It fades into a statistical abstract: an audience whose opinions count only insofar as individuals refract the pressure of mass publicity. In interest-group theory the public ceases to have a real existence. But interest groups, by definition, operate in the private sector, behind the scenes, and their relationship to public life is essentially propagandistic and manipulative.
In political theory, the public was replaced by the interest group as the key political actor. With the rise of the polling industry, intellectual work on the public went into eclipse. Polling (the word, interestingly enough, derived from the old synonym for voting) was an attempt to simulate public opinion in order to prevent an authentic public opinion from forming. Public life started to evaporate with the emergence of the public opinion industry and the apparatus of polling. “This notion of a public, a conversational public, has been pretty much evacuated in our time. I often quote snippets of this paragraph from the late Columbia professor James Carey. Theoretically, the opinion poll was intended to capture public opinion but in fact does the opposite: cut it off. It’s still happening.Īt the root of this process of disenfranchisement is, paradoxically, the poll. She gave a powerful speech in Iowa punctuated with being a lawyer who has only had one client – “the people” and a “middle class tax cut” Īnd now the Guardian says she could salvage her campaign. Reporters? įolks shouldn’t count out yet.
Subvert expectations synonym full#
I keep thinking about how Kamala was the first to endorse Obama in 2007 and was on the ground knocking doors before anyone thought it was even possible to have a President Obama! I wonder what it's like to be on the ground for this full circle moment. Some of them are African-American commentators who are also saying we should not count them out. Some take to Twitter to suggest she should not be counted out. If you want to know why I support her, all you have to do is watch it.Īfterwards, people notice. But media gradually ignore her, erase her.Īnd then Harris delivers a speech like this one, last week in Iowa. We need her perspective in this race and her intelligence in office. But here I see this cycle affect the campaign of an African-American, a woman, a child of immigrants, someone 15–23 years younger than the three best-known leaders in the field, and someone who can take on our criminal president and his criminal henchmen. Pundits mainsplain what went wrong with her campaign.Pundits say they predicted this, taking no responsibility for perhaps causing it. (And meanwhile, candidates can’t use the the inexpensive and efficient mechanism of Twitter advertising because media cowed the company into closing that door.) Harris closes New Hampshire offices. Pundits even use money as a metric for democracy. Candidates with more money get more attention. The candidate finds it harder to raise money to buy the attention media isn’t giving her so the polls decline and media give her less attention.Harris’ poll numbers fall more because media give her less attention and voters hear less of her, less from her.
A parade of white men with established recognition (read: power) enter what had been a wonderfully diverse field, splintering the vote.Harris’ campaign opens with a big rally and reporters say she could be bigger than Obama! Thus media set expectations the candidate did not set.The coverage of Kamala Harris’ campaign is a classic case of media’s self-fulfilling prognostication. Outside, I just smile and say “you’re damned right, I do,” and wait to get to my desk pour out that screed here. Inside, I scream and deliver a searing lecture on the tyranny of the public-opinion industry, on the true heresy of journalistic prognostication, on the death of the mass, on the devaluing of the franchise of so many unheard voices in America. People know that I support Kamala Harris for president and so these days they’re asking me whether I’m still for her because, you know, the polls.
By seeing my profession and industry from the viewpoint of an interested voter, I get a new window on the failures of news media. But the advantage of heresies is that they open one up to new perspectives. It is journalistic heresy that I abandon the myth of objectivity and publicly support candidates.
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