IN MY 15 years as editor of Connect, we’ve never made a single political candidate endorsement in the newspaper.
I don’t believe in newspaper endorsements for two reasons: 1) I believe our readers are capable of coming to their own independent conclusions, and 2) Endorsements are often not only ineffectual, but counterproductive. Turns out people don’t like to be told what to do!
Fifteen years later my philosophy is vindicated —obviously in totally ironic, unintended fashion — by one Donald J. Trump.
Over 100 major newspapers around the country endorsed Hillary Clinton. Several of them, such as the Dallas Morning News and Cincinnati Enquirer, endorsed a Democrat for the first time in many decades. The Arizona Republic hadn’t endorsed a Democrat since its founding in 1890.
Only a tiny handful of papers — very controversially including Savannah’s local daily paper and its corporate brethren — endorsed Trump.
The 100+ who endorsed Clinton may as well have sold themselves as fish wrapper or toilet paper that day for all the good it did.
Like her debate victories and the endlessly hyped polls, newspaper endorsements of Clinton were not only a non-factor, but given the all-time low credibility of the media probably helped Trump.
It will be interesting to see if in four years news coverage will again be dominated by endorsements, debates, and polls, the trifecta of wrong this election year.
As the state of catatonic and/or hyperemotional shock over Trump’s win subsides — as people realize it’s a new week and they have to get back to work, and to life — the internet is filled with critiques of “what went wrong” and “how did this happen.”
Many of these too-late critiques deal with the Democratic Party’s insistence on running a scandal-plagued symbol of the status quo in a year when absolutely no one wanted the status quo.
Those of us who tried to point out this painfully obvious and likely fatal error before the election, for the good of all, were generally sneered at and condescended to and disregarded as naysayers “on the wrong side of history,” etc.
Some of the critiques are less about Clinton than about a deeper look at the Democratic Party’s focus on identity politics and demographics rather than on a coherent, effective message to the working class and to the working poor on jobs, trade, and the economy.
A few of the critiques are a way-too-late effort to “understand” the typical Trump voter by actually talking to some of them. These think-pieces might have come in handy say, six months ago, but now simply serve to further highlight how embarrassingly out of touch the mainstream media was during the entire campaign.
Indeed, if you count yourself as a Trump opponent the one entity you really should be angry at, but which still seems to be getting a pass, is the mainstream media.
I am firmly convinced that the main reason people are so shocked at Trump’s election is they were assured for months that there was no way Clinton could lose — an assumption very much in effect even up until about 11 p.m. Election Night.
Very popular polling sites like Sam Wang’s Princeton Election Consortium (which had Clinton at a 99 percent probability of victory) and Nate Silver’s Five Thirty Eight (Silver is almost a cult figure among liberals) all but guaranteed a Clinton win.
Their only question was how big a victory it would be.
Sociologists have a term for this phenomenon: Confirmation bias, i.e. “the tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one’s existing beliefs or theories.”
The groupthink got so bad that for a few weeks prior to the election Silver spent most of his time defending himself from increasingly savage attacks that he was “favoring” Trump too much by having him at about a 20-30 percent chance to win.
(As for Wang, to his credit he apologized and ate a live bug on TV for losing a bet about the accuracy of his prediction.)
One is left wondering how many people simply didn’t vote because all they heard from the mainstream media for months was how impossible and unimaginable a Trump presidency would be.
As the Gallup organization concluded a few years ago when it got out of the political polling business, pollsters simply have no way of measuring the opinion of people who for whatever reason refuse to participate in polls.
But who was most responsible for telling people they had to believe all those wrong polls? That was actually the media, not the pollsters themselves.
The next time you see another critique, another navel-gazing “How Did This Happen” piece, remember that for the most part this is an attempt by the mainstream media to divert criticism away from themselves and their own miserably poor performance not only in informing the American people, but in actually listening to the American people.
The real tell will be: Will the media actually revisit how they report on issues and politics and elections?
Or will they — as is much more likely — double down on the insular groupthink and confirmation bias feedback loop which led to so much misinformation in so many places?
For those of you still interested in politics, in activism, and even in voting, remember this bitter lesson for next election season.
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news yet again. It’s a nasty job but somebody’s got to do it.
