Media Admire Clinton’s Resilience, Question Obama’s Toughness

MEDIA ADMIRE CLINTON'S RESILIENCE, QUESTION OBAMA'S TOUGHNESS
[SOURCE: Project for Excellence in Journalism, AUTHOR: Mark Jurkowitz]
Sen Clinton turned back the clock on the media narrative for the Democrats last week. For several weeks running, the press had cast Sen Obama as a clear frontrunner, one perhaps on the verge of finishing off his rival. Almost instantly after Texas and Ohio, that narrative returned to where it was through the decidedly mixed Feb. 5 Super Tuesday results -- speculating about a hopelessly deadlocked contest decided by superdelegates. And embedded in that in the media coverage last week was a months-old question: Was Obama “tough” enough to win a nomination fight with a determined foe. In many ways, even in a strong week for Clinton, the narrative turned on questions about Obama. As a significant or dominant newsmaker in 60% of campaign stories, Clinton narrowly won the competition for media exposure from March 3-9, a period that began a day before the Texas, Ohio, Vermont and Rhode Island primaries and ended a day after the Wyoming caucus. For Clinton -- credited with engineering another comeback in this roller coaster race by aggressively attacking Obama -- that was her highest level of 2008 coverage. At 58%, Obama dropped 11 points from the previous week. And in a difficult stretch of coverage, he found himself facing questions about the need to make strategic and tactical changes in his campaign. In the week that the GOP race was formally decided, the Democrats dominated coverage over the Republicans by the lopsided margin of about four-to-one (70% to 18%), a margin similar to the week before.
http://www.journalism.org/node/10106