Over at Ezra's place, one of the weekenders has an interesting piece of meta-analysis about investment advice publications. But as I was reading it, it occurred to me that it perfectly describes political media too:
...the financial press isn't in the business of supplying useful information; it’s in the business of feeding people’s lust for predictions. "You keep buying the magazine regardless of how the forecasts turn out," Wellington says, "and they’ll keep supplying the forecasts."
That just about perfectly explains why so many pundits often get it so spectacularly wrong and yet never, ever suffer any consequences for it. For the people producing the magazines and the TV shows, the predictions aren't a means to an end, they are an end in and of themselves. How things play out tomorrow is irrelevant if all you are worried about is the ratings you'll get today.