But if next time you repeat the same mistake of believing everything you’re told uncritically, you really will have no one to blame but yourself.
This article appears in Nov 16-22, 2016.
Consider this: had the media and polls been accurate and/or honest that Trump was in the lead the whole entire time, what would that have looked like?
I have a very hard time imagining biased hack outfits like CNN and the Washington Post providing steady, week-in and week-out coverage of hillary losing despite the many Trump outrages, real and otherwise. They had to live in denial in order to maintain their sense of identity. It’s a pathetic reflection on the utter lack of intellectual diversity in what used to be known as journalism.
Also, Jim, I am not so sure you aren’t “one of them” to some degree. Your use of the phrase “Like her debate victories and the…” as if it is some kind of accepted fact that she won the debates indicates your own level of arrogant cluelessness. Do you really think everyone accepts or believes she won the debates? Doesn’t that statement demand some kind of conditional phrase? It goes a long way to answering “how did this happen?”
As I read this, I can’t help but wonder if your support for Hillary may not have come through in a more passive aggressive way than a direct endorsement. For Example, “Only a tiny handful of papers very controversially including Savannahs local daily paper and its corporate brethren endorsed Trump.” as if I must be a corporate shill on the fringes of society if I read those papers. I also find it hard to accept the fact that I’m reading more into your sentence than I should. You are a journalist and as such have an excellent command of the English Language. You wrote what you meant and meant what you wrote.
My concern, is for myself. I cannot find the news in an unbiased way on any platform or in any media. I am reduced to reading as many publications as possible, understanding their slant / bias, and then trying to determine wherein the truth resides. If the MSM wants to be respected, write the story and leave the story telling for the novelists.
For what it’s worth, Hillary has won the popular vote by over 2 million and still counting. It’s not as if we ran the wrong person! How do we know what skeletons they would have found in Bernie’s closet (his wife’s financial problems for example?) Hillary simply didn’t win in the states that counted in the EC. One person – one vote and she would be the president. When a state with a total population of roughly 300,000 registered voters has 3 EC reps (WY), and another state with roughly 600,000 registered voters also has 3 EC reps (DC), it’s very clear that the rural states have twice the clout. In New York, most districts (1 vote) have 707,000 registered voters.
Rather than hang our heads and declare we had a loser for a candidate, we ought to be looking at the long game — gerrymandering, Voter Suppression, demands for ID to solve no problem — there is a minuscule amount of in person illegal voting and most of that is by mistake, but plenty of Americans white and black, rural, poor and students are being kept from the polls. Strange how many of them are likely democratic voters.
And yes, Hillary did win the debates by any objective standards. But I do agree that the MSM did not help the voters. They lead with blood, invective, insults, misogyny, racism and xenophobia and never covered any of the issues that presumably are important to most Americans. Pew tells us that we are more alike than different, MSM focuses on how different we are, because covering the issues would mean homework, knowledge about the issues, and cutting down on their own income. Donald made a lot of money for every network and they weren’t about to hurt the cash heifer.
Donald’s drama caused people to look — he kept their eyes off of the important stuff and on the issues that divide us. The identity politics (if that’s what you call it) came from both sides. You’ve fallen into a republican meme if you mean that democrats are protective of blacks, whites, browns, Muslims, Mexicans and women. Donald found his base among poor white people and he kept his focus on them the entire time playing on their fears, and prejudices and loss of status in a changing world that he never outlined to them. Never, not once told them the truth. Coal is not coming back, and neither is steel. Make American Great Again? When were we not great? No trade deals? Really? I don’t think so. He’s not that stupid. It would cost us 18,000 jobs and spiraling inflation with Mexico, alone. And Canada? It would be impossible. I just hope he doesn’t walk away from TPP. It would cost us free trade with 11 countries. They will join with China if we don’t sign that agreement. I could go on but I’d be competing with you for column space. I liked what you wrote (except for the liberal hand-wringing).
“… Hillary has won the popular vote by over 2 million and still counting..”
And with only 3-5 Million Illlegals and Dead people voting,, that in itself is amazing that Trump won in spite of this massive,, and typical liberal-commie voter fraud that we’v become accustomed to…
That anyone would even CONSIDER voting for a Lying, Murdering, TRAITOR like Hit lery is obscene……