December sports ritual: New coaches, media figure each other out

Bill Belichick was friendly with the North Carolina media, at least on Day 1 (UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA ATHLETICS PHOTO)

Watch for a spectacular culture clash between the University of North Carolina’s new head football coach, the famously media-unfriendly Bill Belichick, and the UNC sports media, including student reporters from one of the nation’s best journalism programs. Maybe Belichick’s brief time working in the media this year will change him, but I doubt it.

Part of the annual December “coaching carousel” in college football is figuring out what media relations will be like. On one side, sports information directors let their new coaches know who the favored and disfavored reporters on the beat are. On the other side, beat reporters are talking to beat reporters from wherever the new coach came to assess the friendliness/hostility level they can expect.

Of interest are the coach’s media access policies* – to the coach, to assistants and players, to practice. These are rooted in the coach’s personality, including how paranoid he is, and in his view of the media’s role. Some see the press as irrelevant and annoying, perhaps even as an uncontrollable threat to disrupt the program. Others see it as a good way to communicate with fans, donors, recruits and even their own players. Some like the personal reputation they can build, too.

Sometimes things get out of hand. Last year, in his first year, University of Colorado football coach Deion Sanders called out Colorado sports writers for insufficient positivity about him and the team. I think even Deion knows that’s not their job. Earlier this year, Sanders put out a public statement that he would no longer answer questions from a Denver Post columnist because of “personal attacks” on him. He could have just done that quietly, but the statement served the real purposes of an attempted flaunt of power and of bringing attention to himself.

Last year, USC football coach Lincoln Riley took away a writer’s access to the team for two weeks because the writer reported on a conversation between two players while in an approved media area and also asked a followup question after a press conference had concluded. How dare that reporter engage in basic journalism. Alabama Media Group’s Kevin Scarbinsky called it “a wild, thin-skinned overreaction.”

No equivalent cases happened during Nick Saban’s time at Alabama that I know of, but he certainly acted the ruffian toward the local and state reporters. I wondered if things got any better in Kalen DeBoer’s first year this year. A couple of the UA beat journalists said yes. Much.

In policy, DeBoer differs from Saban in that coordinators and assistant coaches are available weekly rather than off limits during the regular season, according to Nick Kelly of AL.com. And it’s now possible to interview freshmen, which turns out to be a big deal because of the newsworthiness of first-year players Ryan Williams and Zabien Brown. There’s also more media viewing allowed during fall camp.

Unlike Saban, DeBoer is willing to do one-on-one interviews “with pretty much anyone who requests one,” Katie Windham of BamaCentral wrote in an email. “With Saban it was pretty much ESPN or no one.” Reporters appreciate one-on-one interviews as chances to do distinctive work in a highly competitive market where it’s often hard to break from the pack.

Kalen DeBoer's media rules differ greatly from Nick Saban's. (UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA ATHLETICS PHOTO)

In one regard, Windham pointed out, Saban was more accessible because he did two press conferences per week while DeBoer does one. Those press conferences have changed dramatically, Kelly said.

“Any time Saban spoke, a rant was possible,” Kelly wrote in an email. “And you didn't know if your question was going to be the one to set him off. That's not the case with DeBoer. We have yet to get a rant from DeBoer, and I'm not sure we ever will. That's not his style. He's pretty even keel.”

Windham agrees. “I honestly can't even remember a time that he's been visibly angry with a question. If he doesn't like something that was asked, he'll say some words, but not really answer the question. I think DeBoer sees more value in the local media than Saban did and actually wants to help.”   

Yes, some coaches do want to help. And some do not. It makes December job changes impactful not just for fans but also for the reporters whose ability to do their jobs might go way up or, unfortunately, way down.

*I think athletics directors should set a consistent media policy for all their sports but that’ll never happen.

Good reasons for journalists to leave X -- and to stay

IMAGE BY ENRIQUE FROM PIXABAY

The journalists who have departed from X/Twitter since owner Elon Musk corrupted his social media platform and emerged as a leader of MAGA politics have been rightly unkind in their assessments. Some examples:

• Magazine/newsletter writer James Fallows (several hundred thousand X followers): “Elon Musk has made it a vehicle of propaganda, hatred, and lies.”

• Sports book/newsletter author Jeff Pearlman (85,000 followers): “Uniquely ugly and gross and cruel … an unambiguously anti-truth platform.”

• The Guardian (a whole news organization): “X is a toxic media platform.”

All true. But a question remains: Why aren’t more journalists and newsrooms doing this? The majority aren’t. It essentially comes down to how one weighs the value of a righteous stance against a lot of practical considerations that make remaining on X logical.

