Elections

A Week in the Life

Brooke and Bob reflect on some of the McCain campaign's challenging media moments this week. Some highlights? A near mutiny by reporters, a much criticized interview performance, and the wrath of Letterman.


Uncorrectable

There’s been no shortage of fact-checkers this campaign season. But Washington Post columnist Shankar Vedantam explains that a number of new studies suggest people don't let go of political misinformation after hearing a correction. In fact, the misinformation spreads.


The Old Switcheroo

You can take the politician out of Washington, but you can’t take Washington out of the politician. It’s the hottest rhetorical device of campaign ’08 says Slate assistant editor Juliet Lapidos. And it’s called antimetabole.


Stick Up

How does a non story become the story? The answer has to do with outrageous accusations, cost free ads, back and forth squabbling and media outlets that are left to sort through the noise. WNYC's political director Andrea Bernstein weighs in on how to stay outside the fray.


Pass It On

Email is the easiest and cheapest way to tell political lies. And you can’t blame the campaigns, or even journalists because these emails rarely cross the desks of editors. Bill Adair, editor of Politifact.com, weighs in on what’s true and what’s not from the latest crop of smear emails.


Kiss Off

At the Republican National Convention this week, politicians and their spokespeople levied harsh criticisms at the elitist, " left-wing" media. The main complaint seemed to be reporters' insistence on asking questions about vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. Will the media fall for it? Brooke and Bob weigh in.


Margins of Error

During the presidential campaign, media hang on the results of nearly every poll. But David Moore, former senior editor for the Gallup Poll, says polls inaccurately portray a consensus on issues the public often knows little or nothing about.


Crunching the Numbers

Nate Silver created a remarkably accurate computer system that projects stats for baseball players and teams. Now he's turned his attention to polling data for the presidential election with his website Five Thirty Eight. Silver explains how his site can out-perform the polling firms, whose data he relies on.


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