The Media Primary

"In the early months of the 2008 presidential campaign, the media had already winnowed the race to mostly five candidates and offered Americans relatively little information about their records or what they would do if elected," concludes a new study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism. The study also found that the media gave Barack Obama and Fred Thompson more favorable coverage than other candidates. Most of the coverage focused on "political and tactical aspects of the campaign" such as fundraising and polling, while "just 1% of stories examined the candidates' records or past public performance. ... All of these findings seem to be at sharp variance with what the public says it wants from campaign reporting."