Linkmeister

The media as message

I'm rapidly finding that Campaign Desk is becoming a favorite site to look to when I want to know what the media thinks it's doing. Case in point: when watching the Democratic debate, it seemed to me that the candidates weren't getting much more time than the moderators to speak their piece. Lo and behold, I was right. One of their observers actually counted the words used by both groups, and it was awfully close to a wash. The folks over there have also done the work necessary to learn that the Dean speech was initially reported more-or-less fairly, but then coverage degenerated into a morass of pejorative adjectives. They were less than impressed with Diane Sawyer's interview with the Deans, too.

Here's an explanation of why Dean has been so successful running against the "Democratic Establishment;" there really isn't one. It became complacent during the years the Democrats controlled the House, and when that was lost it fragmented into labor, environmental and other groups and lost its coherence. Could be, could be.