How We’re Covering the Midterms — and the Aftermath
ProPublica · Stephen Engelberg ·
Over the past year, we’ve tried to use the techniques of accountability journalism to add new facts to this pivotal moment in American history. We’ll keep that focus on Election Day — and beyond.
This has been a midterm election cycle unlike any other. Wealthy donors spent staggering sums. Both parties moved to redraw congressional district lines. President Donald Trump and his allies relentlessly questioned whether the results could be trusted even before a single ballot was counted. At Trump’s direction, the Justice Department filed a lawsuit that said the federal government would contest any outcome in which Sen. Dan Sullivan, the Republican incumbent in Alaska, was not victorious.
Newsrooms, including ours, have tried to plan how we will cover an election in which the losing side refuses to accept the will of the voters. Was the Alaska lawsuit a single data point or a harbinger?
As we prepare to write about Nov. 3 and beyond, we find ourselves in the uncomfortable position of trying to game out what might happen in the future — not our strong suit. The record shows that journalists are pretty good at telling readers what happened, particularly if we have some time and some data to sift through, and much less good at forecasting the future.
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