The Campaign & Media

While the art market goes pop, pop art iterations of the Obama Poster keep going.  Mad Magazine's November cover is the latest graphic representation.  Obama was named by AdAge as marketer of the year but the poster was by Shepard Fairey.

According to Editor and Publisher, the Obama-Biden ticket has 231 daily newspaper endorsements (reaching a circulation of 21 million), compared to 102 endorsements for the McCain-Palin ticket (7 million total circulation). College papers back Obama 63 - 1. Poynter has a blurb that news organizations have paid $9.6m to travel w/ Obama and $4.4m to travel w/ McCain.

 The Webby Award's Top Ten Most Influential Political Web Moments.

McCain will appear tonight on Saturday Night Live. Why not Obama??? Newsweek's David Bauder writes about McCain getting slammed on late-night tv.

This week on Wednesday, an Obama appearance the night of his infomercial (that reached 33 million viewers) pushes Jon Stewart's Comedy Central Daily Show to its biggest ever audience.  The previous record was October 8 when Michelle Obama appeared.  The  same night Obama appeared on The Daily Show, The Colbert Report also had its most-watched episode ever, 2.4 million visitors.  Stephen Colbert mocked Sen. McCain's campaign calling it a "flaming bag of dog poo, dropped on America's doorstep," and saying he endorses Obama but will vote for McCain.

Meanwhile, back on the runway, two right-wing papers, The Washington Times and the New York Post, along with the Dallas Morning News, lost their seats on the Obama plane.  All three endorsed McCain.

For voters, the political is psychological, about ideological preferences, with liberals valuing new experiences and flexibility while conservatives favor stability and tradition.

Balanced news coverage on candidates? Let's see how the media plays it: journalism.org's study on how different media have covered the general election show that MSNBC is less fair and balanced that in most other news outlets in showcasing Obama better and McCain worse. On the Fox News Channel, the coverage of the presidential candidates is something of a mirror image of that seen on MSNBC.  CNN's coverage was more in the middle.

McCain has been positioned in a substantially negative light according to a new study of how the press has reported the 2008 campaign. Nearly six in ten of the stories studied were decidedly negative in nature on McCain (57%), while fewer than two in ten (14%) were positive.  39% of Palin stories carried a negative tone, while 28% were positive, and 33% were neutral. Biden has been nearly the invisible man.

Comments

[barnyard]

Just saw that Obama-supporter Lorne Michaels was forced by his bosses at General Electric to invite John McCain onto SNL. McCain advisor Martin Eisenstadt leaked that GE - which gives over $1.2million to Republican candidates (including convicted Sen. Ted Stevens and lightning rod Michele Bachman) - pressured Michaels to invite McCain onto the show. Sounds like a real-life version of something Alec Baldwin might do to Tina Fey on "30 Rock!" Here's the link:
http://www.eisenstadtgroup.com/

[Jennifer]

Once upon a time, McCain called the media his "base". I wonder if some of the negative coverage he's received can be traced to the tipping point when his campaign decided to turn to a negative, win-at-all-costs tone?

[Kay Dennison]

All I can say is that when my traditionally Republican local fishwrapper endorses Obama, it's an indicator that McCain is on the skids. I would like him to stop the lies, goofiness, and negativity and be honest.
(And I probably still wouldn't vote fo him.)

I am boyctting SNL until further notice. You heard it here first.

[anthony]

Watching the media during this campaign , is like watching a fan of a 4-win, 5 loss College football team, holding up the #1 sign, when they win a game. Fans all think their team is the best team. Media's role used to be to bring you NEWS (a/k/a facts about interesting events). Media today are run by bigger corporate conglomerates than those dreaded Wall Street firms. Their goal is to tell you what to think after they show you some news. So we Americans have turned to the likes of Keith Olbermann for our political and financial guidance. Keith, he who has an arts degree, has worked for at least a dozen different companies, was a radio and TV sportcaster from 1979-2003, and was publicly fired at ESPN and FOX news, who then became a true political leader to be followed by us all. It is so easy to read and find things out for yourself, rather than turn to the same source that sells you OXYCLEAN on TV to give you political guidance.