Media

For an hour after Sunday’s Hillary Clinton-Donald Trump debate, cable news commentators critiqued the performances of the key players in an event in which the tawdry subject matter represented a new low in recent American politics. The pundits analyzed which statements appealed to which base and, by and large dispassionately, whose style was more fitting—until…

Dr. Ben Carson, who with boxing promoter Don King and Theresa “Omarosa” Manigault is vying for the title of Donald J. Trump’s most conspicuous African American supporter, wrote Saturday that the release of lewd comments by Trump is part of a conspiracy by progressives. The surgeon and former GOP presidential primary contender said he believes…

Pundits and pollsters declared Republican Mike Pence the winner of Tuesday’s vice presidential debate, but that doesn’t mean that like his running mate, Donald J. Trump, Pence didn’t manage to offend many African Americans, Hispanics and Asian Americans. The debate, the first to be moderated by an Asian American, Elaine Quijano of CBS News, a…

The Democratic National Committee plans a “seven-figure” advertising blitz “to engage and energize communities of color across the country in the final stretch of the campaign,” the DNC announced on Monday, easing perennial concerns particularly among black media that they would not receive advertising dollars reflective of their loyalty to the Democratic ticket. Benjamin F.…

Is this what happens when fear of police violence combines with mistrust of the news media? “Imagine thinking that out of the 197 black people who’ve been killed by police this year, one of them could have been you,” Taryn Finley wrote Friday for Huffington Post BlackVoices. “This thought process, unfortunately, is all too familiar…

Lester Holt answered any doubt about how prominent a role race would play in the first presidential debate of the 2016 homestretch. More than 80 million people watched, setting a record in the 60-year history of televised presidential debates, Brian Stelter reported Tuesday for CNN Money. Holt lobbed a series of questions that helped most…

“Lester Holt is carrying the weight of the nation,” Dylan Byers reported Friday for CNN Money. “On Monday, the NBC Nightly News anchor will preside over what may be the most highly anticipated presidential debate in American history. . . .” Callum Borchers of the Washington Post noted that “Holt . . . is the…

“Did Keith Lamont Scott have a gun in his hand when officers confronted him in a University City apartment complex parking lot Tuesday afternoon?” the Charlotte (N.C.) Observer editorialized Wednesday. “Or was it a book? “Police say the former. Relatives and protesters say the latter. “What we know is that, as Charlotte-Mecklenburg police resist disclosure…

The American Society of News Editors reversed itself Tuesday and released diversity figures on individual U.S. newsrooms, concluding that “the need for transparency outweighed a good-faith effort to improve response rates on the annual survey,” new ASNE President Mizell Stewart III, vice president for news operations at Gannett and the USA Today Network, said in…

Amid the eye-popping statements by Colin Powell revealed in hacked emails made public Tuesday was his belief, seconded this week by President Obama, that news media coverage was helping Donald J. Trump. That help was magnified when the media criticized solely on the “optics” Hillary Clinton’s statement that half of Trump’s supporters are bigoted, Ta-Nehisi…