After the 2000 presidential election, the mainstream media said they wouldn't do it again. The MSM promised not to call an election before the polls close. So, eight years later, they're calling the election before the first votes are cast.
Before the polls opened in New Hampshire, pundits, including the self-styled "best political team on television," had declared Sen. Barack Obama the winner and pronounced Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign over.
The MSM have largely abandoned their traditional role as watchdogs of our democracy. Instead, TV pundits’ baseless and incessant chatter is undermining the democratic process.
My friend Danny Schechter, an Emmy Award-winning TV producer and director of "Counting on Democracy," a documentary about the 2000 election debacle that I wrote and produced, told me:
It's Florida all over again. It's perception trumping reality. I don't expect them to rethink how they cover elections and do something different. They have a template, the same clichés; just the names of the candidates change.
My fear was that Obama would win and the media would say the election was over. They would have confirmed their own suspicions and wrapped up the whole process.
The MSM wring their hands over citizen journalism, but they refuse to accept that their own performance has given rise to the growing cohort of "people who were formerly their audience," in Jay Rosen's formulation.
The know-it-all pundits said Iowa showed the country had moved beyond race but New Hampshire told the rest of the story. When white voters are faced with a black candidate, they often tell pollsters what they want to hear. But in the privacy of the voting booth, the "Bradley effect" kicks in:
But there was no Bradley effect in last week's Iowa caucuses. Obama led in the polls and he led on election night. But, in Iowa, it was a public caucus where neighbors saw who neighbors backed.
In New Hampshire, as in California in 1982, in Virginia in 1989 and North Carolina in 1990, the presidential primary voting took place in private – behind the curtain of a voting booth. It was possible for voters who had said they were for Obama to cast their ballots for Clinton.
That's how "The Bradley Effect" works.
And if "The Bradley Effect" was in play in New Hampshire, then Barack Obama may face a greater struggle to bridge the often-unmentioned gaps that remain in a nation that has long been divided along lines of race and class.
It is not merely Obama's struggle, however. It is America's struggle, as well.
On Tuesday night, Obama told his supporters:
We've been asked to pause for a reality check.
America's racial history tells us that reality sometimes bites.
