Voters and the Press: Who’s in Charge?
If you watched early evening cable news coverage of last night’s New Hampshire primary, you may have witnessed the appalling (or perhaps amusing, depending on your perspective) spectacle of Fox News declaring Barack Obama the Democratic Party winner even though the actual count-in-progress gave Hillary Clinton the lead. The reason? Fox trusted media exit polls more than the vote itself. As it turned out, the exit polls were wrong, as were most media predictions about the Democratic Party results.
There’s an interesting piece in Salon today by Glenn Greenwald excoriating U.S. journalists for continually acting as if they know vote results before ballots are counted. Food for thought there as we get closer to another federal election in Canada …
If you watched early evening cable news coverage of last night’s New Hampshire primary, you may have witnessed the appalling (or perhaps amusing, depending on your perspective) spectacle of Fox News declaring Barack Obama the Democratic Party winner even though the actual count-in-progress gave Hillary Clinton the lead. The reason? Fox trusted media exit polls more than the vote itself. As it turned out, the exit polls were wrong, as were most media predictions about the Democratic Party results.
There’s an interesting piece in Salon today by Glenn Greenwald excoriating U.S. journalists for continually acting as if they know vote results before ballots are counted. Food for thought there as we get closer to another federal election in Canada …
