What Is ‘Mainstream Media’ Now?
How Trump's election triggered an overdue re-think
With an unpopular incumbent and voters feeling financially worse off, the psephologists’ playbook would tell you that the US election delivered a very traditional outcome.
The challenger, who also scored highly on America’s other top concerns, namely immigration and crime (Gallup and Google Trends), was voted into the White House.
The campaign which mostly majored on one important issue – abortion – came up short in both the popular vote and electoral college, with their running mate even losing their home county (link).
Stick to the big issues and score well on the economy and, guess what, you win elections – it’s a formula that has worked well across most democracies. It really is that simple. Here, for example, is how Regan secured his 1984 landslide:
So if it really is that simple, how did so many pundits, commentators and reporters in the US and abroad get the America election wrong? I explain below.
Post-pandemic economy
Using historical precedents, Professor Allan Lichtman’s ‘13 Keys’ method (link) is an alternative and mostly successful way of predicting the next President of the United States.
At least two of his criteria relate to the financial wellbeing of voters, namely the ‘short-term economy’ and the ‘long-term economy’.
In the run-up to the US election, Lichtman gave Harris a green light on both markers. If you look at the US’ strong GDP and GDP per capita growth, he was right to do so.
But if he factored in massive post-pandemic inflation (see below), Lichtman would have realised that voters, especially America’s working-class, largely felt worse off than before 2020.
Other commentators also fell into this trap. Google Trends data (link) showed that ‘wages’ was a top search term in many of the battleground states and, as previously mentioned, Harris’ campaign did not talk about jobs or the economy in a meaningful way.
The pollsters herded
As Nate Silver has pointed out (link), there was hardly any difference between the polls at a national and state level going into voting day, leading many forecasters, including Silver, to call the contest a “toss-up”.
Outlets like RealClearPolitics and The Hill (link) did show that Trump was ahead of Harris, while the Selzer/Iowa poll, which put Harris ahead of Trump, turned out to be a big outlier. Seltzer is now reviewing (link) her data — something the rest of the US polling industry should do.
Also, having worked and reported on UK politics, I was surprised by the margin of error levels with some polls. Around three percent points is normal, but some survey results went over four percent, which is a sizable swing either way.
The polling industry has also made much of MRP or Multilevel Regression and Post-stratification techniques. Now questions surround its efficacy, especially after predictions like this (link).
‘Horse race’ journalism
US news media is much more interested in the soap-opera surrounding the Presidential candidates, rather than focusing on policy. It’s partly a result of the parties not offering up election manifestos, as is common in Europe, and partly because they’re set-up as infotainment outlets.
Media critic Jay Rosen (link) has been warning about this for years. Here’s how he describes it:
“[Horse race journalism] imagines the campaign as a sporting event. And everything that happens in the campaign can potentially affect the outcome — everyday you can ask ‘who’s ahead?’ and ‘what is their strategy?’. This perspective appeals to political reporters because it puts them on the inside.”
This over-focus on the candidates, meant that the old media missed out on the biggest concerns of the American people.
GOTV, stupid
There was also little reporting on the ground campaigns of either candidates during the election.
Granted, the party machines do try to keep these operations semi-secret, but mobilisation efforts can increase vote shares by at least four percentage points (link) and are therefore just as important as any media campaign.
The New York Times did produce some solid reporting on the GOP, finding that Trump had outsourced his GOTV campaign to Elon Musk’s America PAC. Here’s what the outlet wrote heading in the election (link):
This election, the Trump campaign has seized on new guidance from the Federal Election Commission that allows it to coordinate canvassing operations with super PACs…
…The PAC, primarily though four different companies, is paying for what donors have been told is an operation of more than 2,500 canvassers, largely targeting rural voters in battleground states.
Many wear a uniform of white polo shirts embroidered with an American flag as they try to hit about 150 doors a day. Armies of paid door knockers have been deployed before, but seldom on such a short timeline with such a large budget. Mr. Musk himself has poured nearly $120 million into America PAC and recruited other donors.
The super PAC has recently increased resources in North Carolina and Wisconsin, said two people with knowledge of the operations, with about 750,000 knocks so far in Wisconsin. Knocks are just under 1 million in Nevada.
