Sensible Media Reporting - Can We Actually Get Some?

A few days ago Mr. Bolos and Mr. O'Connor led a particularly interesting discussion about the media, and its role during the election process. Maybe I don't have a life but I've been following the election process quite closely, rooting for somebody I won't mention in this post. But what struck me as odd was the indecisiveness of the American people in choosing the republican nominee, and even more so the hysterical reaction by the media that accompanied this indecisiveness.

First it began with Michele Bachmann. After she won the Iowa Straw Poll and did well in a certain debate, she seemed unstoppable. To everyone's surprise, her poll numbers skyrocketed and the media hysteria began, with headlines about the unstoppable Bachmann surge all over the place. Then, Rick Perry entered the field with very high poll numbers, only to come crashing down once people realized his debating skills were a little below average, to say the least. Once again, this incident was accompanied with media hysteria left and right - one second proclaiming the election already essentially over and the next pronouncing Perry's campaign, well, dead.

Then came Herman Cain, who must have said the number 9 more than anybody else alive in that time period. In fact, to the questions where he couldn't think of a proper response, he resorted to the one answer he could always count on: 999. The media dubbed his serge in the polls and his overall support as the "Cain-Train", and everybody knew that if you didn't support the black guy saying 999 over and over again you were living on the moon. Following the "Cain-Train", came Newt Gingrich, who the media was sure would be the final nominee. But to everyone's "surprise", Gingrich fell just like everybody else, even though people in the media had once again been labeling Gingrich as the unstoppable force in the race. 

Finally came the surge of Rick Santorum - but don't even get me started on him.

So what does this tell us? Are people really that unsure of their political views that they hopped around from candidate to candidate, coincidentally at the same time? Or was there an unnoticed media force propelling one candidate to the front of the pack after another? Take a look at an article (here) written at the start of Santorum's "surge". As soon as he barely hit third place, the media started beating on its drums and telling everybody that Santorum was somehow making an enormous move (even though it wan't even that big). The article wrote that Santorum had "leapfrogged", and described his campaign as "surging". To nobody's surprise, Santorum picked up another 9% in the time leading up to the Iowa caucuses, with everybody under the impression that he was somehow the true conservative that they had been looking for all along.

In my opinion, these surges happen only because of the media. True, polls do change, and some candidates pick up steam every once in a while. But without the media telling people what to think and why they should jump on the bandwagon, I think poll number would change much more subtly. What do you think?