Tom Bodley

If we ever needed a demonstration of the danger of false balance, we have it now. The New York Times trumpeted its Hillary email scoop and the rest of media recycled it over and over every time they needed a segment to balance each discussion of Trump’s bigotry, misogyny, abuse, lies, insanity, and shady connections. The email story was bullshit from start to end.

After years of criticism for its horse-race coverage, political journalism continued to construct its work around predicting outcomes rather than helping improve those outcomes by informing the public as its mission. The irony, of course, is that the savvy Washington press corps couldn’t predict a sunset.