Here's how a popular online poll aggregator became a pro-Trump cheerleader

[catbyte]

November 17, 2020
By Matthew Chapman

For years, Real Clear Politics has been a go-to site for campaign wonks to get a top-level state of major political races around the country, gathering polls for presidential, House, and Senate contests. But in recent years, it has taken a hard ideological turn, becoming a cheerleader for President Donald Trump, curating polls to favor those that showed the GOP performing better, and providing a platform for right-wing conspiracy theories.

A new deep dive by The New York Times on Tuesday highlights how this shift took place.

“As the administration lurched from one crisis after another — impeachment, the coronavirus, a lost election the president refuses to concede — Real Clear became one of the most prominent platforms for elevating unverified and reckless stories about the president’s political opponents, through a mix of its own content and articles from across conservative media,” reported Jeremy Peters. “In recent days, as Mr. Trump and his loyalists repeated baseless claims of rampant voter fraud and counting errors, Real Clear Politics gave top billing to stories that reinforced the false narrative that the president could still somehow eke out a win. Headlines on Monday — more than a week after Mr. Biden had clinched the race — included ‘There’s Good Reason Not To Trust Election Results’ and ‘Trump Attorney Says Results in Several States Will Be Overturned.'”

One potential source of these shifts, said the report, was a change in the newsroom’s structure and funding.

“Interviews with current and former Real Clear staff members, along with a review of its coverage and tax filings, point to a shift to the right within the organization in late 2017, when the bulk of its journalists who were responsible for straight-news reporting on Capitol Hill, the White House and national politics were suddenly laid off,” said the report. “Though the staff always knew the website’s founders were conservative and harbored strong views about liberal media bias, several said they never felt any pressure from above to slant their stories.” The writers were never given a reason for their dismissal, and were replaced with writers who had strong ties to the GOP, including a former Manhattan Republican Party chair.

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https://www.rawstory.com/2020/11/heres-how-a-popular-online-poll-aggregator-became-a-pro-trump-cheerleader/

NYT article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/17/us/politics/a-popular-political-site-made-a-sharp-right-turn-what-steered-it.html

[underpants]

1. The last week of the campaign they went off the rails

I don’t know if they are included in 538 - if that was the reason other than just trying to move public opinion. RCP is publicity read enough to sway many minds I wouldn’t think.

[comradebillyboy]

2. RCP has always been right wing trash.

But as usual the NY Times is slow to notice.

[struggle4progress]

5. +

[Persondem]

3. I was going to post this myself. Thank you!!

Kick & rec. This is important information that everyone needs to know. RCP is often cited on DU. I, for one, will view their info and articles with some extra care from now on.

[Caliman73]

4. Makes sense.

A lot of people hear have said, somewhat tongue in cheek that "Reality has a liberal bias" but the fact of the matter is that the statement is accurate. The word liberal has several different meanings but at its core, it is about openness to new ideas and about the use of empiricism in a search for fact and truth. Liberals in the political sense, have specific ideas about the outcomes they would like to see, but policies are typically made using methods similar to the scientific method.

We do not fit the facts around the "reality we want to create" we create the reality around the facts that we see. If something doesn't add up, we dig around to try to find the answer.

Conservatives on the other hand, have a very specific outcome that they want to achieve and that outcome hasn't really changed in the several hundred years that conservatism has been a philosophy. As the world changes and the facts are gathered, it has tended away from conservative thought, but as conservatives are the lineage in which most historical power and wealth has been kept, they attempt to control the narrative by framing and fitting "facts" around their desired outcome.

That is why "reality" tends to have a liberal bias, because of the way we approach what we call "reality". Liberals tend to study reality and adapt to it, tinkering with it to achieve some of our aims. Conservatives want to control and shape it outright to maintain their power.