More Than Babbling, Less Than Refined

(Alan at The Command Post asked for a Fisking of this article by Eric Engberg. My responses look like this paragraph. All other portions of this posting are copyright ©MMIV CBS Broadcasting Inc. I am using the text for purposes of critique, as guaranteed under the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America.)

As the election campaign unfolded, operators of some of the internet’s politics-oriented blogs, no doubt high on the perfume of many "hits" and their own developing sense of community, envisioned a future when they would diminish then replace the traditional media as the nation’s primary source of political news and commentary.

The webmasters/webmistresses have no need to "diminish" the mainstream media. The newsrooms are handling that on their own. The website operators are merely stepping in to fill the growing void.

One of the more self-important of these blog-ops, Andrew Sullivan, declared in a newspaper article

in a medium Engberg sees as "threatened"

in September that the internet upstarts had become, along with cable-TV, the new "powerbrokers in American politics and culture," primed to unseat "old media." In another piece he compared the new and old thusly: "Critics of blogs cite their lack of professionalism. Piffle. The dirty little secret of journalism is that it really isn’t a profession, it’s a craft. All you need is a telephone and a conscience and you’re all set." That hubris was rampant through much of blogland as election night rolled round.

"Blogland" wasn't the only place with hubris. The Big Three Networks are once again stinging from their reckless reporting of the night's events. Bernard Goldberg, thank you.

Big plans and big claims are to be expected from folks – pajama-clad or not – who are dabbling with new technology and new modalities of public expression.

Why not dream big? The mainstream media are so entrenched in their way of thinking, we can't count on them to take cheap, world-wide two-way communication to the next level.

As a retired mainstream media ("MSM") journalist – and thus a double-dinosaur -- I don’t begrudge these knights of the blog-table their grandiose dreams.

As if they need his blessing.

But I worked on a school paper when I was a kid and I owned a CB radio when I lived in Texas. And what I saw in the blogosphere on Nov. 2 was more reminiscent of that school paper or a "Breaker, breaker 19" gabfest on CB than anything approaching journalism.

I remember CB ("citizens' band") radios. I also remember the horrible Blizzard of 1978. CB's saved people's lives where I was. These radios were powered by car batteries, home generators, whatever, and they could transmit a call for help when no other way was available. Again, when the established channels failed, the people figured out a way to pull it together.

From early afternoon to very late in the evening, those who checked in with the leading political blogs like Drudge, Wonkette, Andrew Sullivan, evote, mydd.com, Daily Kos, and others were given the distinct impression that John Kerry would win the election. The website Slate.com, well-funded and generally a responsible voice, joined in the folly.

First, Slate.com is a blog? Second, that isn't quite how I remember that evening.

The bloggers, obtaining through leaks partial, in some cases suspect snippets of information from the early "cut" of data gathered by MSM through exit polls, were spreading a story that the network and wire service bosses knew to be incorrect because their own experts – and their journalistic experience -- had warned them of the weaknesses in such data.

Weaknesses like the stronger tendency of conservatives to be wary of, and therefore less willing to talk to, exit pollsters?

Kerry was "in striking distance" in Florida and Ohio, said the Drudge Report. The popular and smutty Wonkette site claimed it had "information" from "little birdies" showing Kerry up 52-47 in Ohio and 50-49 in Florida. "The national number that’s floating around right now: 51/49 K/B," wrote Wonkete, aka Ana Marie Cox. After repeating some of Wonkette’s numbers, Sullivan mused, "A Kerry landslide? Could be. Could be." He cautioned the numbers could be misleading, even as he was publicizing them.

At least he publicized them, with caveats. So did the Command Post. Didn't two of the Big Three networks actually stop reporting returns, at the request of the Kerry campaign?

This is the kind of stuff we used to run in my aforementioned school paper, when the speculation surrounded who was going steady. The difference is that the bloggers aspire to being a force in our public life and claim to be at the forefront of a new political-media era.

No, the difference is that bloggers are the public. We are not an incestuous conglomeration of Mutual Admiration Society members. We argue, we insult each other, we nit-pick, we sling mud at all sides. Most of us have no aspirations of ladder-climbing within the established spheres of influence. We simply build our houses and farms on our little plots of cyber-space, and welcome any visitors. Precious few of us actually think anyone is supposed to pay attention to us.

It was clear to me, from following their efforts that night, that, unlike journalists, some blog operators who are quick to trash the MSM not only don’t care about the veracity of the stories they are spreading, they do not understand when there is a live hand grenade on their keyboard. They appear not to care. Their concern is for controversy and "hits."

This is laughable beyond comprehension. "Veracity?" I'll accept a lecture about "veracity" only if I'm shown, in a notarized statement, that Mr. Engberg has given the same lecture to Dan Rather. In the meantime, such a demand for "veracity" rings hollow. Extremely hollow.

The numbers they were bantering about election night were real enough, just not sufficient for responsible publication. They came from polling data obtained by the two companies organized and paid by the major networks and the Associated Press to interview voters at polling places in key states. About 13,000 voters are asked their choice and a series of questions explaining their decision. The networks get the information throughout the day, using it as one tool to make their "call" or estimate on who won the state. The key words here are "one tool."

Right. And the other tool is the desperation in the Kerry campaign.

Let me tell you a few things

Here it comes.

about "exit polls" as one who was there from the time they were invented and then watched them develop through the nine presidential campaigns I covered. Experienced journalists treat exit polls like hand grenades with the pin pulled; they are unstable and dangerous.

Whoa! Did you see that? A journalist calling information "dangerous"! If only he were around when the Pentagon Papers were published. He could have stopped Woodward and Bernstein from doing their dastardly deed!