Some journalist dissatisfaction with X predates Musk’s purchase in 2022. One journalist wrote that she tried to tough it out “while Twitter’s endemic racist, sexist and transphobic harassment problems grew increasingly more sophisticated and organized.” She signed out in 2017.

Under Musk, X has gotten worse. After he eviscerated content moderation, X now welcomes and amplifies political and demographic hatred, along with blatant disinformation, a lot of it pumped by Musk himself. It has restored users banned by previous ownership, and the algorithm downplays progressive viewpoints. Musk was clearly insincere, if not lying, when he said in April 2022: “For Twitter to deserve public trust, it must be politically neutral, which effectively means upsetting the far right and the far left equally.”

All of this, along with Musk going more public as a funder and adviser of Donald Trump, has prompted a notable exodus of individuals, including some journalists, to other social media sites such as Threads, Mastodon and Bluesky, which I joined last week while still staying on X*.

X has lost an average of 14% of its daily users every month since Musk bought it. In the 24 hours after the presidential election, its daily user count dropped from 162 million to 157 million. Meanwhile, Bluesky gained 6 million total users since the election, giving it 20 million. Threads** said it has been adding 1 million signups per day for three months.

Despite the shift, you can still find most individual reporters and news outlets on X. The reasons generally relate to their ability to do their jobs and to the promotional benefits.

Reporters find X (and other social media platforms) useful in newsgathering. It’s a common way to gain story ideas, find people to interview, locate witnesses and visuals when news breaks, and assess public reaction to events. And occasionally, prominent figures who are otherwise inaccessible post newsworthy statements.

It’s also effective in getting more eyes on a journalist’s good work. It may seem like the whole world is on X. The reality is that X’s reach has never exceeded 25% of the U.S. adult population. But among the users of X are many influential individuals that journalists want to reach – decision makers, citizen activists, academics, other journalists. They hope to maximize the impact of their work, along with wanting to boost the reputation and relevance of themselves and their organizations. Nothing wrong with that.

AL.com, for one, remains on X. It evaluated circumstances after Musk’s purchase but didn’t see a mass departure of users. Director of Audience Katie Brumbeloe wrote in an email: “Ultimately, we decided we would not leave Twitter/X because we still have a large audience there and we need to continue to have a presence there, sharing our work and listening to and engaging with audiences there.” The newsroom’s political, investigative and sports stories get substantial reach and engagement on X, she said.

AL.com, which does not require its writers to post on any particular social media platform, recently started re-posting work on Bluesky “after taking a break over the summer when we were getting no engagement at all,” Brumbeloe said. It’s “experimenting” with both Bluesky and Threads.

Beyond the visibility, there’s also a good argument that journalists need to stay on X and inject as much truth as they can into the Xosphere, even if it feels like typing in a typhoon of tripe. To go elsewhere seems like a win for Musk and a loss for X users who don’t live permanently in an echo chamber.

Perhaps someday a different social media platform can become a major, credible, safe forum for political discussion that bumps X to the fringe. Part of accomplishing that would have to be a long list of newsrooms willing to make a difficult decision.

*I feel obligated to explain why I remain on X, which I use mostly to post links to this blog. The blog is primarily for my students (present and past) and they haven’t moved from X to Threads, Mastodon or Bluesky (I know because I searched). I also take some justification in that my small-community blog discussions do not attract mean and crazy people. I realize that all activity benefits the platform, but I do not subscribe to any of X’s paid services.

 **Threads, owned by Facebook, continues to grow its user count but it de-emphasizes posts about political issues. It has therefore opened a door for Bluesky, a pretty big blunder.

How the news media helped Trump to win

photo illustration by gerd altmann

Let’s acknowledge immediately that broader forces than the news media brought about the result of the presidential election. But the victory of a candidate whose demerits were repeatedly spotlighted by responsible news organizations demands retrospection.

So I asked some smart people to assess the campaign coverage by the mainstream media –national print/online outlets and the major TV/cable networks – and to be any combination of complimentary or critical.

Pretty much, it was the latter. And fundamental concerns, too. Donald Trump didn’t win because The New York Times wrote too many euphemistic headlines. It goes deeper than that. 

Dr. Cynthia Peacock, co-director of the Office of Politics, Communication and Media (OPCaM) at the University of Alabama, wrote in an email that the seeming benefit of having more sources of news than ever before – from news media and social media – actually is “fertile ground for highly partisan and misleading information.” That has the unfortunate consequence that different segments of the public make decisions based on different sets of facts, which “sets us up to fail” at the basic requirement of democracy to talk to each other. 

