The media got the midterms right – and the coverage wrong | Opinion - USA Today
Walter Lippmann was one of the most influential journalists and thinkers of the 20th century. He was among the first critics to describe how hard it is to inform citizens rationally through mass media, starting with his 1922 book, “Public Opinion.”
More than three decades later, in “The Public Philosophy,” he wrote, “When distant and unfamiliar and complex things are communicated to great masses of people, the truth suffers a considerable and often a radical distortion. The complex is made over into the simple, the hypothetical into the dogmatic, and the relative into an absolute.”
Lippmann's reflection pretty much sums up the American media's performance before and after the midterm elections. Covering a complex campaign season without distortion or dogmatism is tough, to be sure, but it shouldn’t be impossible.
American news consumers were unimpressed with the media's performance this election season. A Rasmussen Reports survey found that only 38% of likely voters rated the media's midterm coverage good or excellent. That kind of mediocre grade won't get journalists on the honor roll.
Broadly speaking, the news media correctly predicted before Election Day that Democrats were in the driver’s seat. Curiously, though, the projections underestimated the size of the Democratic wave on Nov. 3. Maybe news outlets tempered their forecasts after polling whiffs that underestimated Republican strength in 2016, 2020 and 2024. But such caution didn’t stop editors and producers from oversaturating preelection coverage with countless poll projections, endless gabbing and superficial analysis.
The most telling data point before the election came not from polling but from television ratings. Fox News, the most-watched cable news network, lost more than a quarter of its audience in October compared with a year earlier. It was the network's steepest preelection-month drop in a decade, even as CNN and MS NOW gained viewers.
That slide signaled Republican trouble better than traditional polling did. It suggested right-of-center viewers were discouraged enough to stay home on Election Day or even flip their votes.
It's time for the journalism world to stop leaning on polls as news content and instead dig into the deeper currents that explain the public's real sentiments and priorities. Polls and surveys, with their limited perspective, feed exactly the simplification and speculation Lippmann warned about. Capturing the full scope of what citizens think takes in-depth, longer-form reporting.
At the very least, newsrooms should stop covering polls once voting begins. That would blunt the criticism that polling is designed to shape public opinion rather than simply report it.
The media’s power to set the national news agenda is real. That power was on display in the run-up to the election and likely boosted Democratic prospects, not that Democrats needed the help.
A content analysis by the right-leaning Media Research Center found that over the second half of September, Apple News’ top stories carried 84 negative headlines and zero positive ones about Republican policy priorities. Google News showed a similar bias Oct. 1-28: Of 87 headlines mentioning President Donald Trump, 45 were negative and just one was positive.
Coverage routinely reported voters’ economic worries, but with a broad, emotional brush that told audiences what they already knew: Consumers want lower prices.
This journalism of omission largely ignored the hard data and context, including record-high median household income in 2025, solid growth in gross domestic product and inflation driven largely by an energy-price shock. Nearly every preelection story leaned on the catchword “affordability,” a rhetorical gimmick that sounds good, is hard to define and helped rocket Zohran Mamdani into the New York City mayor’s office a year earlier.
Broadcast coverage on election night was formulaic, heavy on dazzling graphics and maps. The analysis was more celebratory than explanatory.
That many journalists were giddy over the results was hardly surprising, given their political leanings. Then-President Barack Obama joked about those leanings at the 2009 White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, telling the press corps, “Most of you covered me; all of you voted for me. Apologies to the Fox table.”
The line got a laugh because it rang true.
Election night analysts couldn't resist speculating about potential 2028 presidential candidates well before the midterm votes were fully counted. Handicapping the next election is an American pastime, but it's about as productive as predicting lottery numbers.
NewsNation, the upstart cable channel, turned in a solid election night, even though its audience lagged its competitors’. Political editor Chris Stirewalt offered helpful, measured analysis of the results along with valuable historical perspective. The channel has built a reputation for balanced journalism. Its coverage, however, would have benefited from less of the bombastic Chris Cuomo and more of the insightful Katie Pavlich.
The next challenge for the news media is figuring out how to cover Trump’s lame-duck presidency. The industry is now the dog that caught the car. The news media has long wanted to see Trump on his heels, and with his party routed and his approval rating at 38% in early exit polls, he clearly is as he heads for the exit ramp.
Coverage that reads like an anti-Trump funeral won’t serve the nation or the news media. The midterms are over, and a new Congress will be seated in January. With Trump’s influence on the wane, it’s time for a different approach to journalism, one that doesn’t put Trump at the center of every story.
Jeffrey M. McCall is a professor of communication at DePauw University. Follow him on X: @Prof_McCall
