The Media's Love Affair with Senator Barack Obama

Each week, the Project for Excellence in Journalism evaluates more than 300 political stories in newspapers, magazines and television. For the past six weeks -- from June 9 and July 13 -- Obama was a significant part (25-50 percent) of 77 percent of these stories. Sen. John McCain, on the the hand, was significant in less than half: only 48 percent.

But on Hardball Monday, Andrea Mitchell criticized the TV coverage of Obama's trip to Iraq:

Let me just say something about the message management. He didn't have reporters with him, he didn't have a press pool, he didn't do a press conference while he was on the ground in either Afghanistan or Iraq. What you're seeing is not reporters brought in. You're seeing selected pictures taken by the military, questions by the military, and what some would call fake interviews because they're not interviews from a journalist. So, there's a real press issue here. Politically, it's smart as can be. But we've not seen a presidential candidate do this in my recollection ever before.

Andrea Mitchell is the chief foreign affairs correspondent for NBC News, a position she has held since November 1994. Want to take odds on whether her closing line will make the other networks -- or mainstream press?