Journalists perhaps too early to get on the bandwagon in New Hampshire

The debate will go on long about the incorrect predictions of the media pundits in the New Hampshire primaries.Factors pointed to by commentators include people telling the pollsters that they are voting for the Black candidate put in private voting the other way and the citizens of New Hampshire simply telling the rest of the country that they can make up their own minds thank you very much.

The role of the press in all this must be scrutinised.Following the results in Iowa,the media bandwagon threw its weight behind change and Obama.On both sides of the Atlantic it must be said.Put into context Iowa was always going to be fairly unrepresentative just as New Hampshire was last night.There is a long way to go for both parties and let's hope the media return to a more objective reporting.

Brian Stelters writing in the New York Times this morning reflects on thsi very point.

Just after 11 p.m., the MSNBC anchor Keith Olbermann drew comparisons between the media’s pre-primary predictions and the infamously wrong 1948 headline “Dewey Defeats Truman” in the Chicago Daily Tribune

And adds

Tom Brokaw, somewhat of an elder statesmen of television news, may have said it best on MSNBC around 11 p.m. As Mr. Olbermann’s co-anchor Chris Matthews commented on faulty New Hampshire polls, Mr. Brokaw pointed to a larger fault shared by media organizations, suggesting that journalists should “temper that temptation to constantly try to get ahead of what the voters are deciding:”