Source: MRCNewsBustershttp://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/pj-gladnick/2017/02/07/nate-silver-explains-how-msm-helped-hillary-lose-electionBy P.J. Gladnick | February 7, 2017 | 8:54 PM EST
Sometimes your best friends can inadvertently become your worst enemies. Such was the case of Hillary Clinton and the mainstream media according to Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight. Most observant people knew that the MSM was all in for Hillary this past election to the extent of acting like cheerleaders for her. So instead of cautioning Hillary when Donald Trump made exactly the right moves to win the necessary electoral votes for victory, they instead mocked him for his ignorance of political campaigning. As a result this gave the Hillary campaign a false sense of security when they should have campaigned more extensively in the previous "blue wall" states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.
Silver explains in great detail how the MSM helped lead Hillary to her shocking election loss:
...Trump was pretty close to having an optimal Electoral College strategy as judged by our tipping-point calculation. Clinton made a couple of mistakes, meanwhile. So did campaign reporters, who usually lauded Clinton’s strategy while maligning Trump’s, making essentially the same errors that the Clinton campaign did.
...Like any other kind of organization, campaigns are subject to internal politics and potentially misaligned incentives, and their decisions can be influenced by outside groups, such as donors and the media. Making the technically correct decision may not be easy if it contradicts the conventional wisdom,7 and correct Electoral College strategy (i.e., not necessarily campaigning in the closest states if they aren’t near the tipping point) is often slightly counterintuitive.
Speaking of the conventional wisdom, we should talk some about how the media covered Clinton’s and Trump’s Electoral College tactics. Being among the most technical aspects of the campaign, this was generally not a strength of mainstream coverage. For instance, on Oct. 30, The New York Times jabbed at Trump for “campaigning well outside the traditional band of states that decide presidential elections,” including in New Mexico and Michigan, “two solidly blue states where polling has shown Mrs. Clinton with a clear lead” — failing to recognize that they were potentially tipping-point states even if Clinton was ahead there. A few days later, on Nov. 3, the Times criticized Trump for campaigning in too wide a range of states...
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