There might be a residual sense in the minds of some media players that political coverage plays a “Fourth Estate” role. But the reality is that the excesses of the media now extend to brazen partisanship and a desire to be active political players. That this desire should be completely out of alignment with public opinion should come as no news to News. And it’s right and appropