Zachary Roth : Author Archive : CJR

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Campaign Desk

Is Romneycare a Success or a Failure?
October 6, 2010 02:18 PM
If you're looking for a news story that exemplifies what so many people find both engaging and infuriating about Politico, look no further than this piece about the continuing fallout for Mitt Romney of the health-care law he... Continue reading
Campaign Desk

Seeing FOX for What It Is
October 1, 2010 01:40 PM
Will this week mark the beginning of a new phase in the way that Fox News is perceived by the rest of the media, and perhaps ultimately the public too? As surprising as that sounds, it seems plausible. Politico's Ben... Continue reading
Campaign Desk

Media Critic In Chief
September 28, 2010 01:56 PM
President Obama used his interview with Rolling Stone to open a new offensive in the White House's verbal war with Fox News. But he also seemed to be making a more subtle—and more interesting—point. Said the president: The... Continue reading
Campaign Desk

Kurtz Stays Silent on Peretz
September 22, 2010 11:50 AM
Earlier this summer, when Helen Thomas said Jews should "get the hell out of Palestine" and return to Germany, among other places, The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz appeared to share the widespread outrage. The nation's most prominent media writer <a... Continue reading
Campaign Desk

The Senator in Full
August 10, 2010 03:30 PM
The Associated Press confirmed this afternoon that former Alaska senator Ted Stevens has died in a plane crash in his home state. You can expect to see a gaggle of Washington figures competing over the coming days... Continue reading
Campaign Desk

Appearances Are Everything
August 15, 2008 01:38 PM
Once the crisis in Georgia broke out late last week, it was inevitable that the campaign press would soon try to assess each candidate’s “handling” of the issue, and which one appeared to profit politically from it. We don’t have... Continue reading
Campaign Desk

Comrade Obama?
July 18, 2008 01:19 PM
Only in our screwy media culture can a candidate imply, on little evidence, that his opponent is a socialist, confident in the knowledge that the press won’t scrutinize the claim, or stop to ask him what the hell he’s talking... Continue reading
Campaign Desk

Mr. Obama Goes To Baghdad
July 17, 2008 04:06 PM
Lately, John McCain and the GOP have been attacking Barack Obama for not having recently visited Iraq. (The RNC’s Web site features a running clock showing the amount of time that has elapsed since Obama’s last visit.) Now... Continue reading
Campaign Desk

MoDowd’s Obama Fixation
July 16, 2008 04:17 PM
Another day, another shockingly dumb column by Maureen Dowd in The New York Times. Dowd starts out by complaining that Obama had an “icy reaction” to the infamous New Yorker cover. “If Obama keeps being stingy with... Continue reading
Campaign Desk

Gramm Trackers
July 11, 2008 11:27 AM
When Phil Gramm’s comment—that we’re in only a “mental recession”, and that America is a “nation of whiners”—first became public yesterday morning, some on the left wondered whether reporters would pick up on the remarks with anything like the enthusiasm... Continue reading
Campaign Desk

Social Distortion
July 10, 2008 02:21 PM
Yesterday, we wrote about the media’s strange reluctance to cover John McCain’s recent assessment that the way in which Social Security is funded is “a disgrace.” Today, prompted by McCain’s decision to revisit the comment, The Washington Post and... Continue reading
Campaign Desk

McCain vs. Accuracy, Round 17
July 9, 2008 03:38 PM
Amid all the misplaced hand-wringing over whether Barack Obama has changed his position on Iraq (he hasn’t, though both candidates have shifted their emphasis in response to changing facts on the ground), the mainstream... Continue reading
Campaign Desk

“Attacking” McCain’s Military Record
June 30, 2008 03:54 PM
So: The latest round of mock outrage—in a presidential race that has turned the tactic into an art form—now comes in response to comments made by General Wesley Clark. Appearing as a surrogate for Barack Obama on CBS’s “Face the... Continue reading
Campaign Desk

Forced Neutrality II: Try Harder
June 26, 2008 02:25 PM
Yesterday, I wrote about the mainstream media’s tendency to cover policy differences only as he-said-she-said political controversies, without trying to figure out which side’s position best corresponds to the facts. As if on cue, yesterday’s New York... Continue reading
Campaign Desk

Facing Down “Forced Neutrality”
June 25, 2008 02:36 PM
In an online chat with readers this week, New York Times political editor Richard Stevenson was asked a question that goes to the heart of one of our most persistent criticisms of his paper and its brethren. ... Continue reading
The Kicker

Howard Kurtz, Buck-Passer
June 23, 2008 02:40 PM
Is Howard Kurtz a media critic at all? We ask because, yesterday, New York Times public editor Clark Hoyt used his weekly column to argue that a recent Times piece about sexism in campaign... Continue reading
The Kicker

CNN’s Attention Deficit
June 20, 2008 01:57 PM
Does CNN understand the difference between the deficit and the national debt? Doesn’t look like it. Check out this exchange which took place yesterday on Wolf Blitzer’s “The Situation Room”: BLITZER: On our Political... Continue reading
Campaign Desk

A Cap By Any Other Name…
June 20, 2008 10:16 AM
If a candidate for president unwittingly revealed, at a widely attended press conference, that he either didn’t understand a basic element of one of his own key policy proposals, or wanted to fool the public about it, you'd think the... Continue reading
Campaign Desk

Campaign Contretemps Covered Correctly
June 18, 2008 03:35 PM
If reporters are looking for a model for how to cover the daily barrage of charges and counter-charges launched by the candidates and their surrogates, they might consider taking a look at these two stories by the Washington Post’s... Continue reading
Campaign Desk

Parsing “Unconditional Diplomacy”
June 17, 2008 03:41 PM
Sometimes, the press can unwittingly redefine the entire political debate on an issue just through its choice of language. The ongoing disagreement between the campaigns over the value of talking to America’s adversaries might turn out to be the latest... Continue reading

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