How the Press Decides Winners

Washington Times ^ | 1/12/04 | Howard Kurtz

[Tumbleweed_Connection]

Round up the bookies: It's handicapping time again!

Joe Lieberman "desperately needs at least a third-place showing in New Hampshire Jan. 27 to survive," says the Hartford Courant. For John Kerry, a second-place finish in Iowa "would probably be enough" to keep his "hopes alive," says the Los Angeles Times, although "a strong third might even do." The Atlanta Journal-Constitution agrees that "a strong second or third in Iowa could help Kerry rebound in New Hampshire." John Edwards needs a "good finish in Iowa, a surprisingly strong finish in New Hampshire and victory in South Carolina," declares The Washington Post.

Says who? Party strategists, unnamed insiders and the journalists themselves, who, like Olympic judges, set the degree of difficulty and rule on whether the competitors have performed well enough to move on to the next round.

It's a quadrennial expectations game in which the presidential campaigns keep trying to lower the bar (to beat those all-important odds) while the press keeps it high (to winnow an unwieldy field more quickly). And it's more than just a parlor game: Those who do BTE (better than expected) reap positive headlines, which often translate into fundraising success. Those who fail are all but written off by the press, which gives them the aura of losers, which makes it hard to get coverage, which makes it all but impossible to raise campaign cash.

Who designed this crazy system, anyway?

"It's a strange habit and a self-referential habit," says Jay Rosen, chairman of New York University's journalism department, especially since "we'll find out soon enough" which candidates stumble and fall.

"The premise is that the campaign can't stand having too many candidates for too long a period, and I'm not sure that's true," Rosen says. "Why does the field have to narrow? The whole expectations game is a product of this insider culture."...

[Tumbleweed_Connection]

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[conservatism_IS_compassion]

insider culture

Mass-market journalism is an insider culture. Journalists boast of being "objective"--but they are positively averse to critizing the objectivity of an other journalist. Anyone who does criticize the objectivity of an insider is automatically and outcast and even an unperson.

[CGVet58]

well, this article does have some value, but there's nothing new under the sun here...

certainly, not when compared with the major media biased reports of the 2000 election exit polls - not calling arkansas (clinton) or tennessee (gore) as Bush states (when doing so would have sent a devastating message to the rest of america about the dems losing) - or hurriedly calling Dem states - or delaying calling Bush states --

When compared to these truths, the idea of rather-jenkins-jennings holding up cards which read "9.8"... "9.7"..., etc; dudn't hold any flash for me.

CGVet58