Adrian OceguedaVerified account

The point being the coverage wasn’t meant to advance policy differences, and this is where this coverage becomes both self-fulfilling and dangerous. First, understand most of the other local media took the same approach (@dallasnews, @houstonchron, @statesman, @expressnews).

If you only cover two (or a few) candidates, then what those candidates get is shallow but free coverage that serves to build their name and becomes the catalyst for a statewide primary echo chamber. Articles are written, candidates and supporters forward those articles,

those articles get posted on discussion boards and thus retweeted, competitive local reporters with limited budgets follow this reporting and believe this is the story line, so then they publish a similar line of coverage, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat.

And then the when the election takes place, we see the results mirror the coverage, this is the self-fulfilling part. Now let me bring in a little Daniel Kahneman here and his brilliant book, “Thinking, Fast and Slow”.

So, because our minds predominantly go with name recognition, we enter the polls and we don’t have policy on the mind we have a name and maybe some vague prospect of viability in mind.

In order to consider weighty policy differences, one would have to think (use our mind’s system two) and because system one of our minds dominates and is a lazy system, we go for name recognition and general impressions.

These names are easier for our minds to retrieve because the media has done us the great service of repeating them over and over, so the slightly engaged voter goes to the polls recalling the general impression of a name not the policy stances of any given candidate.