“When Democrats who prefer MSNBC and Republicans who faithfully tune in to Fox News come together, they might as well be speaking different languages,” she said. “The news they consume has presented them not only with different issues but completely different ‘facts’ regarding those issues. No wonder we can’t fathom how the other side could make the decisions they do – we’re living with differing ideas about the nature of reality.”

(I will add my view that this problem is not equally balanced. The partisan outlets on the political right are far more guilty of going beyond presentation of selective, favorable facts to the promotion of falsehoods.)

My department colleague Dr. A.J. Bauer, another OPCaM researcher, believes the news media have become too focused on misinformation and disinformation (false information spread to intentionally deceive). “The commitments to fact checking, to publicizing and exposing lies and false statements, only further circulated those ideas — creating the epistemological (knowledge) crisis it aimed to solve,” he wrote in an email. 

That emphasis, he said, appeals to the “journalistic ego” and reinforces a norm of objectivity that “has always been flawed.” 

“Its presumption that Trump supporters are dupes or operating in an alternative reality has only made it more difficult to understand the Republican Party’s ongoing salience. Right-wing folks didn’t share AI images of Trump wading in hurricane flood waters last month because they were tricked into believing they were real. They did it because they felt those images reflected a deeper truth. They voted based on that truth, while reporters played pedantry.” 

 What’s necessary, he concluded, is for journalists and researchers to pay less attention to disinformation and more attention to “why (Trump supporters) believe what they do.” 

Dr. M. Clay Carey, a professor in the Department of Communication and Media at Samford University, sees “frequent disconnects between people who practice journalism and those who consume or avoid the news.” Citing an article published Wednesday by the Nieman Lab journalism website, he noted that journalists believe readers want media independence and traditional news values. Meanwhile, readers say they actually want the press to offer “empathy and a genuine desire to listen and understand” them. The result of this divide is “distrust and cynicism,” he wrote.

He offered actionable advice for newsrooms. “Journalistic habits of focusing on political extremes and poll-based coverage centered on winners and losers might give way to reporting centered on the challenges our communities face and how government might tackle those challenges. People in those communities might become more important parts of those conversations. Too often, they are shouldered out by pundits, pollsters, and political operatives.” 

Clearly, the news media have some rethinking to do about how they can become more trusted and influential (although I’m sure Fox has no interest in that). I scoffed, however, at the Republicans on social media who declared that Trump’s win had rendered the mainstream press irrelevant. Journalism that is respected plays a vital role in better civics. With democracy under threat, the mainstream press has never been more relevant. That’s why – pronto – it needs to figure out what to do differently.

Believe it or not, some journalists won’t exercise their right

AI-generated Image by KP Yamu jayanath

Some people won’t vote Tuesday. Such as lazy people. Sadly oblivious people. People protesting two unacceptable candidates. Ill people. People without transportation. And a small group you might not have thought of: Journalists who believe voting would compromise their impartiality.

New York Times chief White House correspondent Peter Baker, whose commitment to impartiality has drawn critical claims that it causes him to soft-pedal his language about Donald Trump, wrote this in 2020: “As reporters, our job is to observe, not participate…. I try hard not to take strong positions on public issues even in private, much to the frustration of friends and family. For me, it’s easier to stay out of the fray if I never make up my mind, even in the privacy of the kitchen or the voting booth, that one candidate is better than another, that one side is right and the other wrong.”

Dan Gillmor, a former journalism professor at Arizona State University and a well-respected media commentator, called Baker’s perspective “the ‘view from nowhere’ at its most classic – and absurd.”

A few weeks ago, Washington Post media critic Erik Wemple fielded an online question from a reader who wondered why he was seeing more and more reporters state in their online bios that they don’t vote. Wemple called the decision not to vote “a bunch of malarkey…. It’s an empty and performative exercise.”

When Kelly McBride of the Poynter journalism education institute prompted a social media debate in 2020 about whether journalists should vote, one poster responded: “Should food journalists eat?”

Many newsrooms restrict their employees’ political activities, even staff who don’t report on politics. They can’t participate in campaigns or demonstrations, donate money, sign petitions or display bumper stickers or yard signs. On hot-button issues such as the Black Lives Matter movement and the current war in Gaza, the prohibitions clashed with the consciences of some journalists, causing a few news organizations to ease up, but only slightly.

Organizations can’t prohibit voting, and they don’t try to discourage it. Some journalists on the politics beat just choose not to do it out of principle.

That may seem strange when no one is going to know which candidate they voted for. But everyone is going to know that a journalist did pick a side. Primaries are more fraught than general elections, because in almost all states it’s public record whether an individual voted in the Republican or Democratic primary. Cynics could use that against a political reporter’s work even if there’s no basis. It could affect the audience’s perception, too.

