BOB GARFIELD: Well, the fact is no matter how campaigns spin the truth, someone has to be there to interpret it, chiefly the weary gaggle of reporters known as the "boys in the bus." This election year the "boys on the bus" are just as likely to be "girls," and while they still have to endure the discomfort and mind-numbing repetition of the campaign trail, they do have some new tools available to them. The television networks have equipped their political producers with small digital video cameras and dedicated a reporter to each campaign full time. MSNBC has even dubbed their field producers "campaign embeds." New Hampshire Public Radio's Raquel Maria Dillon followed some embeds in the field. [CLIP FROM CAMPAIGN TRAIL PLAYS]

JOHN KERRY: ...aspirations -- we're going to stand up--

RAQUEL MARIA DILLON: John Kerry must really like chili. He's serving it again at this campaign stop at a middle school cafeteria in Keene.

JOHN KERRY: --for civil liberties and civil rights, the right to choose; for an attorney general whose name is not John Ashcroft...

RAQUEL MARIA DILLON: MSNBC's Becky Diamond has heard Kerry's stump speech and tasted his chili many times before.

BECKY DIAMOND: I'm a producer-reporter-shooter-and-editor, so I can be alone in the field, and I can cover a day in the life of John Kerry's campaign which is cheaper for NBC News, cause they don't have to pay four people, and I get more, more access. I get an inside look, an off-the-beaten-path look.

RAQUEL MARIA DILLON:Diamond is one of nine field producers that MSNBC calls "campaign embeds." She's been following the Kerry campaign since the Massachusetts senator formally announced his presidential candidacy in early September. She says in the past few months she has captured some priceless moments on digital video.

BECKY DIAMOND: 24 hour news is an animal that must be fed, and the DV camera helps feed that animal quickly. I transmit after many events sound bites and footage that's used that day on air. I'm fulfilling what that machine needs.

RAQUEL MARIA DILLON:Smaller, cheaper digital video cameras allow field producers to shoot, edit and upload tape from the field -- anywhere they can find high speed internet access. Some of that footage ends up on the nightly news, some on the networks' websites. Dispatches from NBC's campaign embeds feed First Read, the network's daily email newsletter read by party insiders and political junkies around the country. That's what you can do when there's a staffer with a camera on the campaign bus all the time. Mark Lukaschewitz is NBC's executive producer for 2004 election coverage.

MARK LUKASCHEWITZ: There is a certain level of access you get once in a while, just by being around. Every one of our embeds has ridden in the back seat of the car when the candidate's in the front seat. Those are little moments that are telling, that help you understand the candidate, that impact our coverage in all sorts of ways.

RAQUEL MARIA DILLON:From the networks' point of view, any access, no matter how controlled, is good access. Their reporters get to know the campaign staffers and vice versa. ABC has assigned nine, and CBS has assigned six digital video cameras to the campaigns, but they reject the term "campaign embed" as an NBC marketing ploy. ABC and CBS call them "off-air reporters." Either way, it's a tough assignment. NBC's Becky Diamond.

BECKY DIAMOND: The travel is hard, frankly. It's really hard. I'm exhausted. I work 18 hours a day, 6 or 7 days a week, constantly on the road. I'm sick.

RAQUEL MARIA DILLON:And there's another challenge. It's hard to maintain journalistic perspective when the campaign staffers are more like roommates than sources.

BECKY DIAMOND: It's not even that you identify with the candidate. I mean I was embedded in the pr--in Iraqi - Operation Iraqi Freedom - it was the same thing. You're in a bubble, and you have to remind yourself to get out of that bubble and remind yourself - make calls on both sides. You know, just because John Kerry says poll numbers mean nothing doesn't mean that poll numbers don't mean anything. You gotta pick up the phone and call Zogby. Your coverage could tend to be more positive, and you have to keep a check on it.

RAQUEL MARIA DILLON:Alexandra Pelosi spent months inside the Bush presidential campaign bubble in 2000 as a field producer for NBC. The final product was the HBO documentary Journeys with George, which she shot with a hand-held video camera in her off-hours.

ALEXANDRA PELOSI: All the campaign staffers know that these cameras are in their candidates' face all the time, so they've been trained. They're all made for television now. So any moments that you get that may be candid are made for television.

JOHN MILNE: TV always changes everything.

RAQUEL MARIA DILLON: John Milne has been covering the presidential primaries since 1972 for wire services and the Boston Globe. He says the effort to capture intimate moments on video might actually put distance between reporters and candidates. Cameras rolling all the time make it harder for reporters to understand the person behind the politician, and by extension, harder for voters to size up the candidate.

JOHN MILNE: Primary voters are looking for personal characteristics. I can trust this candidate. I can believe this candidate. And that's the one place where a sense of personal experience can inform the voters.

RAQUEL MARIA DILLON:Oh, yeah! The voters. They're the ones who are supposed to benefit from all the network access to the campaigns that digital video makes possible. But University of New Hampshire communications professor James Farrell says they are not well-served by all this 24/7 coverage.

JAMES FARRELL: It's almost a kind of variation on the reality TV extended to coverage of political campaigns.

RAQUEL MARIA DILLON: Farrell says the role of the campaign embed is to collect images and campaign gossip rather than to explain and differentiate the candidate's policy proposals.

JAMES FARRELL: You know the reporter isn't going to ask the kind of penetrating question that might put the candidate on the spot or create a dilemma that the candidate can't respond to effectively.

RAQUEL MARIA DILLON:Or raise questions that might get the so-called embed booted off the campaign bus. Farrell says if the networks were really interested in understanding how a campaign is run, they'd find a way to get hold of internal polls and focus groups. That, Farrell says, is what determines how candidates choose and frame issues to appeal to various demographics. It's pictures that determine what television covers and how, so what you're more likely to see this campaign season is pictures of Wesley Clark doing pushups, of Joe Lieberman and his wife throwing a New Year's Day party in their Manchester apartment, and of John Kerry serving up campaign chili.

JOHN KERRY: I serve a mean bowl of chili. Who made this chili?

RAQUEL MARIA DILLON: What it comes down to is good tape. For On the Media, I'm Raquel Maria Dillon in Concord, New Hampshire.

JOHN KERRY: Only mild chili, so... all right - all right we're going for it right here.

BOB GARFIELD: Coming up, keeping secrets in the courtroom and in the White House, and to arm or not to arm -- that is the question for journalists in Iraq. This is On the Media, from NPR.

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