News media must brave chill that some threaten

By The Herald Editorial Board

Before President-elect Trump chums the waters with more outrage bait — renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America? — those who rely upon the independence and courage of the news media ought not to ignore Donald Trump’s latest attacks against the freedom of the press.

Just before the Christmas and New Year’s holidays, Trump’s lawyers filed suit against an Iowa pollster and the Des Moines, Iowa, newspaper that sponsored the poll because the poll showed just days before the Nov. 5 election that Democrat Kamala Harris held a 3-point lead over the Republican nominee, 47-44, in Iowa. The poll buoyed hopes of Democrats who told themselves it might show hidden support among women voters for Harris, support that other polls might have missed, especially since it came from a reliably deep-red state.

Instead, even in the words of the pollster, J. Anne Selzer, the survey was a “spectacular miss”; Iowa went to Trump by a 13-point margin. Selzer —who had already announced her retirement from her polling firm prior to the lawsuit’s filing — and her Iowa Poll had been a staple of election campaign reporting over the years. 538, the polling aggregator, rates the poll at 2.8 stars out of 3, ranked among the top pollsters for accuracy and transparency.

While reliable, Selzer’s survey — like all polls — had missed its share of snapshots of where voters stood; her final poll in 2004, The New York Times noted, showed Democrat John Kerry with a 5-point lead in Iowa, which went to Republican George W. Bush by less than 1 point.

https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/editorial-news-media-must-brave-chill-that-some-threaten/