THE POLLS are closed, the election is over, and no clear winner has yet emerged. The clear loser, however, made itself glaringly apparent: television journalism. While the Ombudsman column generally tries to stick to addressing the behavior of The Cavalier Daily, some opportunities come along only once in a lifetime.
Generally, I do not watch television election coverage, and particularly not early evening coverage, where the media pundits hold court and the pollsters work their exit poll data, everyone predicting the outcome. I have a term for this kind of journalism. I call it "making up the news." Since there is the all important rush in television news to break a story first, in order to get more people to watch your advertising, the networks rush to call the result of the election, so that no other program gets "the scoop." Of course, the other programs don't actually have a scoop, because they are also reporting news that they just made up.
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Now, before you write in to accuse me of being a backwards, curmudgeonly rejecter of modern reporting techniques, let me add that I have a good grasp of statistical modeling, and a fine respect for what mathematical models can or cannot prove. The models used to predict election outcomes are no doubt well-designed and sensitive to numerous variables. They are generally very accurate.
This year, the projections bo unced back and hit the networks in the eye. The models were worthless, not because of the modeling equations, but because the number of votes that will determine the election is very small, well within the margin of error for both the counting systems and the predictive models. In addition, the methods used by our election officials to collect and tabulate votes, particularly in some states, seem to be sloppy, error-riddled and poorly thought-out. (No model, of course, can be more accurate than its data. If the data are incomplete, erroneous or otherwise "dirty," then the model will make conclusions that either "fill in," reject or utilize the questionable information.)
The problem lies in television journalists' insistence on reporting their projections as if they are facts. The media has been taken to task for this for several years now, particularly in national elections, where the networks have often called elections before the polls have closed in the western part of the U.S. The concern has been that early announcements of a "winner" based on projections will impact the voting behavior of those who have yet to vote. Every election year the media claims it will examine their procedures, and yet, next election cycle, it is the same old thing.
Typically, the media has been saved by the fact that elections, especially nationally, don't tend to be that close. With millions of voters, the odds that an election will come down to a few hundred votes is minuscule. Thus, the media can minimize their own impact by arguing that even if they do swing a few hundred - or even a few hundred thousand - votes, it would not make a difference. Whoops.
This has been the election that has shown that the naysayers who have decried the reportage of projections each year had a valid and useful point. Did the reporting of these erroneous projections have an effect on voting patterns? We will never know. To tease apart all the variables of influence alone would be difficult, but because the vote is secret, the patterns of voting over the time-frame are all but impossible to determine. For television journalists to discard the possible effect they might have on the electorate, and the immense and improper influence they may exert through their privileged position, is a breach of the journalist's most sacred public trust: to seek and report the truth. There is no duty to make up and report a scoop in order to make profits for the networks.
It is clear that the reporting of these projections has had one effect. It has served to intensify the perceptions that the election process is without meaning, that it is riddled by more confusion than it in fact is, that electoral results shift day-to-day. The reality is that vote counting is difficult, democracy is messy, the tabulation of votes - like any other data - will always have some error. If the media had waited for some clearer sense of returns, if they had allowed the nation's election officials to do their jobs (which take, and have apparently always taken, several days after the elections for a stable count), would the country's sense of turmoil be the same? If the expectation of instant results - which have in fact been just media projections in the past, rather than hard numbers - was not put in place by the media, would we not just be waiting for the final results? Admittedly, the voters would be excited, it would be clear that the vote is historically close, but the out-of-control perception would not be the same.
The television journalists offer mealy-mouthed rationalizations for their "right" to provide this information, that the public "wants" this information. This is generally one of our weaker arguments as journalists. Unquestioningly, the media has the right to provide this information, and the public probably does want it. However, many people also want to know the spending habits of the wealthy, the favored sexual positions of politicians, the detailed health information of rock stars, and the stomach contents of famous dead people. A right to provide this information? Maybe. Good journalism? Not by a long shot. In their rush to be "first," the television journalists missed the biggest political story since the 1800s - a razor margin election with elements of uncertainty unforeseen by anyone. It is a pity we had to wade through predictions, announcements, retractions and the attendant hoopla, just to hear it told.
(Brent Garland can be reached at ombud@cavalierdaily.com)
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