The Washington Post's Dana Milbank (10/2/15) said he would eat the page on which his column was printed if Donald Trump gained the Republican nomination. "The entire commentariat is going to feel a little silly when Marco Rubio wins every Republican primary," tweeted the New York Times' Ross Douthat (9/25/15). "Trump Will Still Lose. Here's How," said Bloomberg News (1/7/16). "No, Donald Trump Won't Win," lectured David Brooks (New York Times, 12/4/15). And on and on.
These experts, it would seem, were wrong--and confidently, arrogantly, condescendingly so. But as noted by Glenn Greenwald and Zaid Jilani, who corralled many examples for The Intercept (5/4/16), they will pay absolutely no price for it. And that's a problem. It isn't that journalists should never make predictions; or that they're expected to always be right. But you do have to wonder why so much energy is devoted to crystal-ball gazing when nothing seems to be learned when pundits are way off target.
"At the very least," wrote Greenwald and Jilani,
when a profession that touts its expertise, collectively, is this wildly wrong about something so significant, more needs to be done than a cursory, superficial acknowledgment of error -- or casting blame on others -- before quickly moving on, in the hope that it's all forgotten.