My former colleague John Archibald, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner who writes opinions for AL.com, has a longtime policy not to vote. He said a 2008 explanation column cost him more readers than anything he’d written to that point.

The reason for not voting, he wrote in 2012, is that he didn’t want the act of picking a candidate – even in secret – to influence his ability to hold any and all politicians accountable when he wrote columns. And that voting was an act of partisanship that ran counter to the journalistic value of objectivity.

Guess what. John said by email a few days ago that he’s considering voting for president Tuesday.

He’s changed his thinking, he said. He also figures everyone knows where he stands anyway. And he notably adds: “I think it is a critical moment in history.”

Can’t argue with that.

I endorse journalists striving for impartiality and doing whatever they believe is necessary to try to achieve it. But it is possible to engage in this most basic of civic activities and still produce journalism that can’t be legitimately challenged as biased.

That’s not all. Look at the stark differences in Tuesday’s choice of presidential candidates. More candidly, look at the extraordinary dangers posed by the Republican nominee. I think for non-voting journalists, sticking to their principle this year will be harder than ever. It certainly should be.

Washington Post suffers foolish, self-inflicted damage

UPDATE (Oct. 28, 3:30 p.m.): NPR's David Folkenflik reports The Post has lost 200,000 subscribers (8%) as of midday today. That’s remarkably high.

UPDATE (Oct. 28, 9 p.m.): In a commentary published by The Post tonight, Jeff Bezos said he decided to end presidential candidate endorsements to avoid the appearance of bias and to help improve public trust in media, not because of other business considerations. He wrote that he wished he had made the decision sooner.

One of my more formative experiences as a college journalist was getting to visit The Washington Post newsroom, meeting legendary editor Ben Bradlee of Watergate fame, and attending the Page 1A budget meeting (where I got to hear Bradlee curse, which was really formative).

So it was with some sadness that I found myself on The Post’s website Friday, contemplating canceling my digital subscription.

But the publication had angered a lot of readers and its own journalists earlier in the day by announcing it would not endorse anyone in the current presidential race. According to The New York Times, The Post’s editorial board had written an endorsement of Kamala Harris, then billionaire owner Jeff Bezos killed it. CNN reported Saturday morning that “thousands” of subscribers had cancelled. (Perspective: The Post has about 2.6 million print and digital subscribers.) One longtime columnist resigned. Many other Post journalists went public with their fury. Former editor Martin Baron savaged his old company.

Publisher Will Lewis claimed The Post – 11 days before the election – was simply returning to a tradition of not endorsing presidential candidates and that it wasn’t The Post’s place to tell readers how to vote. But everyone’s highly logical suspicion was that Bezos did this to protect his many business interests – Amazon, Blue Origin – from the wrath and regulatory power of Donald Trump, were he to regain the presidency.

A rising number of news organizations are indeed ending presidential endorsements, and more alarmingly, the much more useful endorsements at the state and local levels. And the growing number of nonprofit news websites are not allowed to endorse candidates. There’s an even bigger picture here: The institutional voices of news organizations that speak to all kinds of issues are disappearing. Fewer organizations have editorial boards to express the views of the organization, instead putting opinion writing almost exclusively into the hands of individual staff columnists and guest commentators. (My former organization, The Alabama Media Group, is one of many examples of this.)

After Friday’s announcement by The Post, Scott Buttram, publisher of The Trussville Tribune, wrote on X that news media endorsements of presidential candidates are “self-indulgent and insulting.” Valid point. If editorial boards think voters need their advice to know how to vote for president, they are mistaken. Research indicates newspaper endorsements in national races don’t move the needle much.

I nonetheless believe Jeff Bezos blundered.

JEFF BEZOS

Journalism is pointless if people believe it’s timid. Bezos, who according to Baron’s book has stood up to Trump many times, might not meddle in negative Trump commentary or news stories ever again. But now the public and even his own newsroom will always suspect that he might have. Or that his top editors will because, well, they got the message. That’s devastating to The Post. Making matters worse for journalism is that the billionaire owner of the LA Times just did the same thing. (In fairness to The Post I should point out that its opinion staff immediately published several pieces critical of the no-endorsement decision.)

Bezos deserves criticism for another reason, too. If ever there was a year not to abandon courage and principle, it’s this one. Faced with the most potentially destructive major-party candidate maybe ever, the country needs its institutions to show some resilience. That ought to be a journalism specialty, and one that can’t get shaken by politics or economics. Take a stand, because once it’s too late, I can’t think of anything worse than being rightly called a coward who helped let it happen.

