No one – well, no reasonable person – could ever accuse Matt Taibbi of being a political conservative.
But he certainly can be accused of providing credible journalism – journalism based on what facts he finds out, regardless of which side of the political aisle “wins” or “loses”. And I’m sure he’d be (justifiably) proud of that accusation.
This brings us to Mr. Taibbi’s latest commentary, titled “How America’s Accurate Election Polls Were Covered Up”, with the explanatory sub-head stating “The Real Clear Politics National Average was removed by Wikipedia before the election and the New York Times denounced its failure to skew data.”
Here is how it begins:
John McIntyre couldn’t believe it. The publisher of the Real Clear Polling National Average, America’s first presidential poll aggregator, woke on October 31st to see his product denounced in the New York Times. Launched in 2002 and long a mainstay of campaign writers and news consumers alike, the RCP average, he learned, was part of a “torrent” of partisan rubbish being “weaponized” to “deflate Democrats’ enthusiasm” and “undermine faith in the entire system.”
“They actually wrote that our problem was we didn’t weight results,” says an incredulous McIntyre. “That we didn’t put a thumb on the scale.”
The Times ended its screed against RCP’s “scarlet-dominated” electoral map projection by quoting John Anzalone, Joe Biden’s former chief pollster, who said: “There’s a ton of garbage polls out there.” But being called “garbage” in America’s paper of record was nothing compared to what happened to RCP at Wikipedia.
Six months ago, when former Wikipedia chief Katherine Maher became CEO of NPR, video emerged of her talking about strategies at Wikipedia. She said the company eventually abandoned its “free and open” mantra when she realized “this radical openness… did not end up living into the intentionality of what openness can be.” Free and open “recapitulated” too many of the same “power structures,” resulting in too much emphasis on the “Western canon,” the “written tradition,” and “this white male, Westernized construct around who matters.”
In the context of poll averages, it seems even a track record of accuracy did not “end up living into the intentionality of what openness can be.” The ostensibly crowdsourced online encyclopedia kept a high-profile page, “Nationwide opinion polling for the 2024 United States presidential election,” which showed an EZ-access chart with results from all the major aggregators, from 270toWin to Silver’s old 538 site to Silver’s new “Silver Bulletin.”
Every major aggregate, that is, but RCP. McIntyre’s site was removed on October 11th, after Wikipedia editors decided it had a “strong Republican bias” that made it “suspect,” even though it didn’t conduct any polls itself, merely listing surveys and averaging them. One editor snootily insisted, “Pollsters should have a pretty spotless reputation. I say leave them out.” After last week’s election, when RCP for the third presidential cycle in a row proved among the most accurate of the averages, Wikipedia quietly restored RCP.
Get the picture?
Do yourself a favor and read all the rest as well. Not only is it extraordinarily instructive of how this kind of bias operates, but it is a wonderfully refreshing example of real journalism – the kind we find less and less of these days.
Thank you, Mr. Taibbi, for bucking the trend; for living up to what your vocation’s standards are supposed to be. And my condolences for the degree of loneliness which, sadly, accompanies such behavior these days.