Media mistrust and polarisation
Many Americans simply aren’t listening to the old media any more. They don’t trust it, a phenomenon which has been growing over decades in the US (link). And the voters who are tuning in or subscribing to a news outlet are politically polarised. There are no Walter Cronkite figures any more.
Don’t believe me? When CNN’s Kaitlan Collins appeared on Stephen Colbert’s show a couple of months ago, Colbert’s audience laughed out loud (near the 00:39 mark) when he described her outlet as “objective”.
Colbert is at best left-leaning and appeared at a fundraiser for Biden earlier in the year (link). I doubt his in-studio audiences are right-wing MAGA supporters.
Media consumption
There’s an argument to be made that ‘mainstream media’ is now a collection of different outlets and shows spread across digital platforms, rather than a handful of homogenous productions.
Technology has unbundled the consensus too. This is best demonstrated when you look at media consumption surveys. The Meta platforms (Facebook and Instagram) and Google’s YouTube always rank highest. And this is where podcasts have been spreading to.
Joe Rogan is the exception. He started posting clips on YouTube more than 11 years ago. But the new major podcasts, including Call Her Daddy, Theo Von, The Nelk Boys and many others, have simulcasted typically across Spotify and YouTube.
The election cycle ran into this growing media phenomenon, enabling Trump to highly engage with 18 to 24-year-old voters, a demographic which missed the heydays of The Apprentice and his talk-show appearances during the 1980s and 1980s. He was able to build a Call of Duty-style coalition because of it, bringing Gen Z and Millennials together.
Harris did appear on the ‘Club Shay Shay’ podcast, which is hosted by former NFL player Shannon Sharpe and is actually sponsored by Call of Duty, but it was too little, too late near the end of the campaign.
Her team erroneously turned down an appearance on Rogan, the man who most influences other podcasters, instead they urged the UFC commentator to travel to the East Coast and speak to the VP for around an hour.
A decade ago this would have been the equivalent of turning down David Letterman or Jimmy Fallon. The new talk-show megastars are the podcasters and YouTubers.
If you want a more extensive dive into these ecosystems, check-out my interview with Future Proof’s
(link).
What does it all mean?
The ‘mainstream media’ is not what you think. It’s on YouTube, it’s on Spotify and it’s across the largest digital platforms. Traditional outlets still have a place, a bit like the BBC in the UK, but they now have to meet the audience where they are at.
Usually, that means on a smartphone or another device. Radio remains resilient, but you could argue that’s because it’s very easy to move its content and audience to the platforms. And if the old media fails this technical challenge, whilst ignoring political and economic gravity, its lifespan will only be shortened.
Sky-high Starmer
The media narrative is increasingly getting negative for UK PM Keir Starmer. Political journalists are now asking why the Labour leader is travelling so much. Sky News’ Sam Coates has ran the numbers (link): “22 days on overseas trips since [the] start of Sept to next Wednesday in that 77 day period. In that same period the Commons sat 34 days.”
Crypto rallies on Trump
The digital asset industry has already seen a short-term boom thanks to Trump’s election. But it’s currently unclear exactly what a Trump administration will do for the industry, especially since the SEC holds the regulatory power for further ETF approvals. The Republican leader has, however, promised to make the US the “crypto capital of the planet”.
Australia’s social media ban
A series of Australian states and territories are backing a plan to require most forms of social media to ban children under 16 from accessing the platforms (link).
MOTD to Goalhanger
Gary Lineker has announced (link) that he will leave the BBC’s flagship football review show, Match of the Day, after 25 years. Lineker, who has faced criticism for his political views, earns a salary of £1.3 million from the licence-fee-funded organisation.
He is also a co-founder of Goalhanger Podcasts, the production company behind The Rest is Politics, The Rest is History and The Rest is Football. According to a recent Wall Street Journal report (link), The Rest is History draws in 11 million monthly downloads alone, with 45,000 paying subscribers.
Smarter deliveries
Reuters is claiming (link) that Amazon is developing smart glasses to help its drivers navigate better. The reported end goal is to speed up deliveries. The future is AR, as I previously wrote (link).
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