News Networks Bump Clinton Out of Picture

NEWS NETWORKS BUMP CLINTON OUT OF PICTURE
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Howard Kurtz]
Seven minutes into Sen Clinton's (D-NY) speech on Tuesday night, cable news networks cut away to air a speech by her main rival, Sen Barack Obama (D-IL). The freshman senator proceeded to speechify in a Houston arena for 46 minutes, hijacking the television spotlight and -- in a move he seems to have perfected -- upstaging his Democratic rival. As Obama went into overtime -- while the rest of Sen. Clinton's speech in Youngstown, Ohio, went unheard by the country -- her aides were stewing over what they see as media favoritism toward the Illinois senator. And political analysts marveled at Obama's ease in capturing a sizable chunk of prime time on one Tuesday night after another. "Whatever happened to equal time?" Clinton spokesman Phil Singer asked yesterday. Obama spokesman Bill Burton denied any Machiavellian plotting, noting that Clinton had been scheduled to speak an hour earlier. "We hit the stage on time," he said. But he did not minimize the importance of such speeches: "When you have the opportunity to broaden your audience outside the four walls that contain your event, it's an important moment." While this sort of power move is not unprecedented, Clinton aides grumble that Obama is rudely dispensing with the niceties that have usually prevailed on primary nights, in which candidates stagger their speeches and the winners go last. By delivering the longest victory remarks of the primary season -- Sen. John McCain, who carried Wisconsin on the Republican side Tuesday, spoke for all of 12 minutes -- Obama found a way to get a swollen version of his stump speech, in its entirety, onto the three cable news channels.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/20/AR200802...
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