Oh, I didn’t cancel my Post subscription after all, so maybe I’m a coward, too. I decided that would only hurt the journalists who are doing good and necessary work. Maybe I’ll quit Amazon. In the meantime, I’m hoping top editors, publishers and owners will have the fortitude not to let Donald Trump spook them.

Tough interviews shouldn't become controversies

ta-nehisi coates, left, and tony dokoupil on cbs mornings on sept. 30.

It’s never good when the interviewer of a high-profile person becomes the story, but some critics need to better understand what makes for a good interview.

Bret Baier of Fox News and Tony Dokoupil of CBS Mornings drew pro and con headlines for their recent TV interviews with, respectively, Kamala Harris and Ta-Nehisi Coates, author of a new book criticizing Israel for its actions in Gaza. CBS News executives told employees that Dokoupil’s interview was too hostile and opinionated and not up to network standards.

That’s an indictment of CBS News, not Dokoupil.

To meet the standards of journalism, and to be most useful to the audience, interviews done by journalists demand pushback to lies, distortions and evasions, which are especially likely when political candidates talk. And controversial views demand probing.

The best stance for an interviewer is that of the “devil’s advocate,” which calls for in-the-moment challenges based on contrary facts or an interviewee’s contradictory previous statements. In disagreement with CBS News, this approach is not tantamount to the journalist’s opinion and in fact should get applied to all interviewees regardless of their politics.

I didn’t have a problem with Dokoupil’s basic idea that he should challenge Coates, who, like most high-profile guests, was fully capable of defending and rebutting. All good interviewers know how to take the edge off their language while still presenting a pointed question, and the host’s first question, which likened Coates’ views to those of an “extremist,” could have been worded differently. But that was merely a non-best practice for the art of interviewing and not justification for the torrent of criticism against Dokoupil.

I also didn’t have a problem with Baier’s mindset that he needed to challenge Harris. But the execution of the interview was egregiously bad and warranted the subsequent attacks on his professionalism. His topics blatantly parroted the Trump campaign’s talking points against Harris. Are transgender prisoners really a fundamental issue that will help voters pick a candidate? No. It was instead pandering – to the Fox audience and to Donald Trump.

He also interrupted Harris constantly. Challenging a speaker does not mean preventing the chance to answer. It does mean explaining the truthful basis for a challenge. But when Baier sought to show that Harris was unfairly slamming Trump for comments about “enemies” within America, Fox showed a deceptively edited clip of Trump. Harris called it out. Baier doubled down – until the next day, that is, when he claimed he had made a “mistake.” It was not a mistake. It was journalistic fraud.

Baier’s interview was notably different from one he did with Trump in June 2023. The question is, was that because of the two candidates’ political difference, or because of their gender difference?

bret baier interviews kamala harris on fox news on Oct. 16.

Baier did what too many news media interviewers do. They decide their mission is to turn the event into a combative contest of interview skills, instead of a chance to benefit voters by adding insight into the policies and intentions of a candidate for office. The measure of success should be deeper understanding of what a candidate would do if elected, not how many times they can be made to verbally stumble. After the Baier-Harris interview, a commentator for MSNBC Daily wrote: “I don’t know if I’d call the finished result a draw, but it was definitely no knockout.” That’s the completely wrong way to judge this or any interview.

The 2024 presidential race demands a caveat, though. Interview performance does matter – as much as the substance of answers – when there’s a question about a politician’s mental fitness (see: “Trump, Donald” and “Biden, Joe”). Challenges by an interviewer are vital in the face of babble, and vital when an interviewee is speaking coherently but evasively.

Tough questioning is a form of candidate accountability and a public service. No one should get upset about it.

The news media love political polls. Unfortunately.

AI-GENERATED PHOTO BY STAKALO

UPDATE (Nov. 9, 2024): Results of the presidential election fell within the margin of error of most national and swing-state polls. But the deviation in real results went all in Trump’s favor. So the polls’ picture of a neck-and-neck race was statistically accurate but impressionistically wrong, underestimating Trump for the third election in a row.

Nearly everyone who wanted Joe Biden to end his presidential campaign pointed to political public opinion polls. They were one reason he did so. Supporters of Kamala Harris as his replacement cited political public opinion polls. Polls lately have fueled optimism among Harris supporters and panic and strategy changes within the campaign of Donald Trump.

Polls are influencing some really monumental decisions. Sure wish I had more confidence in them. And in how the media report them.

Polls remain the best method for quick and valuable assessment of public views, and they are, for the most part, accurate. But they were wrong in 2016. Although national polls in aggregate reflected Hillary Clinton’s popular vote margin, many state polls failed to reflect Trump’s level of support in some key states and therefore masked his chances of an Electoral College victory. That’s why you, me and most of the world were so stunned that night.

