Dewey defeats Truman! and other nonsense

When the Chicago Daily Tribune ran that headline on November 3, 1948 and announced that Republican presidential candidate, and election favourite, Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York, had defeated the Democrats’ Harry Truman, it set a precedent in editorial ‘oops’ moments that is still probably the finest example of journalistic jumping the gun on record.

It was much the same in 2016 when the political pollsters and pundits touted Hillary Clinton as pretty much a sure thing to become the first woman president of the United States of America. At least that time the media had the sense to wait until everything was official – and a good thing too.

As of this writing, we don’t know who won Tuesday’s presidential election. In this time of pandemic so many people voted in advance and by mail that it may be days before we discover whether Sleepy Joe Biden and his socialist hordes or Donald the Hun Trump and his mask-less mob will take over Washington.

What you can be sure of, however, is that the media, conservative or liberal, will be awash with hyperbolic headlines and superlatives like ‘the worst possible result,’ ‘the greatest electoral disaster,’ ‘a big win, the biggest win in history,’ and on and on. Of course there will also likely be court challenges, demands for recounts, claims of fraud and as many delaying tactics as there are lawyers.

Sometimes I wonder about the education of today’s journalists. I know, I know you’re thinking this is a prime example of the aging pot calling the younger kettles black. But how else do you explain some of the ill-considered, historically inaccurate and downright dumb headlines and comments that appear in supposedly trusted media outlets.

Part of it is the ‘WoodwardBernstein’ effect that stems from the whole Watergate thing. Every journalist today and every media outlet spends inordinate time looking for the big story, the screaming headline or the newest ‘ deep throat’ source. In competition with social media, mainstream news sources have increasingly gone to the spectacular, the outrageous and the shocking.

How else do you explain a recent article I read on the deep divisions that exist in today’s American society. The article itself was reasonably well thought out and well written but then there was the headline; “America divided as never before.” Obviously the person who wrote this had never heard of the American Civil War. I know there has been rioting in several cities in the U.S. recently but this hardly compares to the 1.5 million casualties – 7,000 at Gettysburg alone – that resulted from those societal divisions.

The recent pandemic too has produced endless examples of journalistic overkill. The term ‘unprecedented health crisis,’ or variations of the same, has been bandied about repeatedly. Admittedly, this latest Coronavirus is dreadful but ‘unprecedented?’ Sadly there have been around 1.2 million deaths worldwide, but to put it into perspective, during the flu outbreak of 1918-19, 50 million people around the world died.

So remember, the election, to paraphrase an old adage, ‘isn’t over ‘til the fat pollster sings.’

Until then, just take everything you read, view or hear with a grain of salt.