political journalism

Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Mike Padgett shares his impression of two titans of Tennessee political journalism:

State Representative Joe McCord admits he and others have smoked cigarettes at Legislative Plaza despite his voting for a bill prohibiting the practice

Janet form Xark! urges those who don’t think Barack Obama has experience sufficient scrutiny to go on and give it him already and stop complaining about it:

The Politico details what went wrong when journalists and pollsters relied on their own intel and their own spheres of influence. True to form, they concede that the wiles of the electorate are what make polling difficult but not impossible. For instance, the echo chamber of reporters in New Hampshire said that Senator Clinton was going into a double-digit loss because her message was not resonating with voters.

The Politico explains why journalists often fail to predict the outcome of political races:

If journalists were candidates, there would be insurmountable pressure for us to leave the race. If the court of public opinion were a real court, the best a defense lawyer could do is plea bargain out of a charge that reporters are frauds in exchange for a signed confession that reporters are fools.