WJC
(This essay was first posted at TheHill.com on November 12, 2021.) A refreshing departure from the blame-dodging tendency came the other day, following the outcome of the New Jersey governor’s race in which the incumbent Democrat, Phil Murphy, narrowly defeated Republican Jack Ciattarelli. The result represented another setback for pollsters, whose pre-election surveys collectively estimated […]
Read More…(This essay was first posted at the Media Myth Alert blog on August 27, 2021.) USA Today suggested in an editorial the other day that the chaos accompanying Joe Biden’s botched and precipitous withdrawal of U.S. military personnel could turn into a kind of Hurricane Katrina for the president. The reference was to the damage […]
Read More…(A version of this essay originally was posted at the Conversation online site on 20 May 2021.) More than six months after the acute polling embarrassment in the 2020 U.S. elections, survey experts examining what went wrong are uncertain about what led to the sharpest discrepancy between the polls and popular vote outcome since Ronald […]
Read More…(A version of this essay originally was posted at the Conversation online site on 2 April 2021.) Sixty years ago today, the New York Times is said to have muzzled itself in reporting about plans for the CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion, earning a lasting niche of dishonor in the history of American journalism. The […]
Read More…(This essay was first posted at Media Myth Alert blog on 21 December 2020.) The timeless paean to childhood and the Christmas spirit, published in 1897 in the old New York Sun, long ago became the single best-known, most-reprinted editorial in American journalism. It also is a myth-distorted artifact, as suggested by errant media descriptions […]
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W. Joseph Campbell 