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

This week saw the first presidential debate and the ensuing debate over who won the first

presidential debate, which, strictly speaking, is unanswerable. There is no panel of judges

scoring on a point system.

What isn't unanswerable is who the media say won the debate.

And that one's easy.

Factoring out a few outlier votes, Hillary Clinton trounced Donald Trump.

Point by point she hit him on personal matters to get him to react.

And in every case, he reacted.

For example, mentioning someone like Rosie O'Donnell in a presidential debate, never a good thing.

If there were an algorithm to determine who won, it might be something like number of memorable pre-packaged zingers.

I call it trumped up, trickle down, because that's exactly what it would be.

Minus volume of bodily function sounds, divided by moments of becoming unhinged along Captain Quig lines.

Everybody refuses to call Sean Hannity.

I had numerous conversations with Sean Hannity at Fox,

and Sean Hannity said, and he called me the other day,

and I spoke to him about it.

How the electorate processes 90 minutes of back and forth

is always a mystery.

Even the dial groups brought in by the cable channels are recording reactions

to moments, not overall perceptions. And for the media, those moments are the commodity.

I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience.

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