News Media's Biggest Vice? Endlessly Predicting the Future

Indeed a few financial analysts such as Jim Cramer of CNBC39s Mad Money were relatively early in issuing their warnings about the coronavirus39s potential impact Nevertheless few in the news media saw this crisis comingThis is to be expected How many journalists have the background and experience to foresee the emergence of a new disease coming from China with the potential to spread across the world at worrying rates Of course Bill Gates and others have been warning of the risk of a pandemic for years now with Gates even explicitly predicting in 2018 the impending emergence of a pandemic as serious and widespread as the 1918 Spanish fluIn theory the news media would be excused for failing to predict such a potentially significant event They are after all supposed to be journalists rather than soothsayers However from even a brief look at news coverage it would appear that its focus is more concerned with being the latter An inordinate amount of news coverage today consists of commentators seeking to predict the future But the fact of the matter is they39re not terribly good at itAlong with falsely predicting the imminence of many events that do not come to pass the news media amp8212 for all its exercises in prophesying amp8212 also largely fails to foresee an era39s most pivotal events from the September 11th attacks to the Great Recession This was all wellarticulated by Swiss author Rolf Dobelli in his controversial yet tremendously thoughtprovoking 2010 essay quotAvoid Newsquot As Dobelli puts it quotMaybe you39d find one or two correct predictions in a sea of millions of mistaken ones Incorrect forecasts are not only useless they are harmfulquotDobelli would add to my examples of missing the rise of global terrorism in the early 21st century and the crippling financial crisis of the late 2010s quotthe rise of the Internet the resistance to antibiotics the fall of Europe39s birth rate or the explosion in depression casesquot as examples of enormously impactful events not foreseen by a news media so fixated on making future predictionsAs for a more recent example look no further than the coverage of the ongoing 2020 Democratic primaries In the early fall pundits had all decided that Elizabeth Warren was to become the Democratic nominee even culminating in David Brooks39 whimsical New York Times column quotA Brief History of the Warren Presidencyquot Although perhaps not intended to be taken literally the spirit of the piece reflected a growing consensus among media commentators that a Warren nomination was all but assured At the time few expected that Bernie Sanders who suffered a heart attack in early October would become the quotfrontrunnerquot for the Democratic nomination by February as betting markets and commentators alike labeled him the presumptive nominee And then came BidenPrior to his victory in the South Carolina primary on February 29 Biden39s chances had been largely written off Commentators such as Vox writer Li Zhou were downplaying Biden39s prospects for a decisive victory in the South Carolina primary considering it the state of his last stand But then Biden won the state by nearly 29 points Shortly thereafter The Intercept39s Glenn Greenwald would tweet quotEstablishment Democrats ampamp neocon friends are likely to have one last moment of delusional hope tonight amp8212 a quick fleeting high amp8212 until the harsh crash comes 72 hours lateramp8230quot predicting a resounding Sanders victory on Super Tuesday However it was instead Biden who overwhelmingly carried the day Again prediction after prediction missed the markWhile it is certainly costeffective for media outlets to focus on punditry and playing the parlor game of seeking to predict who the next president will be or what the stock market will do next this exercise puts journalism itself on the back burner Punditry as former Time managing editor Nancy Gibbs alluded to at HISTORYTalks last month is much cheaper to produce than investigative journalism which requires paying journalists to travel and investigate as well as pay for their sources39 drinks And then the investigative story that may emerge amp8212 if the facts can all be borne out amp8212 often does not appear for weeks or months Furthermore said investigative story even if it is tremendously important may not be all that popular with readers This is what took place when Julie K Brown of the Miami Herald had to wait with colleagues in the newsroom until her awardwinning exposamp233 on Jeffrey Epstein quotbecame the mostread article on the paper39s website surpassing a story about a woman who had passed gas in a convenience storequotIt may be amusing to speculate endlessly about future events but journalism is really more a question of analyzing the past and present Although I would never favor imposing formal penalties on newsrooms or commentators that inaccurately predict the future it is well within the rights of readers or viewers to turn away from commentators whose steadfast predictions turn out to be very incorrect such as when Rachel Maddow suffered a 20 percent audience drop after the conclusion of the Mueller probeMost important however a mindset shift might go a long way journalism ought to refocus itself on analyzing the events of the past and present An occasional wellconsidered future prediction is certainly fine but the ratio could use a correctionDon39t stop now Stay in the know with critical commentary on media news coverage from Erich Prince and News on the RecordClick the social buttons to share this story with colleagues and friendsThe opinions expressed here are the author39s views and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNetamp160

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News Media's Biggest Vice? Endlessly Predicting the Future

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Erich J. Prince

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