How did "the media" get it so wrong?

Snickers Man

Much bluster over the last few weeks from the likes of the Sunday Independent and John Waters about how the "Dublin 4" "College Boy" media (by which they mean RTE and some columnists in the Irish Times) got the outcome of the election all wrong.

In fact if you look at this clip from the Late Late Show featuring Eoghan Harris and John Waters (watch it from about 17 mins 50s in) Pat the Plank got it absolutely right (Bertie in power without an overall majority) Eamonn Dunphy got it partly right that there would be a big swing against the sitting government (which there was) and Harris and Waters got it dead wrong when they insisted (nudge nudge wink wink we know what's what) that there would be an FF/Labour coalition, although Waters conceded that Labour would have to ditch Rabbitte to effect that.

Wah!! Uhh!! Wrong guys!!!!

it was another party entirely, largely made up of wishy washy Dublin college boys that those two Blow-In Blow-Hards seem to hold in such contempt, that went into power, although their leader did the honourable thing and resigned so as not to make a liar of himself.

Will it stop the bombastic "We told you so editorials?"

I wouldn't bet on it.

mike65

I would'nt place Pat Kenny in that discredited group tbh. He's quite clever (just not on the Late Late). Many in the Dublin meeja pool got it wrong cos they so wanted a different result. No-one should underestimate the bias towards the soft-left in Official Ireland media anyone who thinks otherwise should cast thier mind back to John Kerry loosing the US election RTEs Morning Ireland held an aural wake.

Mike.

flogen

mike65 wrote:

I would'nt place Pat Kenny in that discredited group tbh. He's quite clever (just not on the Late Late). Many in the Dublin meeja pool got it wrong cos they so wanted a different result. No-one should underestimate the bias towards the soft-left in Official Ireland media anyone who thinks otherwise should cast thier mind back to John Kerry loosing the US election RTEs Morning Ireland held an aural wake.

Mike.

Well a true conservative would have mourned the re-election of George W. Bush too given his complete disregard for fiscal responsibility, small government and libertarianism but that's another matter altogether.

If there's any reason why the media seemed to get it wrong it was because they relied on FPTP-based polling data, but that said I clearly remember the media talking of a FF resurgence after the leaders' debate, and the drop in support for the "alternative" parties. They didn't come close to predicting as positive an outcome for FF as they got, but not even FF was predicting that.

Snickers Man

mike65 wrote:

I would'nt place Pat Kenny in that discredited group tbh. He's quite clever (just not on the Late Late). Many in the Dublin meeja pool got it wrong cos they so wanted a different result.

I was pointing out that Pat, the epitome of the middle-class urbane Dubliner actually got it quite right whereas the representatives of the real vociferous
part of the media, the Blow Hard Blow Ins from down the country who bitch so long and so hard about "Dublin 4" and "middle class messers" and "College Boys" got it dead wrong. Fast forward to the part where Waters says that the "Greens moment has passed" for a deliciously wrong prediction.

mike65 wrote:

No-one should underestimate the bias towards the soft-left in Official Ireland media

Well you see your enemies where you want to see them. I see the enemy in the media as being loud, boorish, hectoring, bullying, right wingers who speak with a pronounced rural accent and have not so much a chip on their shoulder as an entire Intel factory.

Examples:
Harris
O'Connor
Clifford
Waters

Dublin's Finest

Snickers Man wrote:

Examples:
Harris
O'Connor
Clifford
Waters

But does anybody take this lot seriously anymore? Harris became a parody of himself a long time ago.

mike65

Fair enough Snickers Man. I hear the likes of Vincent Browne (when he's not just being ecentric), the whole RTE news room plus Tom McGurk, Joe Duffy, etc. The electronic media is more powerful in moulding opinion than newsprint these days I suspect.

Mike.

flogen

Dublin's Finest wrote:

But does anybody take this lot seriously anymore? Harris became a parody of himself a long time ago.

Plenty do, I'd imagine... even if it's just the ones that like to have their own beliefs reinforced by others.

Snickers Man

Dublin's Finest wrote:

But does anybody take this lot seriously anymore? Harris became a parody of himself a long time ago.