While out on the campaign trail covering candidates, my own network’s political unit would not even give me exit poll information on election days because it was thought to be too tricky for a common reporter to comprehend.

Welcome to our world, buster. The mainstream media has long considered us ignorant dolts, unworthy of their uninterpreted knowledge. Only the properly ordained priesthood of "journalism" could be trusted to make it acceptable to the unwashed masses.

How insulting. Even more telling is that Mr. Engberg isn't himself insulted by this notion.

If you are standing in the main election night studio when your network’s polling experts start discussing the significance of a particular state poll, you the reporter will hear about three words out of one hundred that you will understand.

How would he know? Has he bothered to ask any of us how well we understand those polls?

These polls occur in the realm of statistics and probability. They require PhD-style expertise to understand.

And not everyone with that PhD knowledge works for the mainstream media. In fact, some of those PhD's will put their knowledge on the Internet, for free. Imagine that: disseminating information through alternate channels, free of charge!

The people who analyze them for news organizations, like the legendary Warren Mitofsky and Martin Plissner at CBS News -- have trade associations like doctors do to certify their work.

After the last two elections, it looks like the trade associations need to pull back and re-group. Their certified interpreters seem to have tripped up. All at once.

When you the humble reporter are writing a story based on the polls you need one of these gurus standing over your shoulder interpreting what they mean or you almost certainly will screw it up. There is a word for this kind of teamwork and expertise. It’s called "journalism."

If the information were relating to platelet count or the tensile strength of a steel girder, that would be true. But this was Election Day, and the only numbers that truly mattered were the ones in the ballot boxes. We voted, we have opinions, views, and experiences, and we don't need the blessing of a Three-Lettered Network in order to be credible. We see what's happening, and we report it, in all its gory detail. We don't reduce it to some 90-second potato chip, devoid of real substance.

You did not see any of the networks or the AP put out misleading reports of a Kerry lead nationally – or in the battleground states of Florida or Ohio.

But we did see how upset Dan Rather was when Bush took the lead. And we saw Katie Couric in her funeral dress the next day.

The editors, producers and executives who run these MSM organizations, in typical responsible, dinosaur fashion, know it would be wrong to do so.

Uh, aren't the dinosaurs now extinct?

As professional journalists, they understand the limitations of this kind of polling.

Especially when the polls aren't showing their candidate winning.

The polling results from early in the day will not necessarily conform to late afternoon and evening voting patterns. They also understand that even as they lumber toward the extinction predicted by so many blog warriors, providing a false early picture of the returns can be bad for democracy. Oh, those backward, self-serious dinosaurs.

There's the holy invocation: democracy. And how many mainstream media called early for Gore in 2000? Again, it's ringing hollow.

Slate.com is deserving of special criticism in this matter. That website is not a blog; it’s a well-established, well-funded and mostly responsible organization that qualifies as serious journalism.

Based on whose criteria? Mr. Engberg's? And what are those criteria, anyway?

But, in what seemed to me to be a smarmy grab for election night circulation, Slate decided to go with leaked exit poll results, thus helping boost the amplitude of the bogus "Kerry leading" buzz on the web.

The web will buzz, with or without Slate and Mr. Engberg.

Presumably, Microsoft, which owns Slate, has a few dollars jingling around in its budget which would have permitted its editors to join the official National Election Pool, which conducted and analyzed the exit polls. Many major newspapers did so. That would have given the Slate bosses access to the cautions being provided by the pool’s experts to the networks and other members about the booby-traps in the early poll numbers. Then they wouldn’t have put out a bunch of misleading figures.

Or maybe Microsoft, on the verge of being a dinosaur itself, knew better than to cement that fate by joining the mainstream media. Instead, they cast their lot with the wild and wooly free-flow of information.

The public is now assaulted by news and pretend-news from many directions, thanks to the now infamous "information superhighway."

There's another gratuitous swipe at the Internet culture. Using the term "infamous" here can be for no other purpose than to cast aspersions on uncontrolled communication. Of course, it doesn't seem to bother Mr. Engberg, that his article appears on that "infamous" medium he seems to despise.

But the ability to transmit words, we learned during the Citizens Band radio fad of the 70’s, does not mean that any knowledge is being passed along.

Maybe in his world. In my world, it was how each of us let our friends know we were well, or needed fast help. And that knowledge was, and is, far more important than Bush's progress of victory.

One of the verdicts rendered by election night 2004 is that, given their lack of expertise, standards and, yes, humility, the chances of the bloggers replacing mainstream journalism are about as good as the parasite replacing the dog it fastens on.

A lecture about "lack of expertise" from someone who has no clue about America's heartland? The corn belt, the Bible belt, the rust belt? The people who, increasingly, don't care what the mainstream media are trying to feed them? This isn't rocket science, and "expertise" is good only for those who are trying to impress.

A lecture about "standards"? Come on, with CBS's so-called "standards" we'd be driving Model T's at 80 miles per hour. (That's 129 kmh, for you ISO types.)

A lecture about "humility" from someone who considers himself and his ilk the "keepers of the sacred knowledge"? This is ludicrous beyond belief.

Then he calls his vaunted organization a "dog". I'm sure all kinds of Freudian oddities can be deduced from that. But Mr. Engberg forgets that one flea may be inconsequential, but ten thousand fleas can cause problems. Then again, one flea can cause Rocky Mountain spotted fever, and a whole raft of other problems.

Oh, for the record, I'm not in my pajamas. I prefer sweats.

Posted on 11/09/2004 at 04:02:00 AM EST.