From WNYC in New York, this is on the media. I'm Brooke Gladstone. And I'm Bob Garfield.

OMG, time so flies. As of Friday, only 627 days remain until the 2020 presidential election,

which means reporters, editors, anchors, and pundits are running out of time to speculate,

trivialized, and marginalized, to be baited by irrelevancies, and to otherwise miss the forest

for the cliques.

But they've already got a head start with at least a half dozen women in the running for

the Democratic nomination.

The media ether already abounds

with nonsensical tropes.

Bernie's everything Warren is, but better.

He's more energizing, more unifying, certainly more authentic.

Jill LeBrand is very politically ambitious.

That's fine.

She's without a doubt going to run for president.

The question really is not can a female win for president, but can a female beat Trump?

Scholars have long since established measurable biases and double standards in the perception of women holding and seeking power.

But now, in the Me Too age and in the wake of the midterm elections,

surge of women into the House of Representatives,

the news media have a chance to choose new habits over old ones.

And so we bring you this Breaking News Consumer's Handbook,

Gender and Politics Edition.

First on the list, the flawed and fraught metric of likability.

...