The FAIR blog (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting) had a very interesting take several days ago on Nate Silver’s move from the NY Times to ESPN.
You remember Silver–he’s the statistics guru who used available data from different political polls to make predictions in the last two presidential elections.
FAIR’s headline tells the story: “Nate Silver Didn’t Fit In at the New York Times Because He Believed in the Real World.”
Despite Silver’s success in drawing conclusions from the plethora of data, his data-driven approach to politics apparently rubbed the NYT’s traditional political reporters the wrong way.
FAIR linked to a column by the Times’ public editor, Margaret Sullivan, on Silver’s departure.
* I don’t think Nate Silver ever really fit into the Times culture and I think he was aware of that. He was, in a word, disruptive. Much like the Brad Pitt character in the movie “Moneyball” disrupted the old model of how to scout baseball players, Nate disrupted the traditional model of how to cover politics.
His entire probability-based way of looking at politics ran against the kind of political journalism that The Times specializes in: polling, the horse race, campaign coverage, analysis based on campaign-trail observation, and opinion writing, or “punditry,” as he put it, famously describing it as “fundamentally useless.” Of course, The Times is equally known for its in-depth and investigative reporting on politics.
FAIR’s Jim Naureckas then nailed the central issue, Silver’s empirical data-driven mindset running directly counter to the old “he said, she said” reporting style.
This is what I like to describe as the difference between objectivity and “objectivity.” Objectivity is the belief that there is a real world out there that’s more or less knowable; the “objectivity” that journalists practice holds that it’s impossible to know what’s real, so all you can do is report the claims made by various (powerful) people. The chief benefit of “objectivity” is that it means you will never have to tell any powerful person that they’re wrong about anything.
If someone comes along and tells you that, no, there are ways to figure out what’s actually happening with the world, and simply repeating without question what interested parties claim to be happening is not a very helpful approach, that’s going to be, as Sullivan put it, “disruptive.”
It’s certainly a loss for the New York Times. Hopefully Silver will continue his political analysis come election season, so it won’t be a loss for those of us who enjoyed his analysis.
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I don’t believe that the NYT can be considered objective in its reporting. Allison Weir, IFAMERICANSKNEW.org, posted on Facebook an article by Jeffrey St. Clair, “What John Kerry Really did in Vietnam”, suggests that Kerry’s brief tenure in Vietnam and Cambodia was notable for acts of casual savagery. http://Www.counterpunch.org. This the fellow chosen by Obama to broker peace in the Middle East.
And if we can’t believe vicious gossip decades after the fact, what can we believe?
War? Savage?? I’m shocked!
He was on NPR’s “Morning Edition” Friday and they didn’t ASL what was, to me, the most important question: will the 538 blog live on? I’ve been following him since before the 2008 election (and before the NYT affiliation) and, while I look forward to seeing the results of his data- analysis of other subjects, He was on NPR’s “Morning Edition” Friday but they didn’t ask what was, to me, the most important question: will the 538 blog live on? I’ve been following him since before the 2008 election (and before the NYT affiliation) and, while I look forward to seeing the results of his data-driven analysis of other subjects, it will be a real loss if 538 does not survive in some robust form.
Sorry for the double post; mobile posting has it’s pitfalls.
yes, his 538 site will live on. It’ll have articles, videos and maybe even podcasts and be promoted by ESPN. His political coverage will continue and be affiliated with and promoted by ABC News. As a sports fan, I’m totally looking forward to Nate Silver’s stuff for ESPN (and hoping it will help me finally win my fantasy football league).
Objectivity is a concept that can be debated for life. I find the Times more complete than most, less biased than other metro papers, far reaching in coverage and outlook. That said its staffers can be and often are stuffy and and weary of newcomers.
Nate Silver’s ” The Signal and the Noise” was my best read of 2012.
He was beyond lucky in figuring out last year’s presidential race while Gallup and so many others floundered badly in some states. Silver might also make a fine gambling consultant, a good sports predictor and an excellent stock broker because of his ability to hear and decipher. Politics is not his only bag.
He is confident if not cocky but he writes well and with understanding.
I would say his departure was the NY Times’ loss.
The NYT is a good, strong organization, but I;m with Nate.
yet another reason newspapers are losing readers and folding (besides Craigslist):
MOST journalism is not the same thing as useful, reasonable analysis and reporting. it could be, but it is far from it, and no change is in site. journalists can blame their rich owners and shifty readers, but the blame, as always, is shared all around. people once thought “he said she said” FEATURES would save newspapers; it had the opposite effect in the long term.
FAIR is always good at cutting through the cr@p of the corporate media. But I think we miss the point if we only focus on the “he said, she said,” style of framing the debate without noticing which people are regarded as having sufficient credibility to have a voice in the first place.
The problem is not just that they are retreating into a relativism of “competing narratives.” They only allow a few narratives onto the stage in order to join the debate. If we think back to the period when the Bush administration was trying to gin up support for a war against Iraq. There were massive demonstrations against the drive to war and public opinion was actually quite divided. But the major media outlets carefully restricted the range of allowable viewpoints to be discussed. Particularly once it became clear the Bush group was determined to go to war. As if on cue, “the time for debate was over,” and the airwaves were filled with pro-war generals and think tank “experts.”
I fear the struggle between the two major, political parties serves a valuable function under such conditions. They allow a Republican to speak, then “balance it out” by allowing a Democrat to provide the acceptable “opposing view.” Even when there is a bi-partisan consensus in favor of militarism. But, hey, what can the press do? They had clearly exhausted the range of credible voices.
The corporate media has contempt for the political parties. Yet they keep them around because they support the “he said, she said” illusion of democratic debate. And, they buy advertising. But the publishers and editors dislike the parties because they interfere with the free marketplace of ideas with their ideological demands on the politicians. When politicians are freed from ideology, they more perfectly reflect the incentives of the marketplace and deliver votes according to the demands of their corporate underwriters rather than their silly activist members.