How mainstream media covered the Dean candidacy

If I had one thing to put on the agenda of news professionals, it would be to do a serious look at how MSM covered the Dean candidacy.

I wasn't a Dean supporter, I didn't support any of the candidates until the primary process was over. But as a voter, I was appalled by how the media wasted all that mental bandwidth by making such a huge deal out of something that, had they done the most superficial of investigation, would have realized was totally insignificant. What are we to believe about the media?

Anyway, when I dug into it, and as reported on Scripting News, this is what I found out. (I was at Dean headquarters in Burlington on the night of the scream.)

1. The scream was part of the Dean culture, derived from United Farmworkers rallies.

2. The scream was inaudible to the people in the room, it was only audible through the feed from the handheld mike that Dean was holding.

And a couple of key questions...

1. Who but the bloggers looked deeper before it was too late? ABC apologized later, but others didn't, and ABC's apology came after the Dean candidacy was over.

2. Didn't the media have a conflict of interest because DFA had found a way to get to the voters without going through them?

Again, I was not a Dean supporter. No one told me to ask these questions.

To me, it's the biggest story of the 2004 election. It was the pivotal moment.

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