Pundit Country

Reprinted almost in its entirety. Link at the bottom.

I’d like to believe that after eight years of GOP dominance of emotional-based / fact-free media narratives, that we’re entering into a new phase where spin can be effectively combated with fact checking, but I’m not as convinced as Greg Mitchell. Fox News is still the number one outlet for Americans and those who watch Fox probably don’t check out liberal-progressive blogs that much.

However, as more and more people turn to individual shows like Countdown, Rachel Maddow and other broadcasters and writers who repeat what they read on blogs, there is a hope Mitchell’s contention will continue to progress.

———————————————–

I’ve read Eric’s book and can certainly recommend it. I was especially keen to read it as my own recent book, Why Obama Won, highlights Web/blog influence and claims it one of the real keys to his victory. So rather than take a broader look at the future of liberal blogging, as some have done here, let me briefly return to the campaign and try to guess what will happen in future elections.

I guess I feel that the uprising on the left side of online, pushed also by generational and demographic changes, will keep the country at least somewhat to the left for many years. And you can quote me. In fact, I predicted that last year even before the current rise of Twitter.

I could go on and on, but let me just mention one reason for feeling this way: fact-checking and instant counter-punditry online. And I’ll just cite one dramatic example.

Last fall’s four major candidate debates could have swung the election, narrowly, to McCain. Obama’s lead was not strong and we’ve seen before what can happen, with Reagan in 1980, Clinton in 1992 and Bush in 2000. Indeed, the performances by Obama or Biden in the four debates were not particularly strong. But the ticket won going away. For several reasons, of course, but I’d argue that online activity around the debates had a lot to do with it.

Why? You may recall that each of the debates ended with the TV commentators, by and large, claiming the Republican candidates (even Palin) surprisingly “held their own” and maybe even gained an edge. In elections past, this likely would have given the GOP a nice bump in the days that followed and led to a deadlock in the next polls.

But this year that “momentum” was blunted, even reversed by one big factor: the Web. Popular liberal sites immediately fact-checked the Republicans’ statements and analyzed why those candidates had, in reality, lost ground. Even more importantly, this time around, various news organizations sponsored scientific instant polls and focus groups – and in every case (even over at Fox), they showed a landslide of public opinion in favor of the Democratic debater. Not even close. Palin, for example, had “held her own” against Biden only in the minds of the pundits.

The results not only came quickly, they were disseminated quickly via the Web, so the next day’s news summaries all had to cite them.

It must have been humiliating for most of the TV pundits. One minute they were assuring viewers that McCain and Palin and held their own or more -and within a few minutes they had to cite polls showing that their analysis had been wholly wrong. Whoops.

Of course, I’d have to add that the work of Nate Silver and his 538 team all year often provided balance to the runaway claims of mainstream pundits.

I could go on, and on, but Iran beckons.

Related articles

• Is Palin retiring, or running for president in 2012? (ctv.ca)
• Andy Plesser: Twitter Emerging as Distributed News Source: High Number of Retweets of Iran News, Report (huffingtonpost.com)
• Why Elections Will Continue to Lean Left Due to the Web (tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com)

Related posts:

1. Today’s Must Read: liberal media and subservience
2. Quote of the Day
3. New study finds growing liberal-progressive generation
4. Jindal and the future of the GOP
5. Quote of the Day: Liberal bias