Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by brennen 3466 days ago
I really haven't seen much evidence that media professionals expressing shock at, for example, Brexit and Trump's election are engaged in some strong form of deception. There's a reasonable set of critiques about media incentives and behavior here, but I think this is a case where cynicism of this kind can obscure observable reality: The majority of people really didn't expect these outcomes.
1 comments

The point is that the media were in a bubble where everyone they talked to had the same views as themselves.
That is absolutely a true thing you can say about the media and the election. They came to believe that Trump would not win the election, by being in a bubble where everyone they talked to had the same views as themselves.

But that is a totally different point than, and is actually logically incompatible with, the assertion that they privately believed that Trump _would_ win the election, but expressed otherwise to the public.

OK, that's fair. I think that most of the media believed that Clinton would win. It was actually quite creepy seeing all the glowing tributes to her life, and upcoming presidency. I still have a special commemorative edition of Newsweek from November 8, 2016, celebrating "Hillary Clinton's Historic Journey to the White House." I think I am going to keep this for a while.