The dust is still settling on the most divisive presidential election campaign in recent memory.
Shocking not just the US but the rest of the world, Donald Trump will be the next president of the United States.
There’s a lot of media introspection (or more aptly, post-mortems) as editors and journalists try to figure out why they didn’t see this coming. Some of the chatter is very relevant for those of us who support Israel.
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So where did the media go wrong? Journalists didn’t take Trump seriously, nor did they appreciate the depth of American anger at “the establishment.” Polls failed or were misinterpreted. The list goes on.
And in a Dewey defeats Truman moment, the Newsweek brand took a hit when a special commemorative issue was prematurely released featuring Hillary Clinton on the cover with the words, “Madam President.” Thousands of copies had to be recalled.
“Like everybody else, we got it wrong,” said Tony Romando, CEO of Topix Media, the Newsweek partner which produces special issues under the popular brand.
An issue featuring Trump had also been prepared, but that tidbit of information didn’t get out before right-wing social media personalities claimed this was “proof” the election was rigged, though the charge wasn’t true.
From the Editors: 2 special edition covers for 2016 election outcomes were produced by a Newsweek licensee, Topix Media, and not by Newsweek pic.twitter.com/MwC4RytGbC
— Newsweek (@Newsweek) November 7, 2016
In the most notable of the assessments, Margaret Sullivan, the Washington Post’s media columnist (and former New York Times public editor) accused the political reporters of operating in a bubble and falling into a pervasive groupthink:
Journalists — college-educated, urban and, for the most part, liberal — are more likely than ever before to live and work in New York City and Washington, D.C., or on the West Coast. And although we touched down in the big red states for a few days, or interviewed some coal miners or unemployed autoworkers in the Rust Belt, we didn’t take them seriously. Or not seriously enough.
And Trump — who called journalists scum and corrupt — alienated us so much that we couldn’t see what was before our eyes. We just kept checking our favorite prognosticating sites and feeling reassured, even though everyone knows that poll results are not votes . . . .
We would have President Clinton, went the journalistic conventional wisdom, and although she would be flawed, she would be a known quantity. There was a kind of comfort there.
Make no mistake. This is an epic fail.
New York Times media critic Jim Rutenberg focused more on the failure on the polls. This snippet is particularly harsh:
Journalists didn’t question the polling data when it confirmed their gut feeling that Mr. Trump could never in a million years pull it off. They portrayed Trump supporters who still believed he had a shot as being out of touch with reality. In the end, it was the other way around.
It was just a few months ago that so much of the European media failed to foresee the vote in Britain to leave the European Union. Election 2016, thy name is Brexit.
Furthermore, by skewing reality, the media failed in its role in shaping the public discourse. In the time leading up to Election Day, the news industry’s conventional wisdom was that Clinton would handily win, thus raising expectations among the US political Left. Responsible, clear-eyed coverage would have tempered false hopes, and possibly galvanized a higher voter turnout, which was only 55 percent, the lowest in 20 years.
Thus, journalists need acknowledge their contribution to the low turnout and the “Trump’s not my president” protests.
More editors reflected on the shortcomings at the Poynter Institute.
Why This Matters for Israel’s Supporters
If you’re a long-time reader of HonestReporting, you won’t be surprised that the news industry is infected with groupthink, insularity, and is capable of skewing reality. It won’t shock you that reporters allowed themselves to become personally alienated and that the public discourse is now suffering for it.
You also know to be on the watch for the eight categories of media bias: misleading terminology, imbalanced reporting, opinions disguised as news, lack of context, selective omission, distortion of facts, lack of transparency and the use of true fact to reach false conclusions.
Noteworthy as mea culpas are, you’re also aware that the news industry doesn’t change overnight. It’s quite possible that, as Joshua Benton argues, “the forces that drove this election’s media failure are likely to get worse” (gulp!). We have to become more sophisticated news consumers. We must embrace the news literacy movement. (Learn more about it at the Poynter Institute, The News Literacy Project, and Stony Brook University’s Center for News Literacy.)
But it’s clear that there’s a bigger gap than we realized between the American public and nation’s leading papers. The Washington Post, for example, is now catching up on white, working class Americans who don’t live in big cities. These are people who are either indifferent to, or even mistrustful of the Post, the New York Times, or CNN. Does this mean Israel activists trying to reach “beyond the choir” should focus their efforts on local papers and web sites more trusted by red state small towns?
If none of this moves you, consider one last question.
With the news industry admitting it blew the biggest story of 2016, isn’t it just possible that journalists are just as capable of having botched other areas of coverage, be it Brexit, nuclear Iran, the Arab Spring, Russia’s rise, the war in Iraq, the economy, issues of race, gender, sexuality, or, of course, Israel and the Palestinians?
UPDATE
For related viewing, see HonestReporting’s video, Trump, Israel and the Media’s Epic Fail.
Related reading: What Would It Take to Spark Media Introspection Over Mideast Coverage?
Image: numbers CC0 pixabay/geralt; reader CC0 Chris Clogg;
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