Lazy Reporters and the Conventional Wisdom

A few weeks ago, political nerd that I am, I came across a section in a political article that really bothered me. The piece, which ran in the Politico, discussed a growing sense of fear among Republicans that the Democrats could win 60 or more Senate seats next month, a possibility which many inside and outside the GOP are starting to take very seriously.

At the end of the article, the authors, Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen, quoted an "official" with the McCain campaign who said the following:

One indication of the Republicans’ mood: They’re already looking past this grim election season.

“2010 looks pretty good for us to pick up three or four or five seats pretty easily,” the McCain official said.

My view of this at the time I read the article, and still today, is that VandeHei and Allen, two longtime and very well-respected political writers did an awful job there. These last couple lines here are simply and totally wrong, and the authors should not have printed them. Period. At the very least, they should have added an important qualifier, that this statement is kind of self-serving.

Indeed, if you look at the 2010 Senate map, you will see that at this moment, it is arguably worse for the Republicans than the map this year. Forgive me, but I would like to go over this:

*In 2010, Sen. Mel Martinez is up, and as he has been boasting pitifully low numbers, he will be very threatened;

*Sen. Jim Bunning is up, and whether or not he runs, the seat will be tough for the GOP to hold with several credible Democrats considering a run;

*Facing a brutal minority -- perhaps, as the articles states, one where the GOP will have no power to filibuster -- many older senators like Charles Grassley in Iowa and Richard Shelby in Alabama could head for the exits, creating open seats which Democrats could go for; in Grassley's, they could be favored if former Gov. Tom Vilsack runs for it;

*Sen. Sam Brownback says he will retire, and then-outgoing and term-limited popular Gov. Kate Sebelius could easily run and perhaps win the seat;

*Sen. David Vitter is up, and he could face problems for his ties to that busted prostitution ring;

*Sen. Arlen Specter is up, and at 80 years old, his seat will be threatened whether or not he retires;

*Popular two-term Oklahoma Gov. Brad Henry (who will be term-limited in 2010) could challenge Sen. Tom Coburn;

*Sen. George Voinovich will face an almost certainly tough contest in Ohio, and he may even be replaced be an unpalatable conservative if he is primary-challenged from our friends at the Club for Growth;

*Democrats are already thinking of ways to recruit New Hampshire Gov. John Lynch to run against Sen. Judd Gregg, and Lynch is the only political figure in the state more popular than Gregg; and possibly other races.

Get my drift? My whole point is that the GOP operative's statement to the VandeHei and Allen was actually factual wrong. This is not a matter of my opinion at this moment. Sure, a lot can and almost surely will change in the world of politics over the next two years, but as it stands today, the Republicans will have a rough map facing them in 2010. And this is to say nothing of fundraising, which the Democrats will able to do with much greater ease than the demoralized Republicans.

VandeHei and Allen just took a self-serving (and overly-optimistic) statement from a biased party operative and printed it without thinking twice. I doubt they even considered whether it was right or wrong.

Now, I understand a reporter's job is not all peaches and cream. It can be tough and annoying work. In politics, as in sports, you deal with a lot of the same storylines over and over (think of being the Yankees beat reporter for the Daily News, writing about 162 similar games every day for six months), and you get bored with them and fall into a routine.

One routine for political reporters is to fall back on operatives and party hacks from both sides, and print their nonsense without much challenging. A textbook example of this is when articles quote the mouthpieces from the DCCC and the NRCC and the DSCC and the NRSC where said press secretaries/communications directors/you-fill-in-the-title spew a line about how pathetic/desperate/stupid/misguided the other side is. You know what I am talking about. Let me print this section from an article on a single race, the open contest in New Jersey's Third District:

The survey of 400 likely voters was conducted on Oct. 2 and 3. According to the data released, Adler leads Myers 38 percent to 34 percent, said Carrie James, a spokeswoman for the DCCC. But unlike other polls on the race, no data were provided as to where the candidates stand in Ocean and Burlington, the two counties that comprise almost all of the state's 3rd Congressional District. The only portion of the district outside Ocean and Burlington is Cherry Hill in Camden County. James said the data were limited.

"This poll demonstrates that the more voters know about Chris Myers' record of raising property taxes, the less they like him," James said.

However, Myers' campaign manager Chris Russell indicated Monday night that he did not believe the poll was authentic.

"By trotting these bogus numbers, it's clear to anyone paying attention that the Adler campaign and the DCCC have officially hit the panic button," Russell said. "An independent Monmouth University poll taken at the same time has Chris Myers leading John Adler by 3 points among likely voters."

This is just a single example in a sea of thousands, but I think it gets the point across. Here, spokespeople for the DCCC and NRCC are quoted to comment on a new poll of a close race. Quotes like these are easy fall-backs for political writers, and they make good filler for a reporter trying to meet a word count and deadline.

I get all that, and I sympathize with many reporters. But that does not mean that when an article quotes a wrong piece of conventional wisdom or a statement so self-serving that it is wrong that it does not bother me. It's shoddy work, and it should bother anyone. Freely quoting hacks and operatives without ever challenging them is bad practice. Sometimes, in fact often more, the conventional wisdom is either half-true or totally wrong. At best, the quote above that the GOP could "easily" win 3-5 Senate seats in 2010 is a half-truth, and more like today, 100 percent wrong.

I wanted to post all of this on the day the article was printed, but I decided not to because I felt it was way too inside-baseball; in other words, that my complaints were based on feelings that no one except a super-geeky political junkie would find valid or interesting.

