Washington Post media columnist Howard Kurtz said the media also received a black eye by anointing Clinton and Romney and failing to take notice of the eventual winners, especially Mike Huckabee:
For most of the past year, the news media treated Hillary Clinton as inevitable and Mike Huckabee as invisible.
In the wake of Thursday's Iowa caucuses, those judgments are looking rather shortsighted.
Until recent weeks, Huckabee was regarded as an asterisk, a former Arkansas governor whose entry into the presidential race didn't even warrant a mention on the "CBS Evening News." He was good for comic relief -- the wisecracking, bass-playing, weight-losing preacher man -- but not portrayed as a serious threat to win in Iowa or anyplace else. The media's chief benchmark is money, and Mitt Romney had truckloads of it and Huckabee very little.
Barack Obama, who beat Clinton in the Democratic contest, was initially hailed by anchors and pundits as a "rock star," but by the summer and fall he was depicted as a dull candidate who seemed to have little hope of catching up. Commentators openly urged him to attack the former first lady. Obama's winning margin was something of a surprise, but not as big, perhaps, as the bursting of the Hillary bubble that may have been inflated by a year's worth of press.
Time after time, the media has let down voters with its obsession with money and the horse race aspects of politics, rather than the actual substance of what candidates are saying. It would be nice to think Iowa was going to cause the media to examine themselves and change their ways, but it is highly unlikely that will happen.
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