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The Seers

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Why do America= n journalists keep telling the future after continually getting it wrong? <= strong>James Fallows on the ideas and culture behind the predictiv= e style in U.S. political media.

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Maya Makovskaya

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Nearly= every prominent news analyst in America misunderstood what would = happen in the country’s midterm elections last week, assuming predict= ions of a “red wave” that would give the Republican Party decis= ive control of Congress. You might think that such a collective error would= result in a moment of collective introspection. But the U.S. political med= ia hasn’t really missed a step, with new predictions about what the r= ecent results mean for America’s 2024 elections—extending to wh= o will emerge as candidates for each of the political parties and, above al= l, who the next president will be. The predictive style in American politic= al coverage belongs to a genre of opinion journalism, one that’s come= to overtake reporting, data analysis, and the art of the interview. As it = has, there’s been a steep decline in the U.S. public’s trust in= media, often expressed in terms of its “bias.” Yet the supply = of opinion journalism continues to grow, on new-media platforms such as You= Tube or Twitter and in established institutions like The New York Times or = Fox News Channel. This widening disparity between what Americans are consum= ing in current-affairs journalism and what they trust seems paradoxical. Wh= at accounts for it?

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=09=09=09=09=09=09James Fallows is a U.S. journalist, the = author of 11 books, including Breaking the News—along now wi= th a new publication of the same name—and most recently Our Towns, co-written with his wife and = co-founder of Our Towns Civic Foundation, Deborah Fallows. To Fallows, the conversion of the U.S. press into a pr= ofession consumed with forecasting political outcomes is the culmination of= a more than 60-year transformation—with a pronounced, negative effec= t on American democracy. There are forces of change in the new media enviro= nment, he says, but, so far, few signs that they will depose the predictive= style anytime soon.

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——= —

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=09=09=09=09=09=09Eric Pfeiffer: You’ve long made th= e case that a gradual shift in the focus of U.S. political coverage from po= licy and substance to “horse-race” politics has eroded public t= rust in American media. How do you see this erosion happening over time? =09=09=09=09=09=09

=09=09=09=09=09=09James Fallows: I’d say the history= of the way the press has shaped U.S. political awareness has a lot of cont= inuity in it back through the decades. There are elements of the contempora= ry press that are ancestrally related to the kind of people who would go in= to public political journalism in the past. They like the game of politics.=

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=09=09=09=09=09=09The contemporary era of this style dates back to the earl= y ‘60s. There was a phase shift then—brought on by the publicat= ion of a formative book by Theodore White, The Making of the President,= about John Kennedy’s election in 1960. It was the first in the = now-pervasive “inside account” genre of political journalism th= at’s intended to give the reader the sense of, Here’s what = it’s like inside a presidential campaign.

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=09=09=09=09=09=09There was never anything like that about Franklin Rooseve= lt or Harry Truman or Dwight Eisenhower. It was a new way of talking about = the machinery of politics—and it’s since developed into the mos= t natural approach to journalism among American political reporters. There&= rsquo;ve been more and more outlets for this style—and there’s = been more and more encouragement of it—over the years.

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=09=09=09=09=09=09You can see the inclination, this intensification of focu= s on insider tales, in subtle ways—such as how a certain candidate wa= s tired before a major event—that direct the audience away from the s= ubstance of campaigns or the policies they’re addressing.

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=09=09=09=09=09=09Meanwhile, post-election coverage has morphed into pre-el= ection coverage. With the refinement of polls at the center of political re= porting and analysis, the moment one election is over, predictions and inte= rpretations of the next one will have already begun.

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=09=09=09=09=09=09Pfeiffer: How do you see these changes a= ffecting the coverage of the U.S. midterms this year?

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Fallow= s: I’d see them in the context of another inflection point i= n this contemporary history—the 2008 presidential election, Barack Ob= ama’s first, as he ran against John McCain. Then, aggregated polls&md= ash;in particular, the kind associated with the statistician Nate Silver, w= ith his needles and meters—started to become conventional in American= political coverage. They heightened the idea that there was a special kind= of polling insight that transcended normal reporting or normal common sens= e, which could give you fortune-teller powers about what was going to happe= n.

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=09=09=09=09=09=09The last phase shift in the history of this predictive st= yle in American journalism may now finally have come with it being so thoro= ughly debunked, 14 years later. After the 2022 elections, here’s the = possibility of a broad recognition that all the forecasting based on polls = was fundamentally wrong—and maybe, with that, some reckoning or accou= ntability for the press.

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=09=09=09=09=09=09Pfeiffer: Thinking about what would inhi= bit that last phase shift from happening, how do you understand the incenti= ve structures that drive so much emphasis on prediction in U.S. political n= ews?

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=09=09=09=09=09=09Fallows: I wouldn’t say the incent= ive structures are especially market-driven. Not too many more people are g= oing to subscribe to a newspaper because of an election prediction. The inc= entives have much more to do with the culture of American political reporte= rs and editors.

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=09=09=09=09=09=09Now, there’s an enormous number of fields I know no= thing about. When Brazil comes into the news, I know nothing about Brazil. = And I don’t know much about India. There are a billion other things l= ike that. But I can say that, whatever might come up in the U.S. news on a = given day, American political reporters always like to convert it into some= thing they can forecast in terms of what it means for the next election. =09=09=09=09=09=09

=09=09=09=09=09=09Why? Number one, if you can bring the topic of the day in= to your field of expertise, such as what it means for the midterms, then yo= u can always be the expert—you can be the authority, the person who&r= squo;s broadcasting from D.C. or New York, speaking from a position and a p= lace where people should listen to you. Number two, you’re not going = to be held accountable if you’re wrong.

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Elias Maurer

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More from = James Fallows at The Signal:

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=09=09=09=09=09=09“Political reporters enjoy the world of pol= itics, but most people do not. To most people, politics is like sp= orts but with less skillful players. Or it’s like a sitcom but the ch= aracters aren’t as sympathetic, and the plot is less emotionally movi= ng. But the reporters themselves are fascinated by politics because it&rsqu= o;s their world. And so there’d be this descending spiral in which th= e press is writing less and less about what engages the public, and more an= d more about what interests itself. The collateral damage of that approach = is in the extent and quality of people’s awareness about the world th= ey live in.”

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=09=09=09=09=09=09“American media’s institutions and po= litical reporters have given no sign of reckoning with the things = they’re doing that have both misrepresented the world and estranged t= hem from many of their readers. Outside of politics, I think the media has = continued to succeed and improve in many other areas of coverage—as i= n science, technology, and the climate—but not in public life. Someth= ing will have to happen to change this, whether it’s in the revolutio= n now underway across new-media platforms or in the new partnerships media = institutions are finding with nonprofits and citizen-funded journalism.&rdq= uo;

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=09=09=09=09=09=09“Any meaningful reform in the American news= industry will have to happen internally, in accordance with the v= irtues of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment—and its value= s of free speech and freedom of the press. For example, places like The New= York Times could bring back the position of the public editor, someone who= can help navigate mistakes the paper makes—such as in its reporting = on weapons of mass destruction leading up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 o= r its hyping of the obsession over Hillary Clinton’s emails during th= e 2016 presidential campaign. The next level down is reporters and editors = personally saying, I was wrong. I made a mistake. I will become humble,= and I will listen to people who can point out how we got things wrong. There are tiers of accountability.”

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The Signal explores urgent que= stions in current events around the world—to support it and for full = access:

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