Well I'd certainly like to think so but whose paper did Bertie and Biffo make a determined effort to cosy up to just before the election?

constitutionus

to get back to the original question the answer is the media spent all its time talking to.......the media. plus its mates in similar social circles. which at best represent 5 to 10% of the population. its insanely incestuous and quite frankly not good for journalism. that and polls

honestly the amount of credit given to polls is unreal. has anyone here actually been polled or know someone who has? if so would you describe those individuals as representative of the population as a whole? my personal opinion is the answer is probably no to both those questions.

if the media want to get any credibility back on stuff they'll have to go back to the old fashioned method of getting out there in the community and asking normal people what they feel instead of relying on communications companies doing if for them. its interesting to see the only real poll that was accurate was the one taken outside the polling stations on the day

fly_agaric

constitutionus wrote:

its interesting to see the only real poll that was accurate was the one taken outside the polling stations on the day

The last opinion polls right before the election were showing a significant swing back to FF (the divil you know effect??) weren't they?

flogen

constitutionus wrote:

honestly the amount of credit given to polls is unreal. has anyone here actually been polled or know someone who has? if so would you describe those individuals as representative of the population as a whole? my personal opinion is the answer is probably no to both those questions.

I was polled - by landsdowne research for the Irish Independent, I think. Naturally I wouldn't be ignorant enough to describe myself as representative of the population, though - it'd be pretty hard for one person to manage that anyway!

J.S. Pill

mike65 wrote:

Many in the Dublin meeja pool got it wrong cos they so wanted a different result.

I think this is the most important factor by far. Even if they privately held that the alternative coalition was dead in the water they were still going to proclaim that it had a chance of winning because they know, as was mentioned, that they are powerful opinion formers - simple as.

Given this, I think its a bit futile to criticicise these guys for 'getting it wrong' when their real opinions were probably a bit more nuanced and different.

Rosita

Snickers Man wrote:

Much bluster over the last few weeks from the likes of the Sunday Independent and John Waters about how the "Dublin 4" "College Boy" media (by which they mean RTE and some columnists in the Irish Times) got the outcome of the election all wrong.

In fact if you look at this clip from the Late Late Show featuring Eoghan Harris and John Waters (watch it from about 17 mins 50s in) Pat the Plank got it absolutely right (Bertie in power without an overall majority) Eamonn Dunphy got it partly right that there would be a big swing against the sitting government (which there was) and Harris and Waters got it dead wrong when they insisted (nudge nudge wink wink we know what's what) that there would be an FF/Labour coalition, although Waters conceded that Labour would have to ditch Rabbitte to effect that.

Wah!! Uhh!! Wrong guys!!!!

it was another party entirely, largely made up of wishy washy Dublin college boys that those two Blow-In Blow-Hards seem to hold in such contempt, that went into power, although their leader did the honourable thing and resigned so as not to make a liar of himself.

Will it stop the bombastic "We told you so editorials?"

I wouldn't bet on it.

How do you work out that there was a big swing against the government? The combined FF-PD first preference vote dropped from 45.5% to 44.29%. That is far from a big swing. That combination got a higher first preference vote than it got in 1997 when it also formed the government. The PDs may have suffered in seat terms but this was mainly because their seat performance in 2002 was so freakish and unrepeatable (their seats doubled even though their first preference vote dropped) that they were always likely to struggle even if they came back with the same % vote. But an overall drop of 1.21% in first preferences for the outgoing government is not a big swing.

The big swing in the election was against the Independents whose first preferences dropped by a whopping 8%. Compare this to the big "winners" of the election, Fine Gael, who gained less than 5% on the last election. The swing against Independents was the big story of the election but the personal obsession of media commentators with a small few politicians meant that this went largely unremarked upon in favour of concerntrating on Ahern, McDowell etc.

Pat Kenny getting it right about "Bertie in power without an overall majority" is hardly a major prediction. In fact I suspect that Kenny probably had FF-Labour in mind when saying that.

Waters predicting a move towards FF in the days leading up to the election was in fact very accurate when you look at the trend of opinion polls and the actual outcome.

As for Harris/Waters predicting an FF/Labour coalition, well, they certainly had the numbers didn't they? It's difficult to predict how the underlying relationships between the different parties affects alternative coalition arrangements since only the politicians really know the underlying relationships, so Harris/Waters can hardly be faulted for that.

It takes a very biased reading of that interview to come to the conclusion that Dunphy got it right and the other two got it wrong.

