It's just with Al Gore, I don't buy that like the Dowd types weren't saying things lots of people weren't already thinking. I thought he would make a great president, I followed a lot of what he did as V.P., and I thought his campaign was really bad and he executed the bad stuff poorly, as if Bush was no threat at all, that he could win it in a walk. Also, I myself remember lots of bashing of candidate Bush, such as all the strategery stuff. Dowd is now often presented as being anti-Gore, but with here in particular, I remember she wrote some really wild & devastating narrative stuff with Bush being like a spoiled little kid just tired of all this presidential campaign stuff and having to learn about grown up foreign affairs, wanting to go home to his own favorite pillow. And it wasn't just one column.

The American public already knew Gore, they had preconceptions, and he reinforced the bad ones in his campaign. The press (and comedians, more devastating, really,) picked up on that and went with it. They also did it to Bush, but people had no reference point, didn't know him, so those things didn't fly as much. It was a classic problem of what happens to a V.P. who runs for president, being challenged by someone relatively fresh, and Gore team didn't handle it well until way too late, especially with knowing Rove was on the other side. It was complicated by Gore chosing to distance himself from Clinton after the impeachment--that I'd say in fairness was a hard call to make, and he went with his gut, he actually was upset at Clinton for his behavior, after all. So wrong choice there (Clinton came out with a fine rep), but hindsight is 20/20.

No I really really don't think the press can be blamed for doing Gore in. There were more silly negative stories than on Bush, but those percolated from the public up rather than the other way around, they resonated and repeated for a reason. You can blame Jay Leno and David Letterman some if you want, that I will go along with. Still, he won majority vote. But if he had only been his late campaign self a few months earlier, I think he would have won the whole shebang.

P.S. I don't have a lot of interest in debating about the media, I just am always interested in learning more insider info. about it & individual writers/reporters/companies, so I know more of the slant of what I am reading. (Blogs are more interesting meta because they are still in infancy and can go many different ways.) Media Matters is OK for fact-check info., but I think it is pretty slanted in choice of coverage. Founder David Brock used to be more than just a foot soldier in the "vast right wing conspiracy," he may have changed his politics but the leopard cannot change his spots. I prefer getting specific inside info. on the biz, to know the slants from things like The New York Observer and people like Jay Rosen, rather than just reading countering individual news items. Everyone has a slant, it's impossible not to, you figure out where they are coming from and then there's your best chance at getting the objective meat. (That's the main reason I appreciated the inside info. on AEI in the posts here from Clemons & Schmitt.)