‘We Should Get Out of the Prediction Business’ Local Newscaster Talks Covering the Election

Cristina Gonzalez/Entertainment Director 

In a time where public trust in the media is already at an all-time low, the latest presidential election has only fueled the conversation on the press’ objectivity and their influence on public opinion. 

For Emmy Award-winning newscaster, Calvin Hughes, the 2016 and 2020 elections proved one thing: the media was wrong.

The Local 10 News anchor sat down for FIU’s weekly “Cafecito Chat” with Vice President of the Office of Engagement, Saif Ishoof on Thursday, Nov. 5. 

“We should not be in the business of trying to predict which candidate is going to win,” said Hughes. “We shouldn’t even put pollsters on television so that they can predict who’s going to win or lose. Let’s be really honest, we should get out of the prediction business.”

For months, news outlets shared polls that indicated a landslide win for presidential candidate, Joe Biden, specifically in key swing states like Florida. 

Results on election night proved otherwise. 

Trump won that state by 374,313 votes, a percentage that was largely made up of Hispanic votes, something the media failed to account for. 

Who’s going to win the election depends on what network you’re watching, but the role the media plays in how the public perceives their candidate is clear. 

“We have a huge social responsibility to the communities that we serve to make sure that we present both candidates in a fair light,” Hughes said. “When we don’t do that, we fail the community, we fail the voters and we fail the political process. It’s an overall failure.”

Objective reporting isn’t necessarily easy when one of the political candidates is continuously attacking your profession, according to Hughes. 

“When the candidate is undermining what we do for a living, well it makes it difficult not to have some sort of persuasion,” he said. 

Once the election newscycle is complete, Hughes said the media has to evaluate their role in the political process.

“We have to be careful about how we phrase everything, how we frame discussions,” he said. “Oftentimes, we don’t have a chance to step back and evaluate where we stand in this debate. We have a lot of self-evaluation to do.” 

During the conversation, Ishoof brought up the 2016 election and how the takeaway after it was that results for individual states were being called too quickly. 

Now in 2020, the public is stating the opposite. 

“Everyone wants this ‘microwave solution’ where you just hit a couple of buttons and in two minutes and thirty seconds, you have the results,” Hughes said.  

But that’s not how democracy works. 

Although the nation is overwhelmingly riddled with anxiety, we shouldn’t be rushing states to count their ballots, according to Hughes. 

“We have to be careful not to rush to an end. The emphasis should be on accuracy, not results,” he said. 

The Office of Engagement hosts their “Cafecito Chats” on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays at 3:00 p.m. No registration is required. For Zoom links to each event, you can head to their Instagram page or their Facebook. 

Their next livestream is on Tuesday, Nov. 10 with voting rights activist and Executive Director of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, Desmond Meade.