Answering CNN's Brian Stelter Questions About The Media

CNN Senior Media Correspondent (and host of "Reliable Sources") Brian Stelter has posted 52 questions worth considering about the media and its handling of the presidential campaign and Donald Trump. As tempted as I am to do so, I'm not going to try and answer all of them. But here are a couple of the ones I consider most important:

Will newsrooms rethink how much air time and ink was spent covering polls? Will the lessons be taken to heart? Or will the same mistakes be repeated four years from now?

One of the under-appreciated aspects of any television newsroom is that it's always a scramble to find news to cover. Whether you're a small local TV station or a major cable news network, the newshole always needs to be filled. Polls are great for that during an election cycle. There's always a new one and each one provides another chance to fill time talking about it.

But cable news in particular consistently makes two mistakes when it comes to how it reports on polls. Because there is airtime to be filled, there is this tendency to see a new poll - especially one showing some sort of a swing - as "newsworthy." There were a number of days in this election cycle when an entire newscycle was filled with panels discussing a specific poll result. Which might (and I stress might), make for okay television. But the nonstop coverage for hours of each poll gave weight and credence to numbers that are always fluid and possibly inaccurate.

The second mistake is that the news media uses polls as a way of discussing process. I just rewatched a Steve Kornacki segment from the November 2nd episode of MSNBC's "Rachel Maddow Show." In the segment, he used a series of local polls to illustrate Hillary Clinton's overall strength in states such as Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. He (and to be fair, most political reporters) use polls as an indication of what is likely to happen. Rather than an estimate of what might happen in a perfect world. Kornacki's poll-driven analysis of the state of the race was correct as far as it went. But because polls don't accurately reflect a number of other items that impact voting, they can often miss important trends. Trends which are then missed by reporters who rely on them to try and determine the state of the race.

My wife asked: "Are you going to have the same people bloviate day in and day out?"

This has been a subject that I have railed about for months, with apparently little effect. The East Coast media news outlets - newspapers, television and digital - all wrestle with the same problems. They need to crank out stories, finding news sources is time consuming and even when you find them, they might not have the expertise or comfort level to be a great interview or source. So the media tends to use familiar faces, because it's easier and they know what they're getting.

Cable news networks also have a larger problem. They want to show opposing sides of every story and they need the conversation to be passionate and "hot." So in the 2016 election cycle, that meant a larger reliance on candidate surrogates and political insiders. The theory is that you're talking to people who know what is going on inside the campaigns and are able to give viewers a glimpse into the behind-the-scenes machinations of the campaign. The reality is that what viewers hear instead are campaign talking points and carefully crafted spin. Everyone is going to follow the party line, because at the end of the day these guests need to be close to the centers of power. And the best way to do that is by being a solid, reliable surrogate that knows how to stay on point.

It was even a bigger problem in 2016, because ultimately this was a change election. Voters from both parties were unhappy with government and the political system. They hated the gridlock, they didn't trust the politicians and the media. And yet very little of that was reflected in the media. The Beltway press focused on process and traditional political norms in a year when it had never mattered less. At some point, it became almost laughable to watch. There were a number of political insiders on cable news networks Wednesday morning explaining "what went wrong" and these are the same people who had it wrong from the first days of the campaign. Even anchors and reporters aren't immune from this disconnect, as I heard more than one try and explain the voter anger through the lens of some conversation they had with a family member or friend who still lives in Middle America. It's the political equivalent of "I'm not a racist, I have plenty of black friends." That statement might be true, but it's not especially relevant.

How did the gutting of local newsrooms affect the coverage of this race, particularly in the red states that determined the outcome?

That's certainly an issue and one that deserves another conversation. But all of the local news coverage in the world isn't going to help if those stories don't make it to the national news mix. Specifically with cable news, which did a terrible job of highlighting regional stories and including lesser-known regional and local pundits, reporters and writers in their on-air story rotation.

How many times have you asked yourself, today, "How does the other side feel?"

Asking yourself that question is a fool's errand. You know how you really know how the other side feels? You ask them. You put yourself in situations where you hear what they think in an casual and unstructured manner. I have friends who are Trump supporters. I spend most morning sitting in a diner talking and listening to everyone as I work. If the news media wants a better feel for the true state of the nation, they need to find people who can get an accurate sense of things and put them on the air. A lot.

If I were running one of the cable news networks, I'd hire someone to take a camera and travel around the Rust Belt talking to people over breakfast. Find some "average" people, buy them breakfast and just talk. Stream it live and then use pieces throughout the day in the regular news coverage. The media needs less talking about what people think and more opportunities for voices from Middle America to be heard.

I have a lot more thoughts about what I'd do if I ran one of the cable news networks and I'll tackle that in a separate piece.