I enjoy sports talk radio but I don’t take it too seriously and usually tune out when they start predictions. Before the football season, the “experts” talked incessantly about who would have great seasons, what athletes and coaches would have success, and what teams would suffer. As the season rolled on their predictions proved incredibly wrong, and they do every year. However, no one loses their job and they begin the prediction process again with callers eagerly joining in with their insights. I enjoy much of the banter but I don’t put much stock in prognostication.
The 2016 US election political experts were hilariously wrong. They laughed at the thought of Donald Trump running for president and dismissed his chances of winning the Republican nomination in a crowded field of diverse and qualified candidates. When he won the nomination they wrote off the Republican party saying that there were great divisions within that threatened to rip the GOP apart. During the campaign, the pundits provided advice for how Trump should run his campaign and marvelled at how he was doing it wrong. As they polished the crown for Hillary Clinton on election night, they began eulogizing the Trump campaign and lauding the historic nature of Clinton becoming the first woman president…until Donald Trump was announced as the winner of the 2016 election. Never has the press been so wrong from the very start and, had Trump followed the advice of the press, he certainly would have lost. Good thing, for his sake, he didn’t listen to the “experts” in the press.
I laughed to myself on my way into the gym several days as the TVs were continuing the coverage by these same pundits on how President-elect Trump was going to administer the country and what he should do. To my knowledge none of these people lost their jobs because they were clueless about the election and the electorate. Yet people will continue to listen to these pundits spout meaningless babble for the 24-hour cycle when they have proved that they are out of touch with the very area in which they proclaim to have expertise.
Years ago I heard someone describe modern media as “reporters interviewing reporters.” I never realized that the radio and television news and talk shows were exactly this. Having aspired to journalism when I was in school, a dream I abandoned, I envisioned a life chasing the story, interviewing and cross-examining people, pouring through data, and digesting the data for publication with tight insightful prose. But many prominent “journalists” are just news celebrities and brands that have to say outlandish things to get hits, views, and invitations to shows that want to create a bar fight on screen. I believe there are journalists true to the calling who cannot be bought and want the truth regardless of whether it is left or right, but I fear they are a minority today and do not have the audience enjoyed by the male and female spokesmodels and fame seekers. Of course, we asked for this by what we pay for with our attention and mouse clicks.
If anything, I hope the 2016 election (and football season) has given us a reality-check regarding our news sources and experts with a healthy dose of skepticism for what they say, and say, and say.
Rhodes Davis 