Brendan Nyhan

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New at CJR: A State of the Union media prebuttal

My new column at CJR warns journalists about overhyping the effects of tonight's State of the Union address on public opinion:

Tonight, President Obama will address Congress and the nation in his 2012 State of the Union address. The SOTU has become both an important civic and political ritual and a signal about the administration’s policy priorities for the coming year. However, the drama of a televised presidential speech also encourages hype by political reporters who have been taken in by the myth of the bully pulpit.

In it, I review the evidence that presidents rarely get a bounce from the speech, caution against the use of instant polls of speech watchers, and suggest other angles that might provide more insight. For more, head over to CJR and read the whole thing.

New at CJR: The out-of-context quote as gaffe

I have a new post up at CJR looking back at the way the press took Mitt Romney's statement about health insurance out of context:

Michael Kinsley famously wrote that “A gaffe is when a politician tells the truth—some obvious truth he isn’t supposed to say.” But in the 24/7 media age, another type of gaffe has emerged. In this case, the target is a defensible statement that can be taken out of context to advance some narrative about the politician.

Classic examples include Al Gore’s statement that he “took the initiative in creating the Internet” while serving in Congress, which was twisted into the false paraphrase “invented the Internet”; John Kerry’s statement “I actually did vote for the $87 billion [in funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan] before I voted against it,” which was rewritten as “I voted for it before I voted against it”; and Mitt Romney’s “Corporations are people, my friend,” an accurate description of who bears the ultimate costs of corporate taxes that was falsely described as a declaration that corporations have the same rights as individuals. In each case, the press appears to believe that these statements reveal the true essence of the politician in question and as such are exempt from normal standards of accuracy.

The latest example of the genre is Romney’s statement last Monday that “I like being able to fire people who provide services to me,” which came during a discussion of individuals shopping for their own health insurance. The furor over the quote did not prevent Romney from winning the New Hampshire primary. But before moving on, it’s worth looking more closely at how the controversy was covered since it raises broader concerns about the way the media handles these sorts of gaffes.

Read the whole thing for more.

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New at CJR: Forget the debates

My new post at CJR makes the case that the media are devoting too much attention to the debates in the Republican primary race. The super PAC-funded assault on Mitt Romney in South Carolina is far more likely to change the dynamics of the race:

[I]f the debates are unlikely to sway voters, is there a format where attacks can shape the primary campaign? Yes—television advertisements, which are seen by a wider and more diverse group of people than debates.

Viewed through this prism, the most significant campaign news of the last few days was not the debates over the weekend, or even today’s New Hampshire primary, which Romney should easily win. Rather, it was the report that a super PAC backing Newt Gingrich will air millions of dollars in negative ads against Romney in South Carolina...

Read the whole thing for more.

New at CJR: The New Hampshire expectations game

I have a new post up at CJR on the problems with journalists setting arbitrary expectations for candidate performance in presidential primaries. Here's the lede:

After finishing the Iowa caucus in a virtual tie with former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney is in a commanding position as the Republican primary campaign heads toward next Tuesday’s primary election here. The former Massachusetts governor holds significant leads in New Hampshire polls and dwarfs Santorum in campaign organization, financial resources, and elite support within the party. The only candidate who can match Romney on those dimensions is Texas governor Rick Perry, who finished a distant fifth in Iowa and considered dropping out of the race before deciding to contest the South Carolina primary on Jan. 21.

However, as I wrote earlier this week, journalists have strong incentives to exaggerate the likelihood of a Romney defeat. These incentives often induce reporters and pundits to create unreasonable expectations to heighten the drama. A case in point is a story published Thursday by the Union Leader, New Hampshire’s biggest newspaper, in which senior political reporter John DiStaso asserted that “anything less than a double-digit victory margin would be an under-performance” for Romney and would create a “wide open” race...

Read the whole thing for more.

