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Cowed by the bucks: did the New York media jump on the Bloomberg bandwagon and swing the election?
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Following the New York City election returns last night was a breathless roller coaster ride. As it turned out, it was as much about following the press coverage as it was about the mayoral candidates’ numbers. Shortly after the polls closed at 9:00 PM, it became clear to some of us that—despite the fact that Mike Bloomberg spent more than $90 million on his campaign and that his candidacy for mayor was endorsed by 60 newspapers, including The New York Post, The New York Daily News and The New York Times—this was not going to be the landslide the mainstream press had been predicting almost forever.
After weeks and months of stories about Mike Bloomberg's amazing, unstoppable money and power, the New York press stuck close to that theme last night...way longer than it was mathematically justified.
Tuning into WNYC radio’s election night coverage, hosted by Brian Lehrer, a little after 9:00, I heard New York Times political writer Joyce Purnick being interviewed about Bloomberg and other three-term New York mayors. The unstated assumption was that Bloomberg’s win was a foregone conclusion.
By 9:30, NBC News had already projected that Bloomberg would be the winner. This was based on just 7% of the precincts reporting. This early report gave Bloomberg 53% of the vote and Thompson 44%.
Within minutes, The New York Times, with only 17% of the precincts reporting, called Bloomberg the winner. A splashy headline on their homepage topped a story by Michael Barbaro and David Chen, that positioned Bloomberg’s win as landslide.
But examining the Times’ election maps next to the story, I noticed Bloomberg had 49% of the vote and Thompson had 48% at that moment. Were Barbaro and Chen even looking at their own paper’s numbers? I wondered. Or had their story, perhaps, been written hours or even days earlier?
Speaking from Bill Thompson’s campaign headquarters around 9:45, WNYC reporter Arun Venugopal continued to play into the prevalent sense of inevitability. He emphasized that the campaign was playing only songs in a minor key, clearly implying that Thompson and his crew were in a blue funk over the unstoppable Bloomberg win.
Finally around 10:00 the mood began to change, incrementally at first, then with increasing vigor. Just as The New York Times sent out email notifications to subscribers that Bloomberg was the winner, NBC News retracted their own earlier projection, acknowledging what anyone who’d been watching the numbers already knew. The race was neck-and-neck and it was too soon to call it.
Although they didn’t retract their projection, within minutes the Times had rewritten the headline and lede on its website, to indicate that the Bloomberg-Thompson race was closer than expected.
A half-an-hour later, Brian Lehrer and political reporter Andrea Bernstein were marveling at the surprising numbers. “It’s a bubble here,” Bernstein reported from Bloomberg headquarters, “no one knows how close it is.” She described how Bloomberg’s senior staffers had suddenly disappeared and she’d had to search for somebody to interview. When she informed the usually talkative City Councilman Oliver Koppell of the close numbers, he was so stunned that his jaw dropped and he was at a loss for words.
As everyone knows by now, the end of the story is that Bloomberg did indeed win a third term in office. By 11:30 last night, most people in the press agreed on that, and minutes before midnight, the victory party at Bloomberg headquarters began. The premature predictions by almost everyone in the mainstream press turned out to be correct in the end. What they were wrong about was how close the race turned out to be.
Which raises the obvious question. To what extent did the press-fueled mood of inevitability tamp down voter turnout yesterday? And what would have happened if more than the pitifully small number of voters who turned out yesterday had voted? Out of more than 4 million registered voters in New York City, only a little more than half a million (557,000) voted for Bloomberg. About 507,000 pulled the lever for Thompson. Most significantly, almost 3/4 of the city's voters simply stayed home.
Were reporters and editors at almost every media outlet so cowed by Bloomberg and his $90 million campaign that they inadvertently discouraged citizens from going to the polls? After all--many may have thought--why bother voting if the outcome is already determined?
It is time for every New York reporter and editor to search his or her soul long and hard on this one. Isn't it time to stop being cowed by the money?
To my New York readers, I’d like to ask the following questions. Did you vote yesterday? If not, why not? Were you convinced that Bloomberg’s win was inevitable? If so, how did that influence your actions? Please post your comments below. Scroll down to the Comments section.
Related stories and sites:
New York Times: Bloomberg wins 3rd term as mayor in unexpectedly close race
New York Times: Chief factor in mayor's race: Bloomberg influence
New York Times: Thousands failed to vote (11-5-09)
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