The Legacy Media Is Gambling With Its Future With Its Election Coverage.

For those of us following the ‘inside baseball’ of politics, we’re relatively calm right now.  Early voting has started, and the numbers look good for Harris at this point.  I also feel like our side is the one with the momentum.  I will admit to having a little heartburn over the occasional bad poll, but that’s more PTSD from about 12 years of piss poor polling practices than actual concern.  In my mind, I have confidence that we’re headed for a Harris victory, with her beating the polling by a couple points or more.  However, compared to the concerned citizens of this country who aren’t politically savvy, this election cycle is hell and its getting worse.

I’ve heard and seen a number of comments from people lamenting that Trump is going to win.  When asked about it, they point to the general old guard media who’re doing their usual horse race coverage.  In particular, the fact that things that scare them about Trump are being presented as ‘not that bad’ or ‘oh, that’s just hyperbole’ or even ‘he didn’t really mean that’.  Added on top of that are the aggregator polls that include polls from such unbiased sources as ‘LOL TRUMP WILL WIN LIB! Polling’ show him up or very close.  The ‘Normal People’, aka those who don’t follow politics, are only getting the general news view of this election and its a terrifying image for the ones who understand what is at stake. 

I sort of understand what is going on here.  Year after year of getting yelled at by angry conservatives for having the audacity to print factual information wears a person down.  Add in that newsrooms across the country are shedding staff and moving to alternative methods to covering the news, and its a nightmarishly stressful job, I imagine.  They need more paying customers, but the most vocal people reading their coverage are always complaining about it.  So why not switch to ‘both sides’ coverage, appease the yelling people and widen your readership base?  Such an elegantly simple solution that will ultimately destroy the institutions pushing them.

The issue is that most Americans consume news to be informed about the actual world, not some fictional world that sort of vaguely resembles this one.  If come election night, the election is wrapped up before polls even close in Alaska, there are going to be a lot of people angry at the news media and I’m not just referring to the rage-addicted MAGA cult.  These people have lost sleep and probably suffered some health issues because of what the media has been reporting.  If that turns out to be untrue, there is going to be a reckoning in the readership department. 

Yes, the news outlets will make excuses.  They’ll hem and haw that its really hard to know what people are thinking.  They’ll say this despite the fact that most news sources have turned into places that only report what is happening on social media, the place where people literally tell you what they are thinking.  They’ll say they were just reporting the polls.  They’ll say this despite excessive coverage of polls showing horse race numbers, and failing to goalkeep their aggregators to keep out bad polls.  They’ll argue they were just trying to be objective.  They’ll say this despite the fact they sanewashed every statement that came out of the Orange Gasbag’s mouth, and attacked Harris for every perceived slight they could come up with.

In the end, they’ll fall back on the argument that this was a hard election to cover.  They’ll point to how we’ve never had one like it in modern history.  But then they’ll be asked a question, a question so fundamental that it should’ve been asked years ago.  “If you cannot provide accurate information in difficult conditions, why should anyone pay for, let alone read, your coverage?”  And I don’t think there’s going to be an answer from the Legacy Media to that question.