Why We Worry

I’ll admit that I watched a lot of the political coverage on TV Tuesday night. Usually because MSNBC brings together the most interesting personalities, I tend to favor their coverage. It’s definitely not because they offer any special insights, if very many at all for that matter.

One exchange between Chris Matthews and Tom Brokaw caught my attention, and I knew it was going to show up in quite a few blogs today. The New Hampshire primary had been called for Clinton, and the various talking heads were dumbfounded at how wrong they all were in predicting a blowout for Obama:

MATTHEWS: Tom, we’re going to have to go back and figure out the methodology, I think, on some of these [polls].

BROKAW: You know what I think we’re going to have to do?

MATTHEWS: Yes sir?

BROKAW: Wait for the voters to make their judgment.

MATTHEWS: Well what do we do then in the days before the ballot? We must stay home, 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. You 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 in effect the process.

Look, I’m not just picking on us, it’s part of the culture in which we live these days. I think that the people out there are going to begin to make judgments about us if we don’t begin to temper that temptation to constantly try to get ahead of what the voters are deciding.

(Crooks and Liars has a video of the exchange)

Without the business of covering the horse race (horse race = polls + predictions), Matthews’ professional life is over, so he figures he might as well stay home. Did it ever occur to Matthews that he could be covering the actual policies and susbtantive claims each campaign raises? You know, providing scrutiny beyond whether or not he thinks a certain candidate cried for real or not. Did it ever occur to him that actually should be his job? Incredible.

Glenn Greenwald has more:

The endless attempts to predict the future and thus determine the outcome of the elections — to the exclusion of anything meaningful — is a completely inappropriate role for journalists to play, independent of the fact that they are chronically wrong, ill-informed, and humiliated when they do it. It would all be just as inappropriate and corrupt even if they knew what they were talking about, even if they were able to convert their wishes into outcomes.

But Matthews’ response to Brokaw is perfect in several ways. The very idea of discussing issues, examining the candidates’ positions, or even analyzing voter preferences does not and cannot even occur to Chris Matthews. That — the most elementary nuts and bolts of standard, healthy journalism — is way, way beyond the scope of what our media stars are able to do or want to do.

Keep all of this in mind when you hear all the hand-wringing about why the media was so very wrong about last Tuesday night. On MSNBC they already floated talk of racism, a deliberate attempt to fool pollsters, a backlash against the media, the power of Hillary’s tears, etc… They’ll clutch at anything to avoid the idea that they shouldn’t be in the prediction game at all.

By the way, if you’re craving some real analysis of the claims made by each politician, please check out FactCheck.org.

Screencap from Crooks and Liars

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