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The media have long complained about President Bush's scarceness with the press. After all, he's held fewer solo press conferences than any of his predecessors in 50 years. By way of contrast, a President Kerry would grant one press conference per month - or so he has promised. But candidate Kerry is not nearly as generous with his time. Brooke talks with Washington Post reporter Paul Farhi about the recent brownout by the Kerry campaign.
Thus far, the presidential campaign has been dominated by candidates sniping at each other from remote locations. But the luxury of monopolizing the podium won't last forever. And when the debates start up at the end of this month, the sparks are sure to fly. At least that's the view of The Atlantic Monthly's James Fallows, who tells Brooke that the vastly different debating styles of Bush and Kerry promise a clash of the titans. And neither is used to tasting defeat.
Georgia’s Democratic senator Zell Miller took the podium at the RNC this week to praise President Bush and condemn candidate Kerry’s record. The tirade set off a whirlwind of fact-checking hitherto invisible in the coverage of the convention speeches. Brooke muses on a possible change in the journalism ether.
On the opening night of the Republican convention, Fox News Channel made television history by drawing more viewers than any of the Big Three broadcast networks. It could be the latest sign that the network dinosaurs are gradually conceding news coverage to the feisty cable news channels. Brooke talks to Brian Stelter, editor of TVnewser.com, about what that means for overall convention coverage. Plus, Brooke reads from listeners’ letters, and updates our recent story about press freedom in China.
The controversy around the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" ads posed a classic controversy for the Kerry/Edwards campaign. Should the candidate discredit the mudslingers before the mud sticks, or should he ignore what appears to be sideline noise, so as not to create something of nothing? Brooke talks to Chad Clanton, a senior adviser to the Kerry campaign, about the candidate's choices. She also examines the coverage of the brouhaha, which has included as much debate over the tactics of the ad campaign as its substance.
When the leading newspapers finally joined the Swift Boat fray this week, they helped to expose the ads as unsubstantiated smears against Senator Kerry's reputation. But the ad campaign itself has also exposed a fundamental weakness in our contemporary press culture. The American Prospect's executive editor Michael Tomasky tells Brooke what's wrong with the he said-she said convention of political journalism.
It's campaign season, which means that we are inundated every day with new results from public opinion polling of "likely voters." But rarely do these reports include information about the polls' margin of error. And even when they do, it's often obvious that the reporter doesn't understand what the margin of error really means. CJR Campaign Desk reporter Thomas Lang explains what's being lost in all the numbers.
The Democratic Party's quadrennial political-media blowout is over, and the Fleet Center is getting back to its sporty self. For viewers at home, it was hard to tell which was the greater subject of revelation this year - the nominees, or the tortured psyches of the journalists covering them. Throughout the week, the media noted with stoic distaste the dearth of real news, even as they, the brave, the true, the many, soldiered on. But was there really no substance to be parsed? Brooke talks to NPR's Mike Pesca about the difficulty of reporting on such a scripted event.
