Monday Morning Media Minute

There’s an old rule in journalism:  Don’t get ahead of the story.

Reporters and pundits covering the New Hampshire primary last week forgot that rule in spades with stories before and during Tuesday’s voting giving Barack Obama a double-digit victory and suggesting Hillary Clinton’s campaign was in trouble – or done.

One problem for the pundits:  The voters didn’t do what they were “supposed” to.

Blame it on the pollsters, if you want.  Many of the pundits who got ahead of the story will do just that.  And the pollsters clearly got it wrong.

But poll results notwithstanding, the journalists got it wrong, too.  They got ahead of the story by assuming the polls were the final word on what would happen.  They weren’t.

You can’t keep reporters from getting ahead of the story when they’re covering you.  But you can avoid getting ahead of the story yourself.  No matter how sure you are of what’s going to happen, making predictions is risky business.  If you get it wrong on a story that’s generating news, reporters will remind you and everyone else of your mistake.

And when reporters get ahead of the story?  They’ll look for someone else to blame.  If they got ahead of the story by following your lead, guess who that’ll be.

That’s my two cents’ worth.  What’s yours?

Tags: Barack Obama, hillary clinton, media relations, new hampshire primary

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 13th, 2008 at 11:05 am and is filed under Creating Your Story, Telling Your Story. 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.