Corporate media coverage of the 2008 presidential election has been rightly criticized for its inept analyses, frequent miss-readings of public sentiment, deep bias toward the status quo, and lazy habit of exploiting at-hand narratives that, in the end, are more like tales from another planet.
The progressive movement is all about the restoration of popular democracy, but the corporate media's acceptance of elite quasi-democracy remains a powerful obstacle. This is nowhere as apparent as in its discussion, or lack of a discussion, about racism, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
It is, maybe, the elite media's worst habit. They create or reinforce a public opinion environment and then step out of that environment and pretend they are covering something they themselves have not helped create. If politics is theatrical melodrama, it is as though they write the script, shape the action on stage, and then retreat to the audience and cover events as though they had no role in the production.
The West Virginia vote and the ongoing euphemism "white working class voters" is another telling episode from 2008, Act I.
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