we are joined by margaret sullivan is the media columnist for the "washington post;" steve deace is aular conservative radio talk show host in iowa; and jim rutenberg is a media columnist for the "new york times." and we welcome all of you to the "newshour". margaret sullivan, you're sitting here next to me. i'm going to start with you. we heard j.d. vance say in the previous discussion in the program, we saw tht news media, he said, lying about what was going to happen in this election based on the polls, and i pointed out we depend on the polls but we don't do the polls ourselves. but how good or poor a job did the media do this time? >> i don't think the mainstream media was lying about what was going to happen. i think we missed the overarching story to a large extent and that is a failure on our part, but it was not the result of, you know, a plan or a lie or anything as quite as venal as that. >> sreenivasan: steve deace, i want to ask how much is a disconnect between the people who write the stories and the people out living them in the middle of the country? >> i think it's a