Media Morass Threatens Both Presidential Campaigns

Even the New York Times has noticed that the utterly chaotic media has made a shambles of the election cycle. Read the whole thing. Here's a blurb:

. . . one of the most frustrating challenges that Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama are facing going into the final weeks of this campaign: the ways in which the proliferation of communications channels, the fracturing of mass media and the relentless political competition to own each news cycle are combining to reorder the way voters follow campaigns and decide how to vote. It has reached a point where senior campaign aides say they are no longer sure what works, as they stumble through what has become a daily campaign fog, struggling to figure out what voters are paying attention to and, not incidentally, what they are even believing.

Add too, of course, the phenomenon of extremist-political blogs that produce smears, outright lies, and vicious attacks.