It is clear that the conservatives' attacks on the press for having a liberal bias are once again having the desired effect. And once again they're working to Reagan's -- and the Republicans' -- benefit. The media's blissful coverage this week "serves a strategic function," Parry says. "When the press is under attack for being liberal, the logical response is to prove you're not." If ever there's been a time when the press handed the reins over to the Republican sensibility, it was this week.

The hand-in-glove relationship between Republicans and the media has produced some strange exchanges, such as CNN's Wolf Blitzer asking Richard Perle, who served as Reagan's assistant secretary of defense, how much of a "hands-on commander in chief" Reagan was. Perle, reading his talking points, assured viewers that, contrary to what all serious biographers have written about Reagan, "he was very much hands-on." (It is telling about the range of perspective offered on television this week that neocon Perle followed neocon Paul Wolfowitz, Bush's deputy secretary of defense, as Blitzer's guest.)

Around-the-clock coverage like this week's hasn't been seen since the start of the Iraq War. According to a search of the Nexis database, by the end of day 3 of the Reagan remembrance, CNN had aired approximately 95 separate segments on the former president. That number is likely to approach 150 by the time Reagan is buried in California Friday night. Meanwhile, the normally space-conscious USA Today devoted 37 articles, columns and letters -- along with 40 photos and graphics -- to Reagan in its Monday edition alone.

"I'm struck by [the length of] this," Johnson says. "From the time Jack Kennedy took a bullet in the head [on Nov. 22, 1963] until he was buried at Arlington Cemetery -- that was four days of TV coverage. This is a whole week." President Eisenhower died on March 28, 1969, and his official Washington ceremony was complete three days later.

CNN's Paula Zahn likened the "public expressions of personal grief" taking place this week with the expressions of grief that followed the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. However, while 9/11 led to a national trauma, television producers have had a hard time finding ordinary Americans outside Simi Valley, Calif., spontaneously choking up about the elderly Reagan's long-expected death.

"Even my own paper [the Post] had four Reagan stories on the front page" on Monday, Pincus says. "It is the new print imitation of wall-to-wall TV coverage. Even if you run out of things to say, it doesn't matter."

Of course, people anticipated that when Reagan died there would be an avalanche of press coverage. As Johnson observes, "Reagan was a consequential figure in our political life. He was a symbol of the conservative movement that has changed our lives for the last two generations." But, he adds, "that means there's all the more obligation for the press to sort it out and not to just present deification, but to examine his strengths and weaknesses."

Early in the week some TV anchors went out of their way to say they would do just that. CNN's Aaron Brown assured viewers, "Our coverage should reflect all of that, the good days and the bad. Iran-Contra is a chapter, as are the tax cuts. Beirut is as much a part of the story as Berlin. It is a line we will walk carefully and respectfully over the next week."

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