On this morning's Reliable Sources, Howard Kurtz took up the issues raised in an article on the Politico over a week ago, titled, "Story behind the story: The Clinton myth." The passage in question dealt with how the media had allowed the race to be perceived, and the piece's authors, Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen (ironically, not immune to the criticism they level here) mused:
Journalists have become partners with the Clinton campaign in pretending that the contest is closer than it really is. Most coverage breathlessly portrays the race as a down-to-the-wire sprint between two well-matched candidates, one only slightly better situated than the other to win in August at the national convention in Denver.
It wasn't an argument that Kurtz was prepared to accept lightly, asking, "Why would journalists, who love predicting how these things are going to turn out, perpetuate a fantasy?" Politico's Harris answered with what is accepted conventional wisdom - the media loves the back and forth of the horses on the track: "We love the race."
The Post's Anne Kornblut, however, suggested that the media was just as susceptible to false perceptions as the public, and included a revealing irony:
ANNE KORNBLUT: What I think is so interesting about this dynamic is that the Clinton campaign has virtually no friends in the media at this point. They've managed to alienate most of the press corps, and yet the press corps has written about it as being a real race all the time. I think once that story ran, we saw a lot of people following it up with agreements. There wasn't a whole lot of counterintuitive thinking after the story ran, saying, "No, actually, it really is a close race."
KURTZ: According to that piece -- you travel with the Clinton campaign week after week. According to that piece, you're either delusional about it being a close race or trying to fool the rest of us.
KORNBLUT: Well, we're delusional after traveling so much all the time. When you spend enough time around Senator Clinton and the campaign, and you see the supporters that she has out on the road, it's easy to believe that there is a real race. It doesn't feel on the road like a dying campaign usually does. But mathematically, there was -- there is a real point, that it's almost going to be impossible for her to catch up.
[WATCH.]