The Kicker

If you got your West Virginia primary coverage from MSNBC, then you know: 1) Hillary Clinton is thisclose to becoming “the Al Sharpton of white people,” per Chris Matthews, what with all of her talk about “white people” and her “so loosely say[ing] ‘hardworking white workers’” (a step up, for sure, from another recent Hillary […]

Media Matters counted the number of times those military analysts named in David Barstow’s New York Times investigation (“Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand”) “collectively appeared or were quoted as experts” since January 1, 2002: 4,500 times. 4,500 times on ABC, ABC News Now, CBS, CBS Radio Network, NBC, CNN, CNN Headline News, Fox News, […]

Body-language experts have already weighed in at key times during the campaign. Ditto graphic designers explaining what campaign signage choices (font, colors and so on) reveal about the presidential candidates. So, what can “three court-certified graphologists” tell us about Clinton, McCain and Obama (while we’re reading tea leaves, might as well read handwriting)? Nothing that […]

In March we saw a CNN anchor swapping his pinstripe suit for a ten gallon hat and horse to better cover, apparently, the Texas primary (authentic Texas costume=authentic Texas coverage). This week, MSNBC — working hard to help viewers really understand West Virginia and its residents — can’t quit playing John Denver’s song, Take Me […]

Joe Matthews, one-time labor reporter for the LA Times, wrote a piece in Sunday’s Washington Post (hat tip, Matthew Yglesias) arguing that in the Los Angeles TV news market “the sharpest coverage of state and local issues — government, politics, immigration, labor, economics, health care — is now found on Spanish-language TV” — Univision’s KMEX […]

Newspaper, TV on the wall, who’s the media darling(est) of them all? McCain? Obama? (Ron Paul, you say?) A first exchange, perhaps, in the inevitable battle of The Media Loves Your Candidate More– Here’s Proof! Newsweek this week published a friendly sort of cover story about Obama (Headline and sub-hed: “Sit Back, Relax, Get Ready […]

“West Virginia Keeps Distance From Obama.” So reads the headline on a Financial Times piece today. Just who is this “West Virginia” eyeing Obama warily and keeping a healthy distance? Twenty-two people the reporter interviewed at a Clinton rally in the small coal-mining town of Williamson, two of whom supplied the reporter with quotes tailor-made […]

From Katharine Q. Seeyle’s New York Times piece today (emphasis mine): This is an awkward phase in a long campaign. Mrs. Clinton has not quite given up her quest for the nomination, and Mr. Obama has not quite finished his. The Democratic Primary: now in its gawky “tween” stage — somewhere ‘tween It’s Over and […]

Which television poli-pundit profile to read first: “Chuckie T’s” or Turd Blossom’s? Howard Kurtz profiles NBC’s political director Chuck Todd (the “goateed guru”) in today’s Washington Post and Fox News’ Karl Rove (whose “new role as a media star marks another step in the evolution of mainstream journalism, where opinion, ‘straight news’ reporting and unmistakable […]

The inauguration of Dmitri Medvedev as Russia’s new president this week is one of those fantastic Historical Occasions for which air quotes (yes, “air quotes”) seem designed. In the sense that the inauguration is basically a farce. Medvedev is, if not a full-on puppet of Putin, then at least overshadowed by his predecessor, the power-consolidating […]

In what might just be one of the most fun pieces of research ever conducted, ever, the Project for Excellence in Journalism spent 2007—yes, the whole year—watching, analyzing, and likely guffawing at footage of…The Daily Show. Ugh. Why do data analysts always have all the fun? Anyway, per the study’s summary report, released today: When […]

Howard Kurtz today takes a macrocosmic—literally, macrocosmic—view of the media’s post-Tuesday treatment of the Democrats’ Epic Battle for Cosmic Domina—er, Nomination: For the moment, there seem to be two separate media universes out there. In the mainstream print galaxy, Hillary’s “options” are “dwindling,” her “path” to the nomination is “narrowing,” the “math” is “challenging,” Obama […]

In a New York Times article today about how the entertainment press is giving Britney-sized attention to this year’s presidential candidates (“It’s the greatest reality show on television,” per Inside Edition‘s producer), Clinton spokesman Jay Carson explains why the campaigns might also love Us back. What might a People or Extra interview offer a candidate […]