McCain and the Media

Mark Kleiman has a provocative post question the conventional wisdom about why John McCain gets such good press coverage. McCain, Kleiman points out, is a longtime member of the Senate Commerce Committee which has jurisdiction over media issues, chaired the Senate Commerce Committee during the bulk of the 1990s wave of media consolidation, and has always been sure to steer the campaign finance reform agenda in media-friendly ways rather than take up causes like free airtime.

Basically, McCain getting good coverage from the corporate media is in part something just along the lines of James Inhof being well-liked by the energy industry. If Exxon-Mobile owned a television network, he'd be a superstar.