Given that media critics often describe FDR as the first “radio president” and JFK as the first “TV president,” logic dictates that 2009 brought forth the first entry in a new era: the Wifi President.

With his Blackberry forever in tow, a sophisticated election campaign grounded in new social networking media, and the most YouTube friendly White House communications team ever to grace Pennsylvania Avenue— Barack Obama has, more than any to date, harnessed the power of Internet to advance his Presidential goals. (more...)

(Note: This post was published before Obama's speech, but remains an excellent guide.) If you cannot speak very intelligently about U.S. policy in Afghanistan, you are not alone. Right now the debate on Afghanistan raging in the media is dominated by hawks on the right saying President Obama is "dithering," and anti-war protesters on the left saying President Obama is becoming "just like Bush."  Meanwhile, the broadcast media has decided the Tiger Woods story is the big issue of the day. (more...)

The fortieth anniversary of Sesame Street makes me wonder if our long-drawn-out debate on health care might have been better served by the likes of Kermit and Big Bird than it has been by the current cast of broadcast pundits.

I am not suggesting that the biggest policy debate in recent history should have been set to song and presented by talking puppets, but — the media's contribution to the health care discussion would have been much more useful if it emphasized effective and memorable explanation over political histrionics and diatribe. 

In what may turn out to be the cruelest irony of the year, the death of Senator Edward Kennedy may have papered over a CNN video clip poised to change the dynamic of the national healthcare debate: footage of a desperate woman crying "We need help!" because she lost health insurance after her husband suffered a brain injury. (more...)

The recent kerfuffle between Nico Pitney (Huffington Post) and Dana Milbank (Washington Post) over a clumsy exchange in a White House press conference brings to mind two media mavens rarely mentioned in the same sentence: Marshall McLuhan and Thomas Jefferson. Seen in the context of their ideas about media and government, a tiff between a blogger and a journalist raises ethical issues about the role of the press in our democracy and about the need for ethical leadership in an environment where government, blogs, and traditional journalism are increasingly interlaced. (more...)