UP Elections: How Reliable On-the-Ground Reporting? Part1-Introduction
Thursday, March 02, 2017
One of France’s
leading newspapers has given up on public opinion polls ahead of France’s
presidential election in April, and its reasoning, it says, comes down to two
recent, unforeseen events: President Trump and Brexit. Stephane Albouy, Le
Parisien’s editor-in-chief, said that they
“want to avoid giving the sort of commentary that accompanies a horse race, always focusing on who is in the lead. Commissioning opinion polls now is useless because they will have no bearing on the final result. This doesn’t mean that we are against polling, but we prefer to focus our political analysis based on what we see and capture on the ground, rather than rely on opinions that have yet to fully develop over the course of the campaign.”
Coincidentally, with
the Election Commission ban on publication of exit polls of the on-going long
drawn out 7 Phase UP elections, those interested to track the electoral battle had
no option but forced to depend entirely
upon on-the-ground reporting. Unfortunately, exceptions aside, most of this
on-the-ground reporting seen so far tends to ape the pollsters’ favourite horserace
format that provides the framework for analysis where a horse is judged not by
its own absolute speed or skill, but rather by its comparative speed of other
horses, and especially by its wins and losses.
Like opinion polls,
media outlets have often resorted to horse-race journalism with the intent of
making elections appear more competitive than they are to spur their readership
or to favour a political party who they are aligned to. They often take to politically
handicapping stronger candidates or hyping dark horse contenders to influence
public perceptions and in turn voter behaviour. Very often their reports have
the same effect of push polls that are designed more to influence voters’
opinions rather than measure them. And we may have seen them all this
elections.
Like pollsters most
of these feed on the hunger of their readership for certainty, setting off
expectations that are basically impossible to meet. The thing is voters are
inherently unpredictable. Yet, we see as if by led by strong compulsive
pressure, on-the-ground journalists tend to be compelled to tell us who is
going to triumph at the polls than try to understand and capture what is going
on at ground level and the mindset of voters. Rather than sticking to reporting,
the emphasis shifts on more commentary, which is basically subjective reasoning
than hard evidence. Extrapolating macro trends from often unrepresentative
sample of respondents at the micro level slips them immediately into hazardous journalism
zone. Nevertheless when these journalists also dip into their storytelling
toolbox, the net effect often makes their reports any day much more fascinating
and insightful reading than the mere numbers pollsters bombard us. They give us
additional information such as revealing the factors, motivations, and reason
why particular groups of people support which candidate or party and how these
factors are likely to play out in their opinion.
Two of the much
followed on-the-ground reports are of Prashant Jha, Associate Editor Hindustan
Times and Shivam Vij, Deputy Editor, HuffingtonPost. Prashant Jha appears more
a prolific writer, penning more articles that slants more on commentaries and
opinions that reflect certainty while Shivam Vij appears to adopt a more cautious
reporting slant, fewer articles but adopts a more engaging style with his
readers by his tweets, retweets and FaceBook conversations.
Prashant Jha comes across as
more inclined towards BJP while Shivam Vij is mostly considered independent.
However, both during the election trail appeared to face some backlash from
readers who accused them of political partisan writings, forcing them to defend
themselves. Though some overlap of opinions between them are noticeable,
there are also significant differences of perceptions and inferences between the two however nuanced. While Jha
appeared more prepared to play the game of certainty, Shivam Vij openly
admitted that he was unable in this instance to meet the expectations of
certainty but still manage to retain his reputation as one of sharpest among
journalists on capturing the mood of the people.
While pollsters lend
themselves easily to be evaluated for their accuracy through comparisons
between their predictions and actual results, a similar method could be applied
to on-the-ground reports of journalists if all their reports - articles, tweets,
retweets are compiled as sort of a journal of their on-the-ground-report trail.
For benefit of
readers who are keen to assess the reliability of on-the-ground reports, we
have compiled a month journal entries of Prashant Jha and Shivam Vij
Read Part 2: UP
Elections: How Reliable On-the-Ground Reporting? The Prashant Jha Journal (Click
HERE)
Read Part 3: UP
Elections: How Reliable On-the-Ground Reporting? The Shivam Vij Journal (Click
HERE)
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