Campaign Desk
1,000 Words…of Crazy
The Times sells McCain short
By Megan Garber Thu 10 Apr 2008 02:43 PMChecking out The New York Times Web site’s newly (and subtly) redesigned Politics section, I noticed, tucked into a column near the bottom of the section’s landing page, a somewhat strange grouping of candidate photos:
There’s Clinton (calm, happy, glowing) and Obama (understated, confident, ensconced in Presidential Shadow)…and then there’s McCain, looking like joker, smoker, and midnight toker all rolled into one—and vaguely like Jim Carrey in…well, any movie Jim Carrey’s ever made.
There are several criteria one can use to gauge the fairness of the media’s treatment of presidential candidates; whatever metric you employ, though, I’m pretty sure the manic McPhoto doesn’t pass the equal-treatment test. Which is somewhat silly to point out, I realize…but it’s also silly that the Times chose, in this context, to display such a ridiculous picture in the first place. McCain is one of the most photographed men on the planet; surely the paper could have found an image of him as (relatively) dignified as the ones it selected for his fellow candidates. Instead, it published a picture whose thousand words, boiled down to their essence, put the “nut” in “nut graf.”
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Doug Alder![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.cjr.org/nav-commenters.gif)
Thu 10 Apr 2008 08:00 PMWell After the treatment Howard Dean got at the hands of the right wing press (pictures of the famous yell at the 2004 Iowa caucus) I would say this is more like tit for tat ;)
padikiller![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.cjr.org/nav-commenters.gif)
Fri 11 Apr 2008 08:55 AMWhat are you trying to say?...
That the NYT is trying to tank McCain?...
Now THERE'S a piece of journalistic deduction for you....