There’s always been a heavy anti-pundit streak in the online political realm. But lately, the volume of criticism seems to be growing.

The general consensus is that pundits are blowhards. They make statements – often absurd, offensive or false statements – for which they’re rarely held accountable. What is most frustrating is that they are granted unfettered access to millions of ears and eyes, regardless of the validity of their claims (or lack thereof).

This is not a left-vs-right thing; it’s a populist attitude that can be found on both sides of the aisle. Here’s Rightwing Nuthouse, from last August, pointing out what it takes to succeed as a pundit:

The trick in being a good political pundit is not in formulating wildly original analysis or penetrating insights into “what it all means.” Rather, it is much better to say exactly what everyone else is saying except be meaner, or funnier, or more serious, or more dismissive than the next fellow. A good turn of the phrase and an attitude will bring you stardom in punditland.

While their backgrounds and expertise may seem to qualify them to opine on political issues, the talking heads’ obsessive focus on strategy and tactics crowds out all but the most simplistic analyses of the government policies which are at stake.

Even when it comes to the horse race, politics is such a stubbornly unpredictable arena that the pundits seem unable to read the political tea leaves any better than their audiences. Or, at least, no better than those who follow politics closely (of whom there are a sizable number).

This rant from Colin Delaney at e.Politics following the Iowa caucuses calls the pundits out on their mistakes:

Well, who was the big loser in the Iowa caucuses? It wasn’t Mitt Romney or Hillary Clinton, and it certainly wasn’t Ron Paul. The big loser was political punditry.

…What was revealed to be vapid and empty last night was the endless, often cable TV-driven spouting of impression and prediction — when did political talking heads suddenly gain the ability to accurately foretell the future? Most of ‘em sure ain’t that good at it… even a cursory stroll down memory lane turns up plenty more. Remember when Fred Thompson was going to change the race irrevocably? Or when John McCain was doomed and should just pack up and go home? When Obama’s young-voter strategy was a waste of time, ’cause the damn kids never show up to vote anyway?

Political pundits: please stop telling us what you THINK is going to happen, because in the world of online communications, you don’t actually know more than we do. We have access to the same polls, we read the same on-the-ground reporting and scroll through the same blogs and we can see every significant piece of video the same day…

…Pundits, please just shut up and surrender some airtime to actual journalism.

Glenn Greenwald, a once-independent blogger who now writes for Salon, wrote about how wrong the pundits were on the Iowa Caucus results in a recent post, aptly titled “Worthless chatter.” He lists a number of quite damning instances in which pundits not only inaccurately foretold Governor Huckabee’s collapse in the Iowa caucuses, but did so with a degree of certainty which now seems absurd, if not downright manipulative.

Underlying much of the criticism is a belief that pundits are an undemocratic influence on the country’s political narratives, and thus, its political outcomes. Once a certain analysis or prediction becomes conventional wisdom among pundits, regardless of its initial veracity, it can serve as a self-fulfilling prophecy. Aware of this phenomenon, pundits often go so far as to make statements they know to be untrue in order to increase the likelihood that their preferred reality will be come to be.

So why is the pundit criticism getting louder now?

Pundits may be more extreme in their transgressions as they try to entertain for more airtime despite having no more material to work with. It also could be that the critics have more visible platforms than ever before.

But I would argue that on top of this, there’s a growing, organic, anti-pundit sentiment out there in the general public that the critics are beginning to tap into. People now have access to almost all the same information the pundits do – we’re savvier media consumers. We are seeing how frequently the pundits are incorrect, how their analyses are influenced by biases which may not be immediately apparent. And we’re justifiably angry.

Politicians recognize this. Both Republicans and Democrats talk about “the pundits” in voices dripping with disdain, instructing us to ignore their cynicism. Candidates in both parties claim they’re going to prove the pundits wrong, and brag of having exceeded expectations. Pursuing their own self interest, politicians are collectively stirring up a mini-rebellion, challenging the voters to show the supposedly omniscient pundits that this country is still a democracy (which, incidentally, means voting for them). It’s almost as if they’re arguing that proving the pundits wrong is valid enough reason for voters to support their candidacies in and of itself! This type of anti-elitist rhetoric used to be reserved for attacking corporate fat-cats, union leaders, and government officials and bureaucrats.

Bloggers definitely see it, too, and point out how wrong – and grating! – the pundits are. Markos Moulitsas and Jerome Armstrong, two leading bloggers of the left, have long railed against the “DC cocktail party circuit.” But even on DailyKos, a leading left-wing blogging community run by Mr. Moulitsas, there’s been an up-tick in the criticism lately, with special emphasis on Chris Matthews (unaffectionately dubbed “tweety”).

Others in politics are also leveraging anti-pundit sentiment. Credo Mobile, the activist network connected to Working Assets, just circulated an online petition accusing the punditry of “biased and uninformed commentary”:

“Can Hillary Cry Her Way Back to the White House?”

That was the headline of a Maureen Dowd column in today’s New York Times.

Hillary Clinton’s win in New Hampshire was shocking. The performance of the national press corps in the days preceding the vote, unfortunately, was not.

Journalists have been replaced by a punditocracy that makes its living (and gets its kicks) by perverting our democratic process. The misogyny that was unleashed by the media’s feeding frenzy on the video of an exhausted Clinton tearing up at a small New Hampshire roundtable of voters was just the tip of the iceberg.

To be clear, we are not endorsing any candidate. This is not about who we choose for president, but rather how we choose our leader…

Firedoglake summed it up:

America is sick of [expletive] this year. From politicians. And especially from pundits.

So what’s the solution? Though their offenses seem greater than ever before at the moment, this situation is not new. And yet the pundits’ stature within the media seems undiminished.

Marc Andreessen, blogger and entrepreneur of Netscape fame, has a proposal:

If the world were a sane and just place, every pundit, commentator, expert, and reporter who predicted the things that didn’t happen and missed the things that did — which is to say, all of them — would resign their jobs tonight.

Since that won’t happen, the only logical response is to put one’s hands over one’s ears and say “Nanananananananananananana” every time one sees them on television from here on out.

While that’s certainly one solution, there’s got to be a better one, a more systemic one.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could take the narratives that shape our politics out of the hands of a privileged few?

Sure, the blogosphere is a big step in the right direction. Because bloggers are more numerous than pundits, and because there’s room for more websites than there is room for major news outlets, people can choose the bloggers they agree with or like with greater precision than they can choose their pundits. The blogosphere is thus more meritocratic. Also, bloggers tend to be more up-front about their beliefs – they do not disguise their points of view as fact – so any efforts to manipulate the debate are more transparent, by definition.

Yet bloggers are still lone individuals, people with agendas, interested in imposing their own lens on the political discourse. No matter how much that lens align with yours, no single individual can always speak on behalf of an entire community. In stepping into the role of pundit, any single person would end up with too much control over the debate.

If, within the media ecosystem, there were some way for groups to speak with a single voice, we could collectively shout down pundits’ efforts to manipulate the debate. If only there were a way that people could create our narratives from scratch, thereby avoiding the undemocratic influences of those who would digest and interpret our news for us. Hmmmm…

This entry was posted on Monday, January 14th, 2008 at 8:15 am and is filed under journalism, media, politics, punditry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.