Imagine this make-believe world: Each mistake you make adds to your credibility. Each misstep you take is further evidence of your infallibility. You’d enjoy an “Escape Hatch 22″ instead of a “Catch 22″ – a life of triumph, instead of a life of frustration. What brings this to mind are the reports of the “greatest [...]

Delegate counts for Democratic presidential candidates are fiction but The Associated Press and newspapers, broadcast stations and Internet sites are reporting who is ahead in the delegate race as though it is fact. If you visit Web sites you will be told, in all seriousness, that – in convention rhetoric – “The Great State of [...]

On the eve of the Iowa caucuses, allow me to beat a dead horse and repeat a few points to help keep you sane and the news media reports intelligible as we move into 2008 and eventually elect a President. The Republican and Democratic caucus results differ in significant ways that the news media often [...]

“Close enough” only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades and the Democratic Party’s side of the first-in-the-nation Iowa presidential caucuses. The wisdom of including horseshoes and hand grenades in “close enough” is self-evident. As for Iowa politics — critics will say that compared to the caucuses the Electoral College is a model of precision and expression [...]

DES MOINES—“Who you gonna caucus for?” is a common question in Iowa these days. For some reason, perhaps the public declarations we make at our precincts, caucus preferences are fair game in conversations – much more so than “Who you gonna vote for?” is in November. In response to my question, a friend said his [...]

If you’re concerned about the state of journalism these days – and thereby also concerned about the state of the nation – you have to visit, or revisit, two recent delightful commentaries on press performance. “Commentaries on press performance” may reflect more my perceptions than what the authors intended, but judge for yourself. The material [...]

If you’re into warning or product labels, what cautionary note should a newspaper or news broadcast provide to the reader or audience? Perhaps something like Caveat Lector or Caveat Celebratio, advising the reader or the audience to beware of what’s being reported. When I first considered this question several years ago, the result was a [...]

In the Iowa straw poll for Republican presidential candidates, critics routinely point out that votes are bought. The fundraiser for the state Republican party masquerades as an election, they say. But there’s another story to be told, another shoe to drop. This year, the campaign of Mitt Romney spent enough money – at $35 a [...]

Like most print-oriented people, my travel ritual includes sampling the local newspapers. Maybe such reading is just habitual, but often enough it also is rewarding or surprising. That certainly was the case during a recent two-week visit to China, reading the China Daily, which is published in English six days a week by the nation’s [...]

With the 2008 campaigns under way for the GOP and Democratic Party presidential nominations, two key questions have to be asked. One focuses on the news media in general and the other on the Iowa caucuses in particular. With regard to the news media, the question is: “Hey, why can’t you get the question right?” [...]