Back on Friday, it was pretty clear that presumptive Republican candidate John McCain's running mate was going to be either Tim Pawlenty, governor of Minnesota, Mitt Romney, former Massachusetts governor and rival primary candidate Mitt Romney, or, if he decided to go out on a limb, independent Connecticut senator and serial executive-branch candidate Joseph Lieberman. As it turned out, of course, McCain chose Alaska governor Sarah Palin (also former beauty queen, a fun fact which opponents are trying to make a political liability). Taking a sampling across media and political orientations, I assembled as much coverage of the selection as I could find from the New York Times, Politico.com, and the website of Fox News. Palin's name occurred around the edges of stories in all three, but none considered her a serious contender...
The most widely distributed account of the selection was that of the Associated Press, which was the most interested in making a prediction. It tried to deduce the choice from the actions of the three favorites, citing Mitt Romney's being seen with an overnight bag, and similar details, and speculating that each might have been planning to travel to accept the nomination. This version dominated the coverage, being used verbatim by Politico and the Huffington Post, which ran nothing else about the matter, and forming the basis for both Fox News's and the Los Angeles AM news radio station KNX 1070's stories on Friday.
Even sources that wrote their own material, however, agreed with the AP on the plausible contenders. The New York Times's story was more analytical in emphasis, summarising the possible consequences of each choice rather than trying to predict. It had, indeed, no evidence of original reporting at all, except for citing a single anonymous source's assertion that there had not been serious disagreements within the McCain campaign. The Times evidently considered predictions as being out of bounds of traditional journalism, as a blog entry by Michael Cooper, one of the authors of the main story, speculates that the nominee cannot be Lieberman because the announcement is to be made during the Jewish Sabbath, which he keeps. It was set off from an ordinary story by a jocular exclamation at the beginning, 'Tea-leaf alert!' Unsurprisingly, Politico.com also ran a number of analytical pieces in the week leading up to the election.
Fox News's take on the issue of prediction was the most interesting, and it also ran, predictably, prescriptive pieces as well as accounts. I should note that I am drawing from Foxnews.com rather than viewing, however. It ran most of the AP stories, but also several written by Fox staff; these had the same emphasis as the AP on prediction, but stressed the unpredictability of the choice rather than repeating the AP's attempts to predict the candidates' travel plans. They added a rumor that Mitt Romney's family were in touch with the Secret Service, and mentioned Tom Ridge--evidently a Fox News favorite, as he came up in a number of stories. Like the Times, though it was willing to talk about prediction, Fox News seemed to be suspicious of it, repeatedly mentioning the unpredictability as a disclaimer, and publishing a satiric piece about the attempts to guess--also using more heavily than any other source the portmanteau 'Veepstakes.' In all, the three sources differed little in their perceptions of the situation, each using the same basic list of Romney, Pawlenty, and Lieberman. Fox, however, devoted a significant amount of time on air to opinion pieces, interviewing their own Laura Ingraham about the candidate's stances on abortion. While quite clearly an expression of her own views on the matter, it was played under the title "Breaking News: Radio Host Laura Ingraham Warns McCain Against Pro-Choice V.P. Pick."
Politico made an attempt to get inside the campaign's selection process, leading both to a story on the mechanics of the announcement, and, more interesting, to a spat with Karl Rove over a report that he had called Lieberman in an attempt to get him to drop out of the race. Rove denied this through Fox News, and Politico reporter Jonathan Martin responded briefly, writing 'I stand by my reporting.' Although he didn't make his sympathies clear in the original story, in the response Martin referred to Rove's allies as 'Bushworld,' which leaves me less inclined to trust a story ultimately built only on his assertion. This exchange illustrates rather well the weakness of unsourced stories; Martin's original post cited no one but 'three sources familiar with the conversation,' leaving no particularly convincing view of the affair.
