Mitt Romney's Saturday announcement that he had chosen Rep. Paul Ryan as his running mate dominated the discussion on the Sunday morning political shows, generated over 15 minutes of coverage from the NBC Nightly News and ABC World News - the only two network newscasts that aired across the country last night - and is featured on the front pages of today's major print outlets. The consensus media view on both TV and print is that Ryan's selection is likely to spark a prolonged debate on his budget plan, diverting the public's attention away from the economy and thus boosting the President's reelection hopes.

Indeed, a new emphasis on the debate over the future of Medicare was in evidence on television, as well as in print and online coverage. While analysts from across the spectrum, and even President Obama himself, describe Ryan as a serious, upright politician with bold ideas likely to make the campaign more substantive than it has been, the verdict on the political implications of his plans for entitlement reform was almost uniformly negative.

Terry