Everyone expected the Pennsylvania Democratic primary to be a tough contest, and it turned out to be grueling. Arguably, though, the candidates took less of a beating this time around than the high-profile journalists who covered them or moderated their debates.

From the shockingly superficial questions asked by ABC moderators Charles Gibson and George Stephanopolous to Chris Matthews' curious Little Richard-like utterances about the candidates (Obama sends a thrill up his leg, for example), criticism of the press' performance is widespread.

Here's former reporter Denise Clay, who live-blogged tonight's vote from Temple University:

The job of journalists, or at least how it was always taught to me, is to go out, get the news, present it, and allow the public to decidewhat it believes or doesn't believe.

Instead of journalists doing that, they have instead been deciding who the front runner is, who should step out of the race, whether or not a candidate should be
harshly questioned for the general election, and what non-issues to
harp on.

The Project for Excellence in Journalism's weekly campaign coverage noted that for many observers, Gibson and Stephanopoulos' controversial performance at the April 16 debate:

marked the clearest example of the media being injected
into the middle of the campaign since the much-criticized Feb. 21 New
York Times story suggesting an improper relationship between John
McCain and a female lobbyist.

Commenters at TalkLeft were broadly critical of tonights commentators on CNN and elsewhere. There were lots of versions of this comment from Turkana: "They're almost uniformly terrible. I miss [retired CNN anchor] bernie shaw." [sic]

At Firedoglake, David Neiwert thinks voters are smarter than the high-profile reporters who focused so much attention on Obama's observation that some voters choose candidates based on issues such as gay marriage and gun control because they are "bitter" about their economic situation. Noting a poll that showed that the controversy had little effect on voters' choice of candidate, Niewert concluded:

Anymore, you can pretty much figure that the people making these news
judgments and setting daily news budgets built around permutations of
the consensus "big stories" are working from faulty assumptions.
They've been getting it wrong for the past ten years, and longer, after
all.

What's your vote on the press' performance of this primary, or in general?