October 2008

[Commentary] Just two nights ago on his show, Fox News Channel's Brit Hume led panelists Fred Barnes, Morton Kondracke, and Charles Krauthammer in a discussion of the purported liberal coverage of the presidential campaign. A greater collection of like minds may never have been assembled. Hume recently told the Los Angeles Times that he's "a journalist first and a conservative second or third." Barnes is executive editor of the Weekly Standard and author of the 2006 book Rebel-in-Chief: Inside the Bold and Controversial Presidency of George W. Bush. Krauthammer is a leading conservative columnist and thinker. Kondracke's distinguishing feature is that he has no distinguishing feature—unless being a chameleon is distinguishing. And so, without any sense of irony, the conservative quartet batted around the subject of liberal media bias. Nobody had a new idea to share, and because there weren't any liberals on tap, no real critical view of the premise was aired. It was as predictable as a theological discussion among a foursome of atheists. If the folks at Fox News Channel really think that the mainstream media is doing such an awful job of reporting the 2008 campaign, they should direct their complaints to their boss, Rupert Murdoch, who owns the second-biggest newspaper in the country, the Wall Street Journal. The best press criticism isn't a column or a moan of disgust into a TV camera. It's writing a better story.

Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform and a supporter of Sen John McCain (R-AZ), squared off against Larry Irving, president and CEO of the Irving Information Group and a telecom advisor for former President Bill Clinton. Norquist largely focused on tax policy and trade policy during a morning forum hosted by the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA). He often criticized Obama's proposals instead of talking about McCain's plans for tech-related issues. Irving talked about Obama's proposals to give U.S. residents more access to broadband and to open up government by using technology. At a different event, McCain adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin was supposed to debate former Federal Communications Commission Chairman and current Obama supporter Reed Hundt. But Holtz-Eakin canceled to appear on MSNBC instead.

Sen Barack Obama's half-hour infomercial, which drew rave reviews for production, was produced by two leaders of the campaign's ad team -- Jim Margolis of ad agency GMMB and Mark Putnam of ad agency Murphy/Putnam -- but it had some Hollywood help. Playing a role in its production was Davis Guggenheim, the Academy Award-winning director and executive producer of Al Gore's "The Inconvenient Truth." Guggenheim was a producer and director of HBO's "Deadwood" and has directed episodes of a number of TV shows.

Cable appears to have attracted 18 to 20% of the overall advertising spend by the candidates for president, according to Tim Kay, director of political strategy for National Cable Communications, which sells spot cable space for owners Comcast Corp., Cox Communications and Time Warner Cable. He estimated that cable also got 15 to 18% of the advertising for Congressional and local races. Evan Tracey, founder and COO of Campaign Media Analysis Group, put those predictions into dollar values. In September, he predicted that the political ad spend will top out at about $3 billion, with $500 million of that spend on media other than broadcast television. By the end of last week, broadcasters in the swing states, including Ohio, Florida, Colorado and New Mexico "were saturated," Tracey said, and campaigns had begun buying as much ad availabilities in Kentucky, North Carolina and Georgia as they could.