So Hillary Clinton's win in New Hampshire seemed to surprise everyone late last night, particularly the media pundits who had relied on polls showing Obama surging ahead in the past few days. The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz column today examines the issue. But is today's coverage of the election result any better? Many newspapers are heralding the victory as a comeback or an upset by Clinton. You can see some of today's New Hampshire front pages on the Poynter Institute website. Is comeback an accurate description, considering until a few days ago Clinton was assumed to be the front-runner in New Hampshire anyway? Bottomline: Are reporters and headline writers correct in trying to characterize every move in the run to the White House? Is there an inherent danger in relying too heavily on polls, which are really just a snapshot in time? Do we need to stick strictly to the facts and forget the characterizations or is part of our job to analyze?
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Is Clinton's win a comeback or not?
So Hillary Clinton's win in New Hampshire seemed to surprise everyone late last night, particularly the media pundits who had relied on polls showing Obama surging ahead in the past few days. The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz column today examines the issue. But is today's coverage of the election result any better? Many newspapers are heralding the victory as a comeback or an upset by Clinton. You can see some of today's New Hampshire front pages on the Poynter Institute website. Is comeback an accurate description, considering until a few days ago Clinton was assumed to be the front-runner in New Hampshire anyway? Bottomline: Are reporters and headline writers correct in trying to characterize every move in the run to the White House? Is there an inherent danger in relying too heavily on polls, which are really just a snapshot in time? Do we need to stick strictly to the facts and forget the characterizations or is part of our job to analyze?
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5 comments:
Part of our job is to analyze, but I think that's a job for the columnists. The White House race will always be sensationalized like it has been this time around because it sells newspapers. There are hundreds of papers in this country, a newspaper needs to be catchy to sell.
With that said, I do think that the way they are characterizing Clinton's win in New Hampshire as a come-from-behind victory is wrong. Sure, polls were showing her down with Obama up by around five points or so, but how often are polls right?
Iowa and New Hampshire are very different places, and with their proximity to Clinton's "home" state of New York, it's no surprise that she won there. Granted, she only won by about two points, but it was not a Comeback Kid moment. If Edwards rebounds, he can have that title.
I think that every step a candidate takes whether intentional or otherwise will be analyzed as a trick or play to gain the Presidential vote. It is a very harsh reality of the newspaper media coverage of the election, but it is accurate. It is the American publics tendency to pick a part our candidates.
The problem with this issue is that the media has been controlling the flow of the primaries from the get-go. At the beginning Hillary was the clear power train and the one to beat. But somewhere about a month ago, she suddenly was in the fight of her life. It is shifts of opinion like these that can not only confuse voters, but dilute the idea of journalistic integrity.
The basis of the upset was more because the pundits were upset than that the voters did something unexpected. The mass of 'professional opinion' was gravitating towards Obama, and so in their minds the world would follow.
In the end though, I think this is beneficial in a couple ways. First of all, although it was a 'comeback' for Hillary, it means that both she and Obama will have to work even harder to stand out and appeal to democratic voters that will still feel they have a real decision.
It has also slapped the knuckles of the hundreds of pundits that thought they could dictate or even predict what would happen. In the end, the result will hopefully be a sign to the public at large that although these guys get to speak the loudest, they aren't always worth believing. And any time people learn to take things with a grain of salt moves the public towards a more reasonable state of mind.
The link at the end of this post really summarizes the issue with this headline. We all know that Clinton has been the front runner of the Democratic party for a while now. So where does the term "comeback" or "upset" come from in this situation. Characterizing the results from New Hampshire as a "comeback" win is completely inaccurate.
I agree with Derek in the sense that if a candidate with less popularity had made a remarkable push in the primaries they would indeed be worthy of the "comeback" title. But this race seems to be all about Clinton and Obama with Clinton as the favorite.
I think Kurtz and the Poynter institute raise some very good questions. There seems to be alot of hypeybole and wild speculation in the coverage of, particularly, the Democratic side of the race. Pundits seem to love predicting the fate of Clinton, while seeing messianic visions of MLK Jr. in Obama. I realize that Clinton and Obama are two completely apart from any other mainstream candidate in history, and if either were elected president it would be a major event in American history, but I think the media needs to tone down the rhetoric and shaky polling data.
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