In 2020, polls got the right winner in Biden, but badly underestimated the strength of Trump and other Republican candidates.

“The polling industry is a wreck and should be blown up,” Politico wrote in November 2020. And a New York Post headline from the same month said: “The pollsters were wrong again – why do we listen to them?”

For the 2022 midterm elections, pollsters got bashed for predicting a Republican surge that never happened. On the other hand, FiveThirtyEight.com, a polling website that also rates the many polling organizations that exist, declared the 2022 polling cycle as the most accurate since 1998.

Polls can serve two distinct purposes: Assessing public sentiment at a particular moment and predicting an election outcome. James Stovall, a former UA journalism professor who co-directed Southern Opinion Research in the 1980s and 1990s (when I occasionally worked with him on political polls on behalf of The Birmingham News), said a “well-constructed” public opinion survey can effectively serve both purposes.

But not every survey meets that standard, he added, and the media and the public can easily misinterpret polling data. “Because there are so many public opinion polls being conducted and reported, it is not easy to say they are always ‘accurate’,” he wrote in an email.

He pointed out that all polls have some degree of statistical imprecision. That happens for various reasons. For one, the best polls use a truly random sample of the population (to increase chances that the demographics of the sample match the demographics of the whole population) and “getting a good random sample of the population is more difficult these days.”

The spread of cellphones has made people harder to reach and telemarketing has made people more reluctant to answer calls. The last time one of today’s young people answered a phone call was … never. And when surveyors do get people to answer, they increasingly don’t want to talk. Some current poll directors say that’s a problem especially among Republicans because many Republicans consider polls as part of the news media and they don’t like the news media. “Response rates have always made survey research difficult,” Stovall said.

News organizations report on polls endlessly and sometimes commission polls by a survey company. When presenting any poll, news stories need to include basic information that helps the public assess the worthiness of the poll: Who conducted it; sample size; how and when respondents were surveyed; margin of error; and how questions are phrased, which can (but shouldn’t) steer answers in a particular direction. “Unfortunately, many reporters do not understand these factors and their importance,” Stovall said.

Margin of error is a biggie. It’s an acknowledgement that the poll results based on a sample may not exactly match the results if the whole population were surveyed. If a poll says Harris leads by 2 percentage points and the poll’s margin of error is plus or minus 3 percentage points, then it’s possible that in reality Trump leads by 1 point. Or Harris leads by 5. News stories generally don’t explain margin of error well enough. Or even mention it.

According to a March 2023 article published on FiveThirtyEight.com, candidates leading polls by less than 3 points have won just 55 percent of the time. “In other words, races within 3 points in the polls are little better than toss-ups — something we’ve been shouting from the rooftops for years.” (That would make Trump vs. Harris a toss-up at the moment.)

Unexpectedly low or high election day turnout by particular demographic groups can also make predictive polls come out wrong. So can the simple fact that people change their minds. Sometimes events cause that, sometimes it’s just a change of heart at the last minute.

The constant headlines of poll results are a media staple of every election cycle. You just have to hope such “horse race” coverage doesn’t overwhelm attention to candidate policy and character, and that everyone understands the limits and variables of polling. And I say that even knowing that “electability” was a colossal question for the Democrats this year.

Stovall sees poll news stories as a popular part of campaign coverage. “It seems to be what the audience for political reporting wants to know about. And it certainly seems to be what political reporters and editors like to report.”

To dive deeper into the mechanics of polling, click here.

“None of these polls mean anything at all. They’re meaningless and yet, we keep looking at them. They’re like the Kardashians in a lot of ways. ”

— Jimmy Kimmel, host of ABC's Jimmy Kimmel Live

Right ways and wrong ways to report on football concussions

CREDIT: ASSOCIATED PRESS/DOUG MURRAY

When Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa collapsed after a head-first collision and concussion Thursday night, I felt sick that we had possibly just witnessed the career end for one of the most thrilling QBs who ever played at the University of Alabama.

Meanwhile, broadcaster Al Michaels projected routineness and dimwittedness, noting that Tagovailoa kept the drive alive with a first down and that Miami doesn’t play again for 10 days, as if there’s an actual chance the player might return by then. Completely tone deaf.

Sports media in recent years have gotten so much better at conveying the severity of concussions and in prioritizing health over winning games in their commentaries. But this requires a constant effort that too often doesn’t happen.

A concussion is an impact or whiplash effect that causes the brain to move violently and alters its functioning. In most cases players recover completely but in other cases one or more concussions cause long-term damage to physical and cognitive health. Football players can suffer such consequences also from the cumulative effect of years of more routine impacts that aren’t full-fledged concussions.

