Media

Saturday

Alex Massie

Press Management By Dummies

Say what one may about the Blair-Brown years but I’m not sure even they would be mad brazen enough to try something like this: The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s No. 2 official apologized yesterday for leading a staged news conference Tuesday in which FEMA employees posed as reporters while real reporters listened on a telephone conference line and were barred from asking questions. “We are reviewing our press procedures and will make the changes necessary to ensure that all of our communications are straight forward and transparent,” Vice Adm. Harvey E. Johnson Jr., FEMA’s deputy administrator, said in a four-paragraph statement. “We can and must do better, and apologize for

Wednesday

Alex Massie

Press bias revealed!

Matt Yglesias sees Fred Thompson jump into a tie with Rudy Giuliani, despite having next to nothing to offer the country beyond shop-soiled platitudes and observes: All-in-all I continue to find it surprising that the press seems more interested in the Democratic primary (and I’ve heard conservatives complain about this, so I’m not making a partisan complaint), which seems frozen in a locked pattern, than in the much more fluid and objectively interesting GOP race. But there’s a simple reason for this: the press assumes that whoever wins the Democratic nomination will also be the next President. Additionally, the Democratic campaign is at a more advanced stage than th Republican

Alex Massie

GOP convention to be brokered? Ooooh, you are a tease…

On, the other hand TNR’s John Judis wins the prize for being the first (I think) to speculate upon the likelihood of us all actually being able to enjoy the delicious pleasure of a brokered convention: With former Senator Fred Thompson’s entry into the presidential race, the Republicans now have at least three candidates who could have the money and votes to compete, if necessary, all the way to June 2008. And they might have to do so. Indeed, when the Republicans meet in Minneapolis-St. Paul in September 2008 to choose their nominee, they might be looking at a brokered convention. Of course, the party has had multiple strong candidates