My colleague at New York University, Jay Rosen, has an uncommon gift for reducing things to their essence, to a simple phrase. The most well-known, I’d guess, is his naming of “the people formerly known as the audience.” (His PressThink blog on this is 10 years old this month.) I’m also fond of “the production of innocence,” Jay’s formulation of how the political press attempts to be objective. Lately, though, I’ve been mulling a single word Jay uses to describe political reporters: “savvy.” He wrote on his blog: “In politics, our journalists believe, it is better to be savvy than it is to be honest or correct on the facts… Savvy is what they themselves dearly wish to be.”
Back when I practiced daily journalism, this characterization used to rankle me. Today, no longer reading political journalism through the lens of a daily practitioner, I’m rankled for a different reason. I’m increasingly unhappy with political reporting that seems aimed at the insider crowd.
(Disclosure: When I refer to political reporters, I know I’m speaking about me and how I spent some of my career, reporting and editing at The Des Moines Register and McClatchy’s Washington bureau. So there’s that.)
As Jay has written, there are many different manifestations of the “savvy” phenomenon. One that has long bugged me is framing policy proposals primarily – or only – through a political lens. Such as: “In a move to shore up blue-collar electoral support, President Such-And-Such today proposed….” As if that were the most important way for a reader to understand an idea that could end up affecting his or her life. I actually think this particular practice has subsided a bit, though it’s impossible to know.
But another example that has gnawed at me this campaign season is political reporters’ love affair with predictions, and I’m pretty sure this isn’t subsiding. I fear some reporters are moving toward the standard set by sportswriters, for whom predictions are a routine and casual part of their arsenal.
It’s comical to watch sportswriters make their bold prognostications of who will win the next game or tournament or championship and, when they’re flat-out wrong, simply march on to their next prediction — as if it was of no consequence that they were spectacularly wrong. The thing is, though, everybody recognizes that what they’re doing is just a game that, for the most part, really does have no consequence.
The same is not true of political prognosticating.
It would be one thing if the reporters’ predictions were invariably right. But look at what just happened in the 2016 presidential nomination contest. The pundits’ early predictions went something like this: Donald Trump had no chance. Same for Bernie Sanders. Hillary Clinton was about to have an uncontested cakewalk. Every one of them was wrong. Until rather late in the primary/caucus season, the press’ entire framing of the two races, essentially a prediction, was wrong. This ought to be a spectacular wake-up call about the perils of predicting the political future.
Reporters’ predictions come in all varieties, some brash and bold, some more subtle. Here’s an example of the subtle genre regularly seen in Trump coverage. It’s the Wall Street Journal’s summary of a Journal story.
“Donald Trump would slash taxes by trillions of dollars, leave entitlements alone, boost spending on infrastructure and defense, and, claims an advisor, deliver a budget surplus of $4.5 trillion to $7 trillion. There is no credible way to reconcile these claims… Politically, though, it doesn’t matter.”
This is where the rankling comes in for me. It’s quite possible that the “it-doesn’t-matter” prediction is wrong as well. It may be that enough people are concerned about these irreconcilable claims to make a political difference. And that’s a problem, because formulations like this can’t help but stifle citizen participation. This is the part of the predictions game that I believe I see more clearly now. Why should a voter invest in something if there’s nothing that can be done about it? The message to citizens: Don’t try; it’s hopeless. Stay away; leave it to us.
The worst manifestation of the predictions game goes something like this: “Senator Mary Smith today proposed legislation to do such-and-such, but it isn’t going anywhere.” Predictions of failure like this are everywhere. Budget bills are dead-on-arrival. Gun legislation has no chance. Negotiations are likely to fail. Health reform is unlikely to pass.
I’m not saying there’s no place for predictions in political journalism. Envisioning the future can be instructive. It can provide valuable context. It can be fun. Plus, in today’s digital world, there are endless opportunities for reporters to predict, not just in their news stories but in their blogs, Twitter feeds, Snapchat accounts, TV appearances, and so on. And yes, I know that a story making a bold prediction can often be a viral winner.
But making predictions a regular part of straight news reporting is going down the wrong path. And not just because these guesses are often wrong. It’s because they hurt democracy. Citizens are routinely being led astray about what’s possible or, worse, not possible. Some, at least, assume journalists know more than they really do and act on their predictions.
So why do journalists keep playing these guessing games? Jay is probably right that political reporters want to demonstrate their “savvy” as political insiders who know the conventional wisdom as well as anybody, and are determined to prove it.
It’s a bad instinct. The downsides of political prognosticating are worse than we’ve considered. These predictions can discourage citizens from seizing an opportunity to make a difference. Why do that, simply to make a guess about the future?