Politics

Jay Rosen thinks coverage of the 2004 presidential election is shaping up as an exercise in "Horse Race Now! Horse Race Tomorrow! Horse Race Forever!" In this time-dishonored tradition of political journalism, reporters use sports as a metaphor for reporting on politics, relying for insights on political insiders who have learned how to spin the "race" as a game of "inside baseball." The result: "An army of sentries encircles the game, guarding every situation from which a glimmer of fresh truth might be allowed to escape."

A Los Angeles woman who came forward during the California gubernatorial campaign to accuse Arnold Schwarzenegger of previous instances of sexual harassment has sued the former star of "True Lies" and "Conan the Barbarian," claiming that he and his campaign smeared her as a convicted felon when she made her charges.

Newt Gingrich, who has been advising the Bush Administration as a member of the Defense Policy Board, has gone public with his worries about the shortcomings of administration policy in Iraq, arguing that the administration has been putting far too much emphasis on a military solution and slighting the political element. "The real key here is not how many enemy do I kill. The real key is how many allies do I grow," he said.

"Dan Klores Communications is helping to introduce Progress Media's plans for a liberal radio network to an intensely interested, but highly skeptical press," PR Week reports. The agency has been helping shape Progress Media's communications strategy. "The network has been billed as a way of balancing the strong influence of conservative talk radio, but so far media reporters have been wondering aloud why this would be different than other less-than-successful attempts at left-of-center radio programming, such as journalist Jim Hightower's show," PR Week writes.