Much was made over the extent to which media prognosticators got it wrong in the lead-up to the early Democratic presidential primaries. But this isn't the only democracy in which pundits are often contradicted by actual events. Take India, for example, where the Sonia Gandhi's Congress Party recently defied most predictions and displaced the ruling party from office. Brooke talks to Shailaja Bajpai, a columnist for the Indian Express in New Delhi, about the Indian media's poor performance.
After interviewing more than a thousand adults in the 18 battleground states that have been running campaign commercials since March, the University of Pennsylvania's National Annenberg Election Survey found that 61 percent believe that President Bush favors sending jobs overseas, and that John Kerry voted for higher taxes 350 times, even though, as the New York Times noted this week, neither of those assertions are true. Only 19 percent of those surveyed admitted to believing the ads, but that's the only place where they would find those so-called facts. So how did those interviewed get their information? Atlantic senior editor Joshua Green explains the nefarious practice of Opposition Research.
The editor of the Appleton Post Crescent had received calls charging that the paper was biased against President Bush, and moreover, that it never printed any letters supporting him. So the paper responded with an editorial that said, "if you would like to help us 'balance' things out, send us a letter, make a call or punch out an e-mail." In other words, you don't like the letters? Write your own. Executive Editor Andrew Oppman tells Brooke of the contretemps that ensued.
Is the mainstream media prematurely writing off the chances of John Kerry for President? Salon writer Tim Grieve thinks so. As he tells Bob, recent coverage of Kerry is strikingly similar to the coverage that Bill Clinton received in 1992. And like his Democratic predecessor, Grieve says, Kerry still has a good shot at the White House.
Is selling a presidential candidate to the electorate the same as selling a car to consumers? Maybe not, but according to one marketing consultant, in both cases Americans are going to be buying for the same basic reasons. Clotaire Rapaille has helped dozens of Fortune 500 companies market their wares to the most primitive "reptilian" level of the human brain, and recently met with a John Kerry adviser to discuss an image makeover for the candidate. He shares some of his advice with Brooke.
Days after the Bush re-election campaign released its first round of TV ads, three anti-Bush ad campaigns hit the airwaves in 17 battleground states. Democratic challenger John Kerry's advisers are welcoming the ads, but are not involved with their production. And according to Bush-backers, that makes the ads illegal. Brooke talks to Democratic media consultant Karl Struble about what recent campaign-finance legislation means for election-oriented ads.
The bunting from Super Tuesday was hardly torn down when the President unleashed his first round of re-election ads this week. Critics are already lashing out at the Bush-Cheney campaign for exploiting 9/11 imagery, but at least one advertising critic thinks the spots are surprisingly tasteful, and restrained. Just so happens that critic is Ad Age columnist Bob Garfield. He joins Brooke to deconstruct the ads.
When it comes to policy platforms, the two frontrunners for the Democratic presidential nomination are more similar to each other than they are to any other candidate. But when it comes to style, the gulf between the two Johns opens wide. Voters are still deciding whether to buy into the popular notion of Edwards as "Mr. Likeable" and Kerry as "Mr. Electable," but many reporters have already made up their minds. Brooke speaks with Boston Globe columnist Tom Oliphant, who has been covering Senator Kerry for decades.
