Email to a friendMedia Views
New York Times: With Commercial, McCain Gets Much More Than His Money’s Worth (7/30/08) by Jim Rutenberg
Spelling out the real political consequences of superficial campaign coverage, when even somewhat critical reportage still gives valuable exposure to a presidential candidate's smears:
The number of times Senator John McCain's new advertisement attacking Sen. Barack Obama for canceling a visit with wounded troops in Germany last week has been shown fully or partly on local, national and cable newscasts: well into the hundreds.
The number of times that spot actually, truly ran as a paid commercial: roughly a dozen.
Result for Mr. McCain: a public relations coup that allowed him to show his toughest campaign advertisement of the year—one widely panned as misleading—to millions of people, largely free, through television news media hungry for political news with arresting visual imagery.
FAIR does not endorse every opinion expressed or vouch for facts presented here, except by ourselves. Send link suggestions to jnaureckas@fair.org.