A concussion has the unfortunate result of making a player more susceptible to getting a second one. Tagovailoa has suffered at least five, including one at Alabama in 2019 and two within four days with the Dolphins in 2022. After Thursday’s trauma, numerous sports commentators, as well as some former NFL players, publicly advised Tagovailoa to retire or strongly consider it.

The NFL has addressed the problem with changes to rules and equipment plus an emphasis on proper tackling. There’s a more aggressive approach to spotting possible concussions and a more conservative approach to when players should return. But dangerous head impacts still occur regularly — some unavoidable and some very avoidable. According to the NFL’s own figures, the number of reported concussions in games and practices dropped from 281 in 2017 to 172 in 2020 but has increased every year since then to 219 last season. Failures of post-collision protocol still happen (see Tua’s first concussion of September 2022).

kevin scarbinsky of the alabama media group commendably calls out this hit saturday on a helmetless uab player.

All of this means concussion prevention and treatment must remain a coverage focus for sports journalists. And not just those who report on the NFL. This is an issue for youth, high school and college football (see UAB vs. Arkansas on Saturday) and sports beside football, especially soccer and ice hockey.

Resources exist for journalists who want more understanding of this complex physiological topic and who want to avoid reporting and writing errors that add to the problem. I point first to the Concussion Legacy Foundation. At minimum, journalists should read the educational links on the CLF’s “Media Project” webpage. The CLF also offers effective training programs* for college journalism classes and professional media organizations, plus a certification program.

In the meantime, here are some basic tips for responsible reporting on concussions:

• Watch for violent impacts to or near the head and subsequent signs of a concussion. Note if the athlete is or isn’t removed from the game. If not, ask why.

• If the athlete is removed, note if and when they return. Know the return-to-play protocol required by the league or association. Try to observe whether it was followed. A return sooner than 10 minutes is reason for suspicion and more questions about the concussion evaluation.

• Don’t use euphemisms, such as “got his bell rung.” Also, it’s a “brain injury,” not a “head injury.”

• Avoid “toughness” narratives. It sends the wrong message to athletes everywhere to praise players who knowingly play with a possible concussion. Praise players who take themselves out.

• The adequacy or inadequacy of a league’s preventive measures and its treatment protocol should be a regular coverage topic. As should dangerous deviations from the protocol.

Big hits and star players are good for the media’s business. But monitoring player safety is more important.

* I judge the CLF training as effective because my department colleagues Dr. Scott Parrott, Dr. Andrew C. Billings and I tested the training on some of my students.

Saban will do better on TV than Brady

Talented students interested in TV sports journalism can get good jobs. But they aren’t ever going to become a football gameday analyst in a booth or a studio for a national network because those precious few jobs belong to former athletes or coaches.*

This football season, major networks added two really big names from those categories -- Nick Saban as an analyst on ESPN’s College GameDay and Tom Brady as No. 1 analyst for Fox Sports’ NFL broadcasts.

Based on a small sample size, I foresee that Saban will perform better in his role than Brady will in his.

Saban works hard to excel at whatever he does and I think that shows in his new role. In three GameDay appearances so far, he’s offered some pointed, welcomed commentary -- talking, for instance, about evidence that his players were solicited to transfer immediately after his retirement and noting that tons of NIL money doesn’t do any good if it’s spent on the wrong players. (The latter remarks included the s-word profanity, which is OK on ESPN but would have drawn a Federal Communications Commission fine on ABC.)

He's even been amusing, such as ribbing Florida State fans that he had nothing to do with his team getting picked over theirs for the playoffs last year. And the notoriously media-averse coach caused the head of every sports writer in Alabama to explode when he said of his new job: “Now I’m in this world. This is my gig, and it’s hard.”

I suspect ESPN is loving the dynamic it has created between the mostly serious Saban and the shtick of co-panelist Pat McAfee as a developmentally stunted frat bro.**

Brady, in his first broadcast Sunday, didn’t offer much game insight beyond what knowledgeable viewers could see for themselves. I expected more revealing analysis from the best quarterback of all time. He was excessively repetitive in his major points, too.

He had good moments when he discussed a quarterback’s view of man-to-man vs. zone coverage and the complexities of the Dallas defensive coordinator’s schemes. He had a lucky moment when he brought up the havoc caused by Dallas defender Micah Parsons, then Parsons immediately made a big play. Brady had multiple bad moments when he bypassed chances to talk about Cleveland quarterback Deshaun Watson’s inadequacies, suggesting that he’s going to protect the men who play his former position.

Brady, who I’m sure will get better, made some decent attempts at humor and personality. I thought “I can’t hit a sand wedge 71 yards” in reference to a possible 71-yard field goal attempt was pretty good.