As for Trevor Sargent, his behaviour would be more accurately described as "bizarre" rather than "honourable". Being pictured on the front of the paper with his arms in the air, saying that it was his proudest moment (going into government with FF) and then poised to accept a Junior Ministry from Ahern, knocks any "honour" out of the water. It seems to me that he probably realised that he is the least able and regarded of the better-known Green TDs and he simply recognised his limitations. As John Waters said in an excellent article in today's Times, Sargent's actions will appeal to a certain section of society for whom semantic consistency is a more important factor in determining integrity than anything you do. They will be pleased with his dramatic gesture. For the rest of the nation he could have said he changed his mind based on the reality of the situation as got on with it. Look at some of the stuff the likes fo John Gormley has said about FFers and the PDs over the years but he is practical enough to be able to get on with the real world. When Sargent destroys himself is in trying to have it both ways - taking a position as a Junior Minister and backing this government while simultaneously being too upstanding to have anything to do with FF as leader.

Snickers Man

Rosita wrote:

How do you work out that there was a big swing against the government? The combined FF-PD first preference vote dropped from 45.5% to 44.29%. That is far from a big swing.

In combined seat terms, they dropped from 86 to 79. That's seven seats down and it's the loss of an overall majority. That constitutes a swing in any book.

rosita wrote:

The PDs may have suffered in seat terms but this was mainly because their seat performance in 2002 was so freakish and unrepeatable (their seats doubled even though their first preference vote dropped)

First preferences are not they key deciding factor in our system. Ask Cyprian Brady.

The PDs got walloped in this election because that's what usually happens when there's a swing against a coalition government, as happened here: the minor party in the coalition pays a disproportionate price. Labour knows all about that. It usually got a bigger share of the blame when it came time to vote out FG/Lab Coalition governments. I think the Green party is going to find that out too next time round.

What was freakish last time round was the melt down of Fine Gael's parlliamentary party where for the first time that I recall, the role of government watchdog was taken from the opposition and given to the junior coalition partner. The PDs had played the anti-single-party government message quite well, scuppering the Bertie Bowl et al, and people thought they would be a good partner to put into power to keep FF honest, but I just don't think people believed they had the same zeal this time round.

rosita wrote:

The big swing in the election was against the Independents whose first preferences dropped by a whopping 8%.

Again empirically this is what happens in our system. It appears to give a chance to the little guy but in the end, the big guys always win. Fianna Fail, Fine Gael, and even Labour have all been around since the year dot. But look at all the small parties that came and went, some even getting into government, before they died out or merged.

Democratic Left
the Workers Party
Clann na Poblachta
Clann na Talmhan
Aontacht Eireann
and.. er...Progressive Democrats?

rosita wrote:

Pat Kenny getting it right about "Bertie in power without an overall majority" is hardly a major prediction.

Harris got it wrong by assuming that Pat Rabbitte was being a bare faced liar and would scuttle into power with Fianna Fail without batting an eyelid despite ruling it out.

Waters got it wrong although he realised that Rabbitte would have to resign if Labour opted for coalition, which is particularly ironic when you consider the next point........

As for Trevor Sargent, his behaviour would be more accurately described as "bizarre" rather than "honourable".........As John Waters said in an excellent article in today's Times, Sargent's actions will appeal to a certain section of society for whom semantic consistency is a more important factor in determining integrity than anything you do.

Excellent article????

Are you for real???

Where's the logic in his argument? He realised that Rabbitte who had "painted himself into a corner" on coalition with FF would have to resign to make his (Waters') prediction come true but when Sargent does effectively the same thing he is derided for "semantic consistency" which is only important to "the self-appointed literal-minded guardians of political morality" namely the "formerly benign Gods of Dublin 4" whoever the hell they are.

A triumph of innuendo over rational debate. Still it goes down well with a certain constituency of curmudgeonly culchies and their 21st century equivalent of "Carthago delenda est" who will put up with anything as long as they can blame it all on a postal district.

Radio Mad.

Snickers Man wrote:

Well you see your enemies where you want to see them. I see the enemy in the media as being loud, boorish, hectoring, bullying, right wingers who speak with a pronounced rural accent and have not so much a chip on their shoulder as an entire Intel factory.

Examples:
Harris
O'Connor
Clifford
Waters

If by Clifford you mean Sunday Trib journo Michael, he could hardly be described as right wing. Quite the opposite, I would have thought.

flogen

Snickers Man wrote:

Harris got it wrong by assuming that Pat Rabbitte was being a bare faced liar and would scuttle into power with Fianna Fail without batting an eyelid despite ruling it out.

In fairness, Rabbitte was never given the chance to make himself a bare-faced liar in all of this - Labour had as much chance of cabinet seats as Sinn Féin after the result ended up as it did - 77 + 20 just isn't good arithmetic for FF when there were far less costly options available.

Most in Labour realised that very quickly.