Berl Falbaum
Someone once observed that reporters are like birds on a telephone wire. When one sits, they all sit. When one flies, they all do -- and in the same direction.
(To political junkies: The essence of this observation is generally attributed to former Minnesota U.S. senator and 1968 Democratic presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy).
It describes the lack of diversity in reporting and the tendency of reporters to being guilty of what some critics call a “herd instinct” with none willing to stray from the flock.
We saw this characteristic displayed in the midterm election with a media consensus that Democrats would be drowned in a red wave. A red wave, not a pink one or one that would be light red. It was all or nothing.
Now, in story after story, column after column, we are told democracy won. Again, there is no in between. No one even considers that perhaps, just perhaps, the results are less definitive.
In analyzing midterm reporting, it appears the media made their most recent decision that democracy won on the fact that the projected red wave did not materialize, that Mehmet Oz, the Trump candidate for Senate in Pennsylvania, lost and that Democrats won in some contested races against Trumpites. There is little, if any mention, of abortion which drove much of the vote.
Also ignored in the analysis:
President Biden was never going to lose as many seats in the House as Obama, Clinton, Trump or Roosevelt did in their midterms (63, 52, 40, 81 respectively).
According to Newsweek, of some 300 election-deniers who ran for national, state and local offices, 168 won, 75 lost and 48 have yet to be decided. Then we have the following Trumpism victors in the U.S. Senate: Johnson in Wisconsin; Lee in Utah; Vance in Ohio; and Budd in North Carolina. In two gubernatorial races, Huckabee Sanders prevailed in Arkansas, while DeSantis was victorious in Florida. And Republicans will control the House while some 140 House members and senators who refused to certify the election remain in Congress.
The major point? Yes, there are reasons to celebrate. Trumpism suffered its first defeat since Trump’s candidacy seven years ago. But the underbelly of our body politic remains severely infected; we remain a nation essentially equally divided.
To paraphrase the poet Robert Frost: We have promises to keep and many miles to go before we sleep.
The following unintentional contradiction perhaps illustrates the political reality best: Jon Meacham, the highly respected author/historian, was celebrating the victory for the rule of law on CNN. While he was speaking, the network ran a chyron/crawler, declaring: “More Election Deniers Won than Lost.”
The question of the day, of course, is, “Why were the prognostications for a red wave so wrong?”
The answer: Reportorial uniformity and if you want to test this principle watch the national news on ABC, NBC and CBS at the same time. They are basically identical. You might like one network better than another but that decision is usually based on the personality of the anchor or the station’s reporters rather than substance.
We experienced similar media superficiality in 2016. Remember who was supposed to win the presidency? Only after Hillary Clinton lost did the media suddenly discover flaws in her campaign.
Why is that? Why is the media so monolithic? (I am not addressing editorials or opinion pieces although they are based on news reports).
Let’s examine the process of what I call “group think” from the standpoint of coverage of a presidential press conference.
--Few papers have beat reporters covering the White House. They don’t have the financial resources. More than 90 percent -- I am tempted to make it 99 percent -- of the nation’s papers use the same wire service stories on that press conference. Thus, we all consume the identical story whether we live in Seattle or, diagonally across the country, in the Florida Keys.
--If reporters from different news outlets in the same city are covering the press conference, they are fearful of taking a different angle from the competition, and having to explain their decision to editors.
--After a press conference, reporters talk to each other on what they view as the major revelation; they reinforce each other’s opinions.
--They talk to the same sources; they receive identical background information and analysis, all coming from within what is usually described as the “Washington bubble.”
--Very few do any research. Given that reporters face tight deadlines, no one, through delay, wants to risk losing a story to a competitor. Consider how different the interpretation of the election might have been if reporters just reported the numbers but delayed any analysis, let’s say, for a day or two during which they took a deeper look at the underlying reasons for the results.
And here is the irony: When reporting proves to have been wrong, opinion writers lament the media’s performance.
“The Biggest Loser of the Midterm Elections?” asks the headline of a Washington Post column by Dana Milbank shortly after results came in. The answer Milbank provided, “The Media.”
More media mea culpas are sure to come in the coming weeks. Sadly, we also can expect that nothing will change. It hasn’t in the past, and there is no reason to expect it will in the future.
Another uncompromising, “herd” principle: Never admit a mistake.
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Berl Falbaum is a veteran political journalist and author of 12 books.
