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Alan Pergament: Campaign’s media stars –and flameouts
Now that Sen. Barack Obama is the president-elect, it is time to declare the winners and losers among media members who covered the historic presidential campaign.
Winners:
Katie Couric: She exposed the obvious flaws of Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin in interviews without being condescending, mean-spirited or gotcha. It will be Couric’s lasting legacy if she doesn’t grow old as the “CBS Evening News” anchor.
Stephanie Miller: The Lockport native, whose national talk show airs on WWKB radio, is the one who nicknamed Palin “Caribou Barbie” and also enlivened Larry King’s CNN show with her liberal humor. However, she could do a little more research.
Alex Castellanos: A realistic, fair-minded Republican consultant who acted more like an analyst than a cheerleader on CNN and has a great sense of humor.
David Gergen: Smart, fair and intuitive, he was consistently CNN’s best analyst.
Anderson Cooper: The newscast version of Bob Costas, he managed to weave in an army of CNN analysts and was fair to them all.
Dennis Miller: The former anchor of “Weekend Update” on “Saturday Night Live” is an entertaining conservative radio host carried locally on WECK-AM.
Jon Stewart: “The Daily Show” host, who is coming to the University at Buffalo on Nov. 15, got laughs for weeks from a wide variety of political figures ranging from conservative columnist Bill Kristol of Fox News to Obama.
Stephen Colbert: His best work was an interview with the head of the Socialist Party who disputed McCain’s claim that Obama was a socialist. A close second was an interview with Kathleen Parker, the conservative columnist who bravely said the choice of Palin was a deal breaker.
Pat Buchanan: It wasn’t always easy defending the missteps of the McCain campaign, but he managed to find ways on MSNBC to do it without looking silly.
George Stephanapoulos: The former Clinton aide, who is an ABC analyst and Sunday talk show host, is the real heir to the late Tim Russert.
Rachel Maddow: The newest MSNBC host has a biting, liberal sense-of-humor, but she allows people who disagree with her politics to have their say.
John King: Another strong, fair member of the CNN team whose dissection of where the vote was coming in Virginia, Indiana and Florida made it look early like an Obama night.
Roland Martin: One of CNN’s pro-Obama analysts, the African- American movingly described what Obama’s victory meant Tuesday to young members of his family and often gave a much-needed point of view.
Tina Fey: Her “Saturday Night Live” appearances as Palin may have been as important to the race as Couric’s interview. And they actually helped get viewers in Buffalo to see if they liked her NBC comedy, “30 Rock” last week. (Tonight, Oprah guest stars on the show).
“Saturday Night Live”: By having Palin and McCain appear in the last three weeks, it managed to look objective while exploiting them for ratings.
John Oliver: The hysterically funny interview done by the British “Daily Show” star with dumb supporters of McCain and Obama made one fear for America no matter who won.
Fox News: It gets four years to bash Obama for ratings.
Bob Schieffer: The best moderator of all the debates.
Losers:
Larry King: He looked too old to ask questions of presidential nominees and too lazy to ask good follow-up questions.
Michele Bachmann: The smiling Minnesota Republican — who was a frequent King guest — choked on her own attempt to be this century’s Joe McCarthy and barely survived re-election.
Sean Hannity: His softball interview with Palin was a joke, as were his desperate nightly attempts to demonize Obama.
Keith Olbermann: MSNBC rightly took away his anchoring duties because his liberal anti-McCain agenda made it impossible to take him seriously as an objective analyst.
Sandy Beach and Tom Bauerle: Do the WBEN radio boys really believe all the nasty, irresponsible nonsense they spewed about Obama during the campaign’s final days, or are they just misrepresenting his stands for ratings? Their shows can be unintentionally funny at times. But Beach’s election eve claim that Obama was trumpeting a Gestapo-like civilian security force and that anybody who voted for him was a fool wasn’t funny. It was reprehensible.
Al Franken: This liberal radio host isn’t the “SNL” figure most deserving to be a senator. After Franken’s apparent razor-thin defeat in Minnesota, that role should go to Alec Baldwin.
Bay Buchanan: She makes her brother look like a Democrat. She rarely had a realistic thought right down to election eve on CNN when she halfheartedly predicted a McCain victory.
Tom Brokaw: His debate performance was dreadful and he was pretty dull as the host of “Meet the Press.”
Elisabeth Hasselbeck: Her conservative point of view can be an asset on ABC’s “The View,” but joining Palin on the campaign trail was a bad career move. And now she’s joined Palin as an easy “Saturday Night Live” target.
Fox News: Yes, it's on both lists. Its morning anchors and prime-time hosts were so pro-McCain that they should have worn McCain-Palin campaign buttons.
MSNBC: Its prime-time hosts were so pro-Obama that its anchors should have worn Obama-Biden campaign buttons. What a sad state much of the left and right wings of cable news have become.
