We complained when the national media jumped on the minor "iCheat" flap in the Florida governor's debate that they just hadn't been paying as much attention as they should to Sunshine State races. There are a lot of interesting stories here, dammit! A three-way Senate race with a Tea Party superstar, and a neck-and-neck gubernatorial race featuring a self-funded billionaire with an, shall we say, interesting past. Well, the Pew Research Center has run the numbers on which candidates received the most mainstream media attention, and only Charlie Crist made the top ten. Uh, what?
Pew analyzed stories from January 1 to October 31, 2010. Any candidate who was a main topic of a story (meaning he or she was featured in at least 50 percent of it) was tallied.
What's interesting is the strong presence of Tea Party candidates yet the absence of Marco Rubio. The media focuses on some of the more, um, colorful Tea Party candidates, such as Christine O'Donnell and Sharron Angle, and not on someone a bit more sane and competent, such as Rubio. See, this is why Tea Baggers think the media is so biased against them.
Then again, if media outlets were focused so squarely on the more controversial, outsider, conservative candidates, you'd think they might have given a bit more ink to Rick Scott.
Whatever. Pay no attention to us here in Florida, national media. It's not like we're the fourth (soon to be third) most populous state in the union that also happens to be a classic bellwether and a swing state. It's not like anything interesting ever happens politically down here.
