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01/28/2004 Archived Entry: "The media lose"

Posted by steve @ 02:26 PM EST [Link]

WHO REALLY LOST IN N.H.: John Podhoretz argues that the biggest loser in New Hampshire was the media.

The results last night in New Hampshire represent a humiliating disaster for the mainstream media. The political reporters and editors who have been judging this race for a year have made utter fools of themselves.

Nobody foresaw John Kerry's huge victory in Iowa. It was suggested that Kerry was doing better in the weeks before the caucuses, but no reporter even imagined Kerry might pull 38 percent of the caucus-goers there. The press failed just as miserably in New Hampshire - but this time by overestimating and overrating John Edwards.

The North Carolina senator was said to be surging by journalists on the campaign trail who positively slobbered over Edwards' brilliance - a "natural" campaigner, better than Bill Clinton, etc. That talk continued unabated after Edwards' horrible performance in the New Hampshire debate last Thursday, when at least one or two reporters in Iowa might have thought twice about praising his skills as a campaigner.

There was no such thing as the Edwards surge. He ended up somewhere around 12 percent, a spectacularly dismal showing considering that he had scored 32 percent in Iowa only eight days before.

Read on.