Media Cocooning
Been watching various cable news shows this evening. It's been an interesting example of the "cocooning" phenomenon. Both shows talked about the latest round of post-debate polls. FoxNews' "Special Report with Brit Hume" emphasized the ABC-News/Washington Post poll and the Pew Poll, both of which showed the President continuing to lead, didn't talk about the Gallup/CNN/USA-Today poll that showed a tie, and more-or-less dismissed the Newsweek poll, which showed a Kerry lead, because of it's sampling irregularities. The core narrative of the Fox programming was that Kerry's strong debate performance had failed to shift voter preferences.
Then I watched two MSNBC programs, "Hardball" and "Countdown with Keith Olbermann". Both programs left undiscussed the two polls showing Bush still up, instead declaring that Kerry had successfully made it a race with his victory in Coral Gables, using the Gallup poll and especially the Newsweek poll as evidence. "Countdown" was especially guilty of this, spending the entire first segment of the show talking with a representative of Newsweek about the Newsweek poll, treating its results as gospel and never once mentioning that other polls had yielded different results.
If you only watched Fox, you'd have the impression that the polls clearly suggest Bush is still winning, and that there's very little Kerry can do to effect that, even if he continues to win the debates. You would believe, in the words of Fred Barnes from that same show, that "America prefers a strong leader to a strong debater."
If you only watched MSNBC, you'd have the impression that Kerry had catapulted himself back into the race (even into a lead), opening up a wide gap on handling the economy while narrowing the gap on Iraq and foreign policy.
Now either, or neither, of these things could be the truth. There's no real way to know. But both networks did nobody any good by telling their viewers only part of the story, especially since it was the part of the story that their respective audiences wanted to hear. As Mickey Kaus has pointed out repeatedly, cocooning is ultimately self-defeating. You begin to believe your own spin, to assume yours is the only rational perspective, and to stop trying to persuade others, at which point you lose. I want to hear the lousy news about the Bush campaign, as much as it ruins my mood some days, because I want to know what's actually going on in the world. I don't want Brit Hume acting as Walyon Smithers to my C.M. Burns. Don't hide the ugly truth. I'm a big boy, I can take it.
As an aside, can we call off fretting about how Florida is going to produce another Florida-style disaster until Kerry gets within five points of the President in the state? In 2000, Florida was a nightmare both because the results were extraordinarily close and because certain parts of the state have royally fouled-up voting systems. Many parts of the state still have royally fouled-up voting systems (I share the general liberal anger that the electronic voting machines don't produce any kind of paper ballot) but if the election isn't close, it won't really matter. Bush - up nine even in the Newsweek poll - will win the state by at least 3 points, which will translate into well over 100,000 votes. It would take error or fraud on a monumental scale to throw that result into question.
A second aside: did you know that in 2000 Bush got more votes in California than in any other state, beating his vote total from Texas by almost 600,000? Yep, he did indeed. And yet he got clobbered in California, 53-42-4. The Golden State is just that big.
Then I watched two MSNBC programs, "Hardball" and "Countdown with Keith Olbermann". Both programs left undiscussed the two polls showing Bush still up, instead declaring that Kerry had successfully made it a race with his victory in Coral Gables, using the Gallup poll and especially the Newsweek poll as evidence. "Countdown" was especially guilty of this, spending the entire first segment of the show talking with a representative of Newsweek about the Newsweek poll, treating its results as gospel and never once mentioning that other polls had yielded different results.
If you only watched Fox, you'd have the impression that the polls clearly suggest Bush is still winning, and that there's very little Kerry can do to effect that, even if he continues to win the debates. You would believe, in the words of Fred Barnes from that same show, that "America prefers a strong leader to a strong debater."
If you only watched MSNBC, you'd have the impression that Kerry had catapulted himself back into the race (even into a lead), opening up a wide gap on handling the economy while narrowing the gap on Iraq and foreign policy.
Now either, or neither, of these things could be the truth. There's no real way to know. But both networks did nobody any good by telling their viewers only part of the story, especially since it was the part of the story that their respective audiences wanted to hear. As Mickey Kaus has pointed out repeatedly, cocooning is ultimately self-defeating. You begin to believe your own spin, to assume yours is the only rational perspective, and to stop trying to persuade others, at which point you lose. I want to hear the lousy news about the Bush campaign, as much as it ruins my mood some days, because I want to know what's actually going on in the world. I don't want Brit Hume acting as Walyon Smithers to my C.M. Burns. Don't hide the ugly truth. I'm a big boy, I can take it.
As an aside, can we call off fretting about how Florida is going to produce another Florida-style disaster until Kerry gets within five points of the President in the state? In 2000, Florida was a nightmare both because the results were extraordinarily close and because certain parts of the state have royally fouled-up voting systems. Many parts of the state still have royally fouled-up voting systems (I share the general liberal anger that the electronic voting machines don't produce any kind of paper ballot) but if the election isn't close, it won't really matter. Bush - up nine even in the Newsweek poll - will win the state by at least 3 points, which will translate into well over 100,000 votes. It would take error or fraud on a monumental scale to throw that result into question.
A second aside: did you know that in 2000 Bush got more votes in California than in any other state, beating his vote total from Texas by almost 600,000? Yep, he did indeed. And yet he got clobbered in California, 53-42-4. The Golden State is just that big.
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