Along those lines:
Is Hillary Clinton Right About Why She Lost? | FiveThirtyEight (Spoiler: Yes.)
The whole piece is worth reading, but I felt the conclusion was especially insightful:
Quote:
natesilver: I’m repeating myself here, but a lot of the admonitions that Clinton is getting from the press are about the media pre-empting discussions that could make them look bad and call into question their editorial decision-making.
perry: We should talk about that. Why can’t The New York Times say “we covered Clinton’s e-mails too much”? The Times admitted at some point that the weapons of mass destruction coverage ahead of the Iraq War was bad. The paper survived that, and my guess is gained credibility from it.
It’s obviously true. They must know that.
We are hinting around about the media stuff so much here that we may want to get just to the issue. I think we are really saying the Times, Politico, NBC News, etc., can’t say “Clinton is right in some ways” without saying “we were wrong.” But journalists are supposed to be for truth, not defending themselves at all costs like businesses or politicians. I should note: I covered the 2016 campaign for NBC News. In my writing and television appearances, I was critical, at times very sharply, of how Clinton handled the email controversy. I haven’t gone back and examined all that coverage, but I’m generally of the view that I personally covered the Clinton e-mails too much.
micah: To that point, and not to end on a self-deprecating FiveThirtyEight brag, but we have a history of saying “we fucked up” when we fuck up. While painful in the moment, it’s really not that hard and has long-term benefits. It’s like eating salad.
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I haven’t read Clinton’s book yet, but it sounds like an awful lot of the coverage thus far has been based on people with grudges taking small excerpts out of context, which is pretty much exactly what I expected to happen with it, all things told. Clinton is pretty much a walking example of
Lewis’ Law in action, and she proves it applies to journamalism just as much as it does to Internet comment sections.