Campaign Coverage Fever - Catch It!

ABC News sez Clinton told Richardson Obama can't win. But wait, according to Mark Halperin Richardson told Clinton Obama can't win!

Tune in for the exciting conclusion!

Alternatively, take opium and fall asleep for seven months.

UPDATE: Read this. Can we get a moratorium on any "news item" that begins with "On a conference call today, campaign surrogate X said..."? Who cares? Are we all in third grade?

In a high-minded alternate universe, the news media might briefly note the Carville and McPeak comments before returning to in-depth analyses of the economic theories undergirding the Obama and Clinton responses to the subprime mortgage crisis. But in a world of TV ratings, online traffic tallies and fast-vanishing newspaper circulation, trumped-up controversy (surprise) beats ponderous policy. According to a wide-ranging (and, at press time, unpublished) media-monitoring analysis by the Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ), Carville and his Judas crack about Richardson were mentioned in 13 percent of all political campaign stories charted so far this week. At the height of Richardson's own ill-fated presidential campaign, the New Mexico governor was lucky to be mentioned in paragraphs that began, "Also on the ballot are..."

Cable TV deserves much of the blame for fanning the flames of these irrelevant controversies. According to the invaluable content analysis by Project for Excellence in Journalism, the three cable news networks have devoted a stunning two-thirds of their entire news coverage to the presidential campaign this year during key time slots. With a seven-week gap between major primaries, there is an alarming amount of airtime that would otherwise be filled with the mysterious deaths of photogenic blondes. As Mark Jurkowitz, the associate director of the PEJ, put it, "As the media platform most invested in campaign coverage, cable news seems to abhor a vacuum. And when people aren't voting in primaries, we find that tends to take the form of expansive coverage of potential gaffes, perceived insults and loose-cannon surrogates."

Can we turn in this media for a disount media?