In this rather small case, there is a visible difference between the standards of evidence present in blogs and 'legacy media'--the blog was more comfortable with writing about predictions and in the use of anonymous sources whose existence they couldn't prove, while the Times was significantly more conservative about prediction than Fox News. But as for reaching the truth, I can find no evidence that blogs are immune from the 'echo chamber' effect--searching on Google or Google News finds no serious references to Palin from before the leak of the announcement above the level of the editorial pages of local papers. Where she did turn up, though, is on a report on the website Onlinecasioreports.com, noting that on Friday, while Romney and Pawlenty led the pack in Ladbrooks.com's betting, Palin, at third, led Lieberman with odds of 1:8 against 1:20. It's the best call I was able to find, and a nice confirmation of the wisdom of crowds--though it ought, perhaps, to lend a grain of salt to the idea that blogs represent the wisdom of crowds.
Even sources that wrote their own material, however, agreed with the AP on the plausible contenders. The New York Times's story was more analytical in emphasis, summarising the possible consequences of each choice rather than trying to predict. It had, indeed, no evidence of original reporting at all, except for citing a single anonymous source's assertion that there had not been serious disagreements within the McCain campaign. The Times evidently considered predictions as being out of bounds of traditional journalism, as a blog entry by Michael Cooper, one of the authors of the main story, speculates that the nominee cannot be Lieberman because the announcement is to be made during the Jewish Sabbath, which he keeps. It was set off from an ordinary story by a jocular exclamation at the beginning, 'Tea-leaf alert!' Unsurprisingly, Politico.com also ran a number of analytical pieces in the week leading up to the election.
Fox News's take on the issue of prediction was the most interesting, and it also ran, predictably, prescriptive pieces as well as accounts. I should note that I am drawing from Foxnews.com rather than viewing, however. It ran most of the AP stories, but also several written by Fox staff; these had the same emphasis as the AP on prediction, but stressed the unpredictability of the choice rather than repeating the AP's attempts to predict the candidates' travel plans. They added a rumor that Mitt Romney's family were in touch with the Secret Service, and mentioned Tom Ridge--evidently a Fox News favorite, as he came up in a number of stories. Like the Times, though it was willing to talk about prediction, Fox News seemed to be suspicious of it, repeatedly mentioning the unpredictability as a disclaimer, and publishing a satiric piece about the attempts to guess--also using more heavily than any other source the portmanteau 'Veepstakes.' In all, the three sources differed little in their perceptions of the situation, each using the same basic list of Romney, Pawlenty, and Lieberman. Fox, however, devoted a significant amount of time on air to opinion pieces, interviewing their own Laura Ingraham about the candidate's stances on abortion. While quite clearly an expression of her own views on the matter, it was played under the title "Breaking News: Radio Host Laura Ingraham Warns McCain Against Pro-Choice V.P. Pick."
Politico made an attempt to get inside the campaign's selection process, leading both to a story on the mechanics of the announcement, and, more interesting, to a spat with Karl Rove over a report that he had called Lieberman in an attempt to get him to drop out of the race. Rove denied this through Fox News, and Politico reporter Jonathan Martin responded briefly, writing 'I stand by my reporting.' Although he didn't make his sympathies clear in the original story, in the response Martin referred to Rove's allies as 'Bushworld,' which leaves me less inclined to trust a story ultimately built only on his assertion. This exchange illustrates rather well the weakness of unsourced stories; Martin's original post cited no one but 'three sources familiar with the conversation,' leaving no particularly convincing view of the affair.
In this rather small case, there is a visible difference between the standards of evidence present in blogs and 'legacy media'--the blog was more comfortable with writing about predictions and in the use of anonymous sources whose existence they couldn't prove, while the Times was significantly more conservative about prediction than Fox News. But as for reaching the truth, I can find no evidence that blogs are immune from the 'echo chamber' effect--searching on Google or Google News finds no serious references to Palin from before the leak of the announcement above the level of the editorial pages of local papers. Where she did turn up, though, is on a report on the website Onlinecasioreports.com, noting that on Friday, while Romney and Pawlenty led the pack in Ladbrooks.com's betting, Palin, at third, led Lieberman with odds of 1:8 against 1:20. It's the best call I was able to find, and a nice confirmation of the wisdom of crowds--though it ought, perhaps, to lend a grain of salt to the idea that blogs represent the wisdom of crowds.
By Mark Evitt
September 1, 2008 10:37 PM
I like how you brought in Onlinecasinoreports.com. A number of our classmates (including me) have discussed what coverage of the Sarah Palin nomination was like, and you attempted to capture what the crowds thought in a creative way.