I am making this post today because of an article in today's New York Times which displays much the same behavior of a lazy reporter who prints a piece of conventional political wisdom without so much as checking whether it is accurate.

In today's Times, there is an article on a subject of great interest to us here, namely the Mississippi Senate race between Ronnie Musgrove and Roger Wicker. Perhaps you have noticed a small piece or two on the contest at this site. Anyway, the article discusses Musgrove's difficult road in the contest, and how he is close, but still so far away from victory.

I will admit, I found the tone to be a little too anti-Musgrove's chances. But that's fine. I am a partisan, but I know reporters have a job to do, and the conventional wisdom is that Musgrove is the decided underdog in the race, irregardless of the recent close polls.

What did bother me was particular passage which was based on the conventional wisdom of this particular race, and was also, as it happens, dead wrong. Here are the offending sentence(s):

The odds for a Democratic pickup, however, out of all the states in play, may be longest in Mississippi.

The numbers in this state — which has perhaps the most racially polarized electorate in the nation — do not favor the Democrat: whites, the majority, overwhelmingly vote Republican, and 85 percent of them voted for President Bush in 2004. Even if there is a record black turnout, Mr. Musgrove would have to get about 30 percent of the white vote to win. Nonetheless, analysts give Mr. Musgrove, a hill-country populist who championed education during his terms as governor and lieutenant governor, a better-than-passing chance, particularly as the credit squeeze penetrates even here.

The author, Adam Nossiter, made at least two mistakes in the second sentence of the second paragraph.

First, the conventional wisdom is that Musgrove needs to get 25 percent of the white vote in order to win that next week. But if Musgrove were to get 30 percent while there was also record black turnout -- which, presumably as the Democrat, Musgrove would win overwhelmingly -- Musgrove would win in a landslide. The author overlooked both of these facts.

I do not know Mr. Nossiter. Even though I read the Times religiously, I can say that I am not familar with his work, and I am not sure what, if anything, I have read of his in the past. He might be a fantastic reporter. Considering that he works for the best paper in the world, I am sure he is good at what he does. But his work here is poor.

I am guessing that the author got that statistic from an operative, and may have just mixed up 25 or 30 percent. More likely, however, the person he spoke to had no idea what they were talking about and told him Musgrove needed 30 percent of whites to win. Or maybe, he got the conventional wisdom from a GOP operative. Either way, it's there and it's wrong. If Nossiter had spent literally two minutes researching Mississippi's composition and these numbers, he would have seen that this conventional wisdom was wrong.

Let's take a very quick look:

*Let's assume turnout is about average, and the voters turn out to be 63 percent white and 37 percent black. Assuming Musgrove gets 90 percent of the black vote -- a fair assessment given voting patterns in the state, and, incidentally, the exact percentage John Kerry got in 2004 in the state -- and also receives 30 percent of the white vote, he would end up with around 52.2 percent, more than enough to win.

*And this does not even assume super black turnout! Let's say black turnout is the same as in 2004 -- 34 percent -- and thus the white vote hits 66 percent. If Musgrove still gets 90 and 30 percent of these segments, he would end up at 50.4 percent. He would thus win, even with low black turnout.

*Finally, let's take the article's assertion on its face, and assume there is unprecedented black turnout. Let's pick a round number and say black turnout ends up at a huge 40 percent. If that happens, and we apply the same percentages, Musgrove would get 54 percent of the vote, essentially a landslide for a Democrat in Mississippi the likes of which have not been seen since the days of John Stennis. In other words, this is not going to happen, almost regardless of what black turnout is.


What does this all mean? These hypotheticals show us that the statement in the article is dead wrong. The simple fact is that yes, Musgrove has a hard road to win, and yes, he needs a certain percentage of the white vote, and yes, the higher the black turnout the better it is for him. Nonetheless, he does not need 30 percent of the white vote to win, and he definitely does not 30 percent of the white vote to win if and when there is massive black turnout.

Look, I bet Nossiter was none too delighted to be sent to Jackson, Mississippi on assignment. In an election season like none we have ever seen in years, there were likely many choicer assignments that Nossiter's colleagues went on, and he was stuck with what is seen as a more boring, less consequential contest, and one smack in the Deep South, no less. We might love talking Mississippi politics here, but I doubt this is sentiment shared by a hungry political reporter. This is nitty-gritty stuff, and not as sexy as Obama-McCain.

Nossiter, like any reporter, whether good or not good, simply took an "expert's" restatement of the conventional wisdom and regurgitated it in his piece because it was easier than actually doing his own homework.

Anyway, I bet if you have made it to the end of this post, two thoughts are in your head. One, is that I am a huge nerd and nit-picker who needs better things to occupy my time with, and two, that this issue I am bringing up is such a minor matter that it does not mean anything substantive.

In the end, that's probably right, and basically no one is going to question the two pieces from the Times and Politico that I have scrutinized here. Only the most inside-baseball political junkies would notice these kinds of small errors. Furthermore, I admit that maybe I took greater exception with this article because I have been following Wicker-Musgrove for so long.

I guess that all of my angst is based on the view that political reporters should be more careful with that they write, and not spend so much time quoting verbatim and relying heavily on political hacks who have their own agenda and so-called experts who might be a little off in what they are saying. I love hacks as much as the next guy; I think to consider myself a political hack. Still, I find the constant reporter reliance on their quotes to be a waste of space and of time.

It is hard enough to find good political writing out there, as just like with sportswriting, political writers seem to write about the same storylines over and over, and they rely more and more on uninteresting and unenlightening conventional wisdom from party operatives. For that reason, this is all a bigger issue than mere inside baseball.