It is said to have been one of the biggest upsets in a presidential election. Despite media predictions Donald Trump won the white house.
The media’s prediction on the outcome of the presidential election missed the mark. The Cronkite School hosted a panel of news professionals on Wednesday to discuss the mis-steps the media made; and where we go from here. Whether it gets blamed it on problems with the opinion polls or changes at the voting polls. The media predicted that Hillary Clinton would win the election; and they were way off.
Eric Newton, Cronkite Innovation Chief said, “We are not very good at reporting things that haven’t yet happened, whether it’s a hurricane, or a sports event or a political contest, we are just not one-hundred percent on the future or even fifty percent.”
Some speculate that the error could have been in the way we gathered our news. Leonard Downie Jr, Former Washington Post Executive Editor said,”There are two faults I saw because of digital revolution. Instead of talking to voters, instead of reporting, instead of shoe leather reporting, we relied on data and focused too much on social media. We were focusing on Donald Trump’s tweets and whether he wrote them or not.” ASU student, Faith Decker, said, “The top media are in big cities and we don’t get out to report in rural areas. We haven’t done our justice reporting in the areas that we don’t normally travel to. We didn’t have our story right because we didn’t have our coverage right.”
Or the error could have been in the way we reported it. Newton said, “Editorial mistakes. CNN covered the Trump candidacy like a freak show.” Maybe it all comes down to bias. Either political or geographical. Julia Wallace, Frank Russell Chair, said, “There is a perception that we are not an independent press. Most media people in newsrooms are democrats, some of them even contribute to the democratic cause.” ASU student, Okechi Apakamn, said “We tend to forget about rural America a lot. We forget those small states and how many people voters could be there possibly.”
No mater how it happened, the result leaves an uneasy feeling with journalists. Decker said,”I’m nervous because journalists are people’s friends, we are the public’s friend, we are their ally. He’s managed to turn his entire campaign into a situation where people fear journalists and it’s our job to now take that and bring back our credibility and rebuild the reputation of the media.” Trump may have won the election on Tuesday but he still has to wait until January 20th to be sworn in.