Beyond individual moments, there’s a troubling issue with Brady. He has a conflict of interest between his broadcaster role and the NFL’s pending approval to make him a 10% owner of the Las Vegas Raiders. The NFL has restricted his freedom to criticize the officiating and banned him from team facilities and broadcast pre-production meetings with coaches and players. Fox Sports obviously doesn’t care, and Brady does have other avenues of access to the pre-game information that any good analyst needs. So he can overcome the restrictions. But the ownership angle still makes a viewer wonder if he’s going to feel more beholden to the league and its people than the typical announcer.

Saban has a conflict of interest, too, but of a different kind. He’s still a paid employee of the University of Alabama ($500,000 per year). With his status, Saban doesn’t need to worry whether anyone at UA might get angry or punitive, and unlike Brady, there aren’t restrictive rules. But one question going forward is how bluntly Saban will talk about Alabama and the SEC. How much, if at all, will loyalty or bias influence such commentary? So far, he’s picked Georgia, not Alabama, to win the SEC. He’s also said good things about Hugh Freeze at Auburn. Thankfully for the current job, bluntness is a Saban trademark, as is his desire to do every job right. But each viewer can decide for themselves what they think they’re hearing.

In the bigger picture, that’s always the problem when coaches and athletes become media commentators. What are viewers hearing? Hopefully it’s highly informed truth, not loyalty to a brethren. I don’t trust networks to make sure it’s the former. Certainly networks value the distinctive experiences and knowledge that former coaches and athletes bring, but I think the executives care more about the star power of big names. Over time, it’s up to Brady, Saban and other second-career TV sports analysts to prove themselves. Which sometimes happens, and sometimes never does.

* Rece Davis of ESPN College GameDay is a graduate of my UA department but I consider him more of a host than an analyst. And a few true journalists, such as Nicole Auerbach of NBC Sports, get on-air studio time in football reporter roles.

** GameDay ratings so far this season have been exceptionally good.

Hannity got bashed so it’s only fair to bash the liberal ones, too

ana navarro, an anti-trump republican, cnn political commentator and a host on abc’s “the view,” speaks at last week’s democratic national convention.

For several semesters, Fox News talk show host Sean Hannity was a featured PowerPoint slide in my lectures on media ethics and conflicts of interest -- specifically, his speaking at a Donald Trump campaign rally in Cape Girardeau, Missouri in November 2018.

If you work in the news media, you shouldn’t play prominent roles in political activities. Your organization likely prohibits it, in fact.* This falls in the “duh” category of avoiding real or perceived conflicts of interest.

Commentators for various liberal news organizations and media watchdogs rightly took Hannity to task. Multiple Fox News journalists anonymously expressed their own outrage toward Hannity. In a vague and performative gesture to try not to appear blatant in its pro-Trump propaganda, the network issued a statement that it does not condone its talent participating in campaign events and that it had internally “addressed” the “unfortunate distraction.”

Move now to last week when CNN political commentator Ana Navarro served as host of the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday night and political activist Al Sharpton, host of a weekly news talk show on MSNBC, was among the DNC’s speakers on Thursday night.

Neither network seemed to have a problem with this, and I didn’t hear or read any alarm from anyone who jumped up and down about Hannity six years ago. What’s the difference?

For one, slamming Fox News is (understandably) a favorite pastime of the liberal media. For two, Kamala Harris is a lot more politically tolerable to the liberal media than Trump. I’ll go further. The threats posed by Trump are so ominous that CNN and MSNBC may have felt justified to ignore traditional conflict of interest rules in order to boost the cause.

Or, to be more crassly practical, CNN and MSNBC may simply have wanted the status boost.

al sharpton, founder of the national action network and host of politics Nation on msnbc

I can offer some arguments why it’s not necessary to worry about journalism ethics here. Start with the question of whether news talk show hosts and commentators are journalists or merely opinion givers who don’t need to be neutral and can play by looser rules. To be even more insulting, maybe they’re just entertainers.

Also, bias that’s on public display is less troubling than hidden bias because at least the public can see it and take it into account when assessing the persuasiveness and credibility of TV talking heads.

Regardless, high-profile political activity by members of the media, even opinion givers, is bad practice. It moves from commenting on the news to influencing it.** It also allows the audience to think – in some cases correctly – that a politically involved commentator is actually just a PR agent for a candidate or a party, with no chance of ever offering a critical opinion, even if facts warrant one.

* Almost all news organizations prohibit not only participation in campaign events but also campaign donations, yard signs and bumper stickers, and other forms of political involvement.

** One of its stars speaking at a campaign rally is not Fox’s most egregious example of influencing the news off the air.