The Boston Globe has an article today about how the presidential candidates “strive to establish [an] image and make it stick.” Not once in the article does the reporter mention the very vital role reporters play in “making it stick.”
The lede:
This year’s presidential campaign is shaping up as a case study in how the race for the White House has turned into a form of marketing warfare, featuring advertisements and gimmicks seeking to brand the opposing candidate with a series of indelible negative images.
How do images (negative or otherwise) become “indelible?” “Ads and gimmicks,” sure. And then there’s the campaign press’s coverage of “ads and gimmicks” (see the top two “campaign storylines” in the press last week, per PEJ). Kind of a key piece of the puzzle.
Liz Cox Barrett is a writer at CJR.