March 2008

NEWS COVERAGE CHANGES, AND SO DOES TONE OF THE CAMPAIGN
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Katharine Seelye]
Over the last few days, the tone of the Democratic contest seems to have shifted, with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign more buoyant and Senator Barack Obama’s more defensive. That shift may be traceable in part to the “Saturday Night Live” show on Feb. 23, when, back from the writers’ strike, it mocked the news media for treating Sen Obama more gently than it treated Sen Clinton. Sen Clinton amplified that view later in a debate, and her aides stoked it all week, practically browbeating reporters. Now comes evidence that the publicizing by the Clinton campaign and the news media may have helped flip the coverage as it questioned Sen Obama more aggressively. Sen Obama was the subject of 69 percent of all campaign articles last week, from Feb. 25 to March 2, and Sen Clinton was the subject of 58 percent of articles about the election, according to a study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/05/us/politics/05press.html?ref=todayspaper
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* TV Networks Resort to the ‘Crawl’ Instead of Real News Coverage
It’s official: the networks no longer cover news, they slap it onto the bottom edge of their regular programming like Post-it notes. There were crawls and brief updates, but viewers who wanted to immerse themselves in the speculation and suspense -- and Tuesday night was arguably a more critical and dramatic election than Super Tuesday -- were relegated to cable news.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/05/us/politics/05watch.html?ref=todayspaper

* Back in the Game
The morning after the Democratic primary debate on Feb. 21, while both sides argued over who had come out ahead, there was one clear winner: CNN.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/05/business/media/05cnn.html?ref=todayspaper

CLINTON CAN ASK THE QUESTION, BUT SHE MAY NOT LIKE THE ANSWER
[SOURCE: AdAge, AUTHOR: Bob Garfield]
[Commentary] In an act of political desperation leading into Tuesday's make-or-break Texas and Ohio primaries, Sen. Clinton has released a campaign ad that pundits and partisans will declare a reprise of LBJ's notorious "Daisy." The Clinton ad plays to the electorate's fear of apocalyptic calamity. No countdowns, no mushroom cloud, but you get the idea. If President Clinton answers, the fighters are scrambled and allies convened. If President Obama answers, he gives an inspiring speech. The Obama campaign responded with charges of fear-mongering -- or, in the front-runner's clever phrasing, "trying to scare up votes." That she is, but playing to voter fear is not what's the matter with this commercial. on the brink of electoral doom, she is pulling a Rudy. Mayor Giuliani, too, pushed all his chips onto the "experience" square and let 'em ride. Alas, Giuliani got to Florida and discovered, to his surprise, that his 9/11 leadership did not translate into votes. Perhaps Republicans wondered whether being a take-charge victim made him fitter than his opponents to protect us. And that is the problem with the Clinton ad. Unless Gennifer and Monica strap on a bomb vest, what exactly in her experience as a senator and first lady equips especially her to deal with crisis? Nothing springs to mind, does it? Which is why she is at risk asking voters whom they prefer to pick up that red phone. Surely the senator learned this at the Rose Law Firm: Never raise a question if you don't already know the answer.
http://adage.com/garfield/post?article_id=125448

IN TECH SUPPORT, OBAMA BESTS CLINTON
[SOURCE: C-Net|News.com, AUTHOR: Declan McCullagh]
[Commentary] Practically from the moment she was sworn into office in 2001, Sen Hillary Clinton (D-NY) began wooing technology firms and their executives in preparation for her presidential bid. She introduced five different broadband bills. She showed up at roundtables with chief executives like Microsoft's Steve Ballmer, Adobe's Bruce Chizen, and Symantec's John Thompson. She spoke at a board meeting of the Information Technology Industry Council, whose members include Apple, Cisco Systems, Dell, eBay, IBM, Intel, and Microsoft. She talked up nanotech, lower taxes on stock options, and better e-voting security. She won a coveted endorsement from prominent venture capitalist John Doerr, and, in fact, won more votes in Silicon Valley during last month's California primary. In theory, the New York senator should have been the perfect tech-friendly candidate in the Democratic race for the presidential nomination. So just how did Sen Barack Obama (D-IL) claim that title? A combination of charisma, background, a remarkably well-received convention speech four years ago, and a willingness to embrace technology.
http://www.news.com/8301-13578_3-9886171-38.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=...

ADVOCACY GROUP TO FCC: COMCAST SHOULD UPGRADE NETWORK, NOT IMPEDE TRAFFIC
[SOURCE: OnlineMediadaily, AUTHOR: Wendy Davis]
Comcast should respond to bandwidth shortages by upgrading its network and increasing capacity rather than impeding traffic to peer-to-peer sites, advocacy group Free Press argued to the Federal Communications Commission. "Consumers want upgrades and a competitive market would provide such upgrades," the group wrote in supplemental comments filed recently with the FCC. "Without investment in upgrades, we'll continue to fall behind our global competitors." Last year, an investigation by The Associated Press revealed that Comcast was slowing traffic to BitTorrent and other peer-to-peer sites. Free Press and other advocates, as well as online video company Vuze, subsequently filed FCC complaints charging Comcast with singling out peer-to-peer networks for special treatment. The groups allege that Comcast's actions violate a 2005 FCC policy statement endorsing net neutrality.
http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.san&s=77...