Reviewing the Pennsylvania Primary Coverage…

CJR Daily has a pair of articles today looking at last night’s primary coverage. The first is from Zachary Roth and covers CNN and MSNBC (but skips FNC. Why?)…

So, where are we after the epic seven-week-long, make-or-break campaign for Pennsylvania? About the same place we were before it. In the end, Clinton’s ten-point win was about in line with, or slightly exceeded, expectations. The delegate math looks little better for her than it did yesterday, but she’ll continue her unlikely effort to wrest the nomination from Obama by convincing the superdelegates that he is unelectable. In other words, last night changed very little.

Not that you’d know that from watching CNN or MSNBC, of course, where the usual election-night suspects discussed every possible angle and implication of the Pennsylvania results, ad nauseam. Would this win give her new momentum to take her fight to the convention? What’s his problem with white working-class voters (now routinely short-handed, by Chris Matthews among others, as white working voters, as if those with college degrees don’t work)? Does this make it more likely they’ll run on the same ticket? Why can’t he close the deal? And on and on.

The second is from Megan Garber and zeroes in on MSNBC alone…

Six hours is a lot of airtime to fill. Especially when, as was the case for the majority of last night’s prime-time cable coverage of the Pennsylvania primary, and as was lamented again and again by those leading that coverage: “We don’t know anything yet.” (“Well, okay, we know Clinton won…but we don’t know by how much! And since it’s all about the margins…we don’t know anything yet!”)

But the good men of MSNBC (yep, the good men—with the exception of Token Lady Rachel Maddow and the occasional chime-in from Andrea Mitchell, the network’s punditry was Cub Scout Meeting-esque) filled the air with lightning bolts of wit. And rain showers of sagacity. And, at times, zephyrs of Pure Poetry. (Witness Chris Matthews, Bard of the Ballot Brawl, criticizing Obama for being too complacent about attacks on him: he’s “too debonair, too Fred Astaire, too Kumbaya.”) Which is not, necessarily, to criticize: the MSNBC Mens’ Metaphor-titude added some whimsy to last night’s otherwise-somewhat-soporific coverage. So impressed were we, in fact, that we began writing down the metaphors so that you, too, might be similarly transported by the imagery. Buckle your seatbelts, and hold onto your hat—or, as Joe Scarborough might call it, your “Indian Bonnet”—it’s metaphor time!