Sigh. I meant to write this exact post, then Kevin wrote it first. Damn you Kevin! But to jump off his comments a bit, I was just at a media panel where one of the reporters argued that issues like the flag pin, "Bittergate", Tuzla, and all the rest "mattered" because they would drive votes, and thus the media had to report on them. This is part of the problem for the media: It's a profession based on a conflict of interest. They construct the reality they report on, then recount that reality as if they were objective observers to neutral fact. That's not being glib, they're in a tough spot. They have to report on the stories that drive the campaign. But many of those stories wouldn't matter if they weren't elevated to A1 and played and replayed on cable for weeks on end. It's the fact of the media deciding a story important that makes it important in the campaign. But the media wants to run their reporting based on what will be important in the campaign. It's enough to make your head explode. The media isn't unaware of this effect, per se, but they can't really admit it, because they don't want the ethical complexities that would result from judging coverage on a subjective metric like "worthiness." Instead, they use a metric they feel more comfortable with, like "political importance." And so you have the odd spectacle of the media deciding a story like Bittergate will be politically important and then reporting on it until that becomes true. In an interesting twist, the polls in Pennsylvania haven't moved, which suggests that the media may be wrong about this one. But in general, the media justifies reporting on bullshit gaffes because those gaffes proved decisive -- or at least "well covered" -- as the campaign wore on. But it was the media who made them well covered, and who elevated them to "decisive." It's a real problem, and not one that's necessarily easy to solve.
