Elizabeth Drew in the NY Review of Books, Feb. 12, 2004:

The press and television coverage of this year’s nominating process has been more superficial and unbalanced than ever. This may partly be the result of there being so many elections and caucuses in so short a time. But other factors also seem at work. Of course some journalists and editors try to be fair, but, for the most part, elementary journalistic standards have been largely ignored. Far too much of the coverage has taken the form of prediction rather than observation, along with a great deal of speculation backed by constantly changing polls about who is the most “electable” candidate, even though this is impossible to discern so far in advance. (At the close of the 1988 Democratic Convention, Michael Dukakis was predicted to be eighteen points ahead of the elder Bush. He lost by eight percentage points.)

The race was declared “over” so many times, and so many outcomes were declared “inevitable,” that it sometimes seemed as if the voters were irrelevant. Reporters and pundits kept telling us what was going to happen rather than explaining what’s happened and trying to analyze why. Early in 2003, The New York Times announced that John Kerry was the “front-runner.” This turned out to have been prescient, but at the time it was written it was hard to discern how there could be a front-runner a year and a half before anyone had voted, and months before there was an opportunity to observe candidates and hear their plans.

Before Christmas, countless pundits and reporters told us that Howard Dean had the nomination sewed up—again before anyone had voted. If Dean won Iowa and New Hampshire, we were told, “it’s over”; some commentators and reporters ventured further, stating that if Dean won Iowa, that would suffice. Consider, they said, the fearsome power of the unions in Iowa, who were backing Dean along with Dick Gephardt. Then Gephardt was said to be winning the nomination, and Kerry was “coming apart”—all before anything real had happened. Clark, a man with admirable qualities—and at times a very good candidate—received, on the whole, negative treatment in the press.[2] That much of the press was wrong in predicting Dean’s “inevitability” apparently gave them no pause in making further predictions.

Such journalism is not only a waste of time but can seriously distort the electoral process. Forecasts by the press that a certain candidate will win may produce contributions, volunteers, and energy (as with the early endorsement of Dean by labor unions)—and the reverse is also the case. That they mislead the public seems not to matter. The entire nominating and election processes need to be reconsidered by the political parties and the press. The voters deserve to be better served by both the politicians and by journalists; otherwise the principle of democratic nomination and election through informed choice is made a mockery.