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New at CJR: The post-Iowa challenge

I have a new post up at CJR on the need for more self-awareness among political reporters about their role in creating an Iowa bounce. Here's how it begins:

Over the last week, much of the nation's political press corps has headed to Iowa to cover the Republican presidential campaign. The saturation coverage is already reaching absurd levels. Scott Conroy of Real Clear Politics described a Mitt Romney event Sunday in Atlantic, Iowa as "45 journalists, 30 Iowans, [and] 20 out of state political tourists." According to The Associated Press, "scores of reporters, photographers and camera crews packed into a small restaurant" there, "making it impossible to tell how many Iowa voters were seated at the tables."

With so many journalists covering the Iowa caucuses, the media tends to invest the outcome with a great deal of importance—in particular, by creating a narrative about the "meaning" of the results for the candidates going forward. Though this interpretive process helps both voters and party leaders coordinate in supporting the most competitive candidates, it also creates important challenges for reporters here in New Hampshire and nationwide who will cover the race as it moves forward after Iowa.

Read the whole thing for more.

Most-read posts of 2011

Since everyone is doing year-end lists, here are my ten most-read posts of 2011. Interestingly, two are posts that still draw significant traffic through links and Google:

1. The disappearing Tax Foundation blog post (5/16/11)

2. The problems with the Groseclose/Milyo study of media bias (12/22/05)

3. Forecasting 2012: How much does ideology matter? (11/10/11)

4. Peggy Noonan reads Obama's mind (8/23/11)

5. The continued dominance of the white quarterback (7/31/05)

6. Do early-stage candidate favorability ratings matter? (2/16/11)

7. Beware early general election trial heats (9/14/11)

8. A Thomas Friedman movie cliché retrospective (4/7/11)

9. Are the Republican presidential candidates weak? (2/15/11)

10. The use and abuse of bar graphs (5/19/11)

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New at CJR: The problems with news pegs

My new post at CJR analyzes how reporters' dependence on news pegs is hampering coverage of Newt Gingrich in New Hampshire:

Given that Gingrich has seemingly come out of nowhere to mount the first serious challenge to Mitt Romney’s frontrunner status, it seemed appropriate to expect that he would receive newfound media scrutiny. But at least in New Hampshire, the coverage has been relatively thin in the state’s two major newspapers, the Union Leader and the Concord Monitor.

With Gingrich out of state, both newspapers had an opportunity to step outside the routine of daily campaign coverage and take a deeper look at the former Speaker’s history in politics, his current campaign, and the policies he has promised to pursue as president. Instead, however, the most sustained coverage of Gingrich’s record was driven by statements made by former New Hampshire governor John H. Sununu, a Romney surrogate. While Sununu's comments served as a convenient news peg, the controversy was less than illuminating.

Read the whole thing for more.

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New at CJR: Fact-checking versus strategy

My new post at CJR analyzes how media organizations in New Hampshire and at the national level have covered recent misleading ads by Rick Perry and Mitt Romney:

In Sunday’s Boston Globe, reporter Michael Levenson warned of a coming “year of mudslinging.” This “rough, negative, and confusing advertising onslaught,” as Levenson calls it, is foreshadowed by recent ads run by Texas governor Rick Perry and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney which are “drawing howls of protest from Democrats but no apologies from the Republicans’ campaigns.”

In both cases, the evidence is compelling that the candidate ads were misleading...

How should reporters here in New Hampshire or at the national level cover these sorts of claims?

Read the whole thing for more.

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New at CJR: Covering a "national campaign" in NH

I'm starting a regular gig as a New Hampshire campaign correspondent for Columbia Journalism Review. My first post, which focuses on the challenges of covering an increasingly national campaign for the GOP presidential nomination, is now online -- here's an excerpt:

At one time, the hope was that people in early states would have a unique opportunity to avoid the media filter and get to know the candidates and what they stand for on a more intimate level. In this cycle, however, analysis of how the candidates are faring threatens to crowd out the actual content of the campaign, even in early states like New Hampshire. The danger, in other words, is that the presidential campaign will be Politico-ized all the way down.

Is there a better approach? Rather than adopting the prevailing framework from national journalists, we should hope that state reporters write in a framework that is attentive to strategic factors but still places their primary emphasis on the positions and proposals of the candidates.

Hope you'll go to CJR and read the whole thing.