Our chief political writer, Seth Richardson, caught me off guard this week with a bold proposal that our newsroom not write stories about polls in the 2022 election season.
Our politics team was having a brainstorm to plot strategy for covering the races for U.S. Senate, governor, chief justice of the Ohio Supreme Court and some others.
One purpose of a session like this is to resist traditional thinking. We ask ourselves what would best serve the audiences on our platforms. We identify the content we’ve done in the past that might not have the value it once did. Journalists can be traditional thinkers, and we need these exercises to break free of worn out traditions.
Even in that spirit, though, I was not expecting Seth’s radical suggestion. Polls have been a staple of election coverage for decades.
His reasoning is sound, though. We’ve known since 2016, when pollsters got almost everything wrong about Donald Trump, that the science of polling faces grave challenges, for a variety of reasons. One is that some people don’t tell the truth to pollsters. Another is the difficulty of reaching a representative sample of the population.
Seth’s point was that we should not write news stories about something that we know very likely is wrong.
I’m having a hard time thinking of a parallel. There was a time when weather forecasts were about as accurate as today’s polls once you got more then 36 hours out, but modern weather forecasting is far more accurate. Five-day forecasts are reliable these days.
Predictions in sports contests can be pretty flawed, but that’s all part of the game. Sportswriters and columnists put themselves out there with their thoughts and live with the praise or the ridicule that comes based on their success.
Polling, it appears, is the only source we regularly use as a factual basis for news stories that is often completely wrong.
So, to Seth’s question. Should we stop reporting polls?
One of Seth’s colleagues suggested we not use the polls as the basis of news stories but include them in more general stories about the various contests. But if they provide no kind of accurate measure of where the votes are headed, should we give them any space on our platforms at all?
We’re still pondering, but while we do, we want to ask you. Do you want to see stories on polling in the races for governor and Senate, knowing that the results are probably way off? Let me know at cquinn@cleveland.com
I hope the answers I receive provide a clearer consensus than your responses to a question I asked last week. That was about an op-ed we published by former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham, alleging abuse by Max Miller, a candidate for Congress in Northeast Ohio. I explained our logic for publishing it and asked if you agreed.
I’m grateful for the number of people who responded. Your opinions were pretty well split between supporting and opposing our decision. What surprised me was that your reasons were all over the map. I didn’t count, but I’d estimate I received at least 30 different reasons in support of the opinions you offered.
So, no consensus. But the question we asked clearly provoked some thought and, very likely, some interesting discussions. It’s a good day for us here if we provoke thoughtful discussions. Thanks for sharing where you came down on the issue.
"Stop" - Google News
October 23, 2021 at 07:00PM
https://ift.tt/3G9DSN3
A bold proposal for covering elections -- stop writing about the polls: Letter from the Editor - cleveland.com
"Stop" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2KQiYae
https://ift.tt/2WhNuz0
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "A bold proposal for covering elections -- stop writing about the polls: Letter from the Editor - cleveland.com"
Post a Comment