It was Joe Namath, almost 40 years ago, who first taught me what media forecasts are worth. On New Hampshire primary night this week, Tom Brokaw reminded me.
For two weeks leading up to Super Bowl III, my beloved Baltimore Colts practiced a bit and enjoyed Miami a lot as America’s sports media predicted a romp over the New York Jets. And when three days before the game, Namath predicted, “We’re (The Jets) gonna win the game. I guarantee it,” the media chalked it up to Broadway Joe’s bravado in overdrive.
Namath had the last laugh. The Jets pulled off what many regard as the biggest upset in NFL history. Suddenly the old adage “That’s why they play the games” took on new meaning.
Tuesday night in New Hampshire, the media got it wrong again, and in the midst of the hand-wringing over how that could have happened, Brokaw reminded us that journalists should be covering events, not predicting them.
In the days leading up to America’s first primary, coverage was obsessed with predictions. Reports focused on Barack Obama’s decisive win in the Iowa caucuses and polls showing he would win big again in New Hampshire.
Stories appeared about disarray in Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Who would be fired? How would the Senator’s strategy change? And then, of course, there was the “tear” – a sure sign that the polls were accurately forecasting her accelerating demise.
The polls, we found out, were wrong. As David Brooks of The New York Times wrote on Wednesday morning:
That’s right — they weren’t. And that wouldn’t be such a big deal if America’s media hadn’t built most of its presidential election coverage around predicting the outcome of the horse race. But from the beginning of this campaign, that’s exactly what the media has done.
A study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy found that:
Throughout 2007, it’s safe to say those numbers didn’t change significantly. In fact, as the year drew to a close, the horse race coverage only intensified.
And, one must ask, to what end? What did all of that horse race and inside political coverage accomplish? How about these pre-Iowa conclusions:
- McCain’s campaign is doomed.
- Clinton’s nomination is inevitable.
- Obama is too effete and inexperienced to win.
- Giuliani is running surprisingly strong.
- Huckabee has no shot.
So much for 10 months of work.
Watching the cable channels cover Tuesday night’s results, I was struck by how little anyone told me about why people in New Hampshire voted as they did. At one point, I heard the briefest of snippets on one channel that exit polls showed New Hampshire voters had been most concerned with the economy. And yes, I saw charts that told me Clinton had reclaimed much of the women’s vote she had lost to Obama in Iowa.
But no one was telling me why.
Why?
With all of this polling power, why couldn’t someone tell me why? After almost a year of nonstop coverage, why can’t someone tell me what the most important players in this election — the voters — are thinking?
Where’s the journalism?
Brokaw must have been wondering the same thing. Or maybe he knew.
On MSNBC, Brokaw was the designated analyst for Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann, who by 11 p.m. had stopped trying to describe a miracle scenario in which late votes would reverse the Clinton lead. Then, right after Obama conceded the election, Matthews told Brokaw the media would have to rethink its polling methodology.
This exchange followed:
Matthews: Yes sir?
Brokaw: Wait for the voters to make their judgment. (Laughs) What a novel idea.
Matthews: Well, what do we do then in the days before the balloting? We must stay home then, I guess.
Brokaw: No, no we don’t stay home. There are reasons to analyze what they’re saying. We know, from how the people voted today, what moved them to vote. We can take a look at that. There are a lot of issues that have not been fully explored during all this.
But we don’t have to get in the business of making judgments before the polls have closed, and trying to stampede and affect the process.
Look, I’m not just picking just on us, it’s part of the culture in which we live these days. But I think that the people out there are going to begin to make some judgments about us — if they haven’t already — if we don’t begin to temper that temptation to constantly try to get ahead of what the voters are deciding, in many cases, as we learned in New Hampshire, when they went into the polling booth today or in the last three days. They were making decisions very late.
Does polling have a place in good election coverage? Absolutely. Stop by NewsU and consider some of the ways in which good polling can benefit your coverage, and how good polls are constructed to help us learn as much as possible.
Problem is, that’s not how most of the press is using polls in this race. Polls are being used in the vain hope that we can circumvent this messy, costly and long job of covering a presidential campaign and get to the bottom line as quickly as possible: Who’s gonna win?
It’s a good question, but as Barack Obama and Chris Matthews found out Tuesday night, getting to the answer probably will not happen easily or quickly. For Obama, months of campaigning remain. For Matthews, months of journalism.
Thanks for the reminder, Tom Brokaw. That’s why they play the game.
