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August 26, 2008
And
For the record, this is the smartest thing I've read today. Indeed, the media critique may prove to be the smartest thing I'll read about either convention.
Jeremy McCarter, Newsweek: "Broken News: Just once during this convention, could the TV pundits get out of the way of the show?"
Quick excerpt:
"DID DEMOCRATS WASTE FIRST DAY?" blared a graphic beneath Larry King's chin. The Monday night program of the Democratic National Convention had ended a couple of hours earlier, and King wanted the assembled pundits to tell him whether the party has mishandled its big event. The question is rich with irony. Precisely because of the pundits, who can even tell what the Democrats did on their first day, much less decide how well or badly they did it?
Time after time last evening, I flipped from the wall-to-wall coverage on C-SPAN--which is viewed, I imagine, largely by shut-ins and political completists--to see how CNN or MSNBC or Fox News broadcast a speech or performance. Time and again, they weren't broadcasting it at all. Instead, talking heads were talking to other talking heads about Hillary's dead-enders, or some other overblown story, at self-parodying length. The resulting coverage had about as much connection to what happened onstage last night as NBC's Olympics coverage would have had if Bob Costas had spent two full weeks asking other sportscasters how they feel about the shot-put.
Posted by caps at August 26, 2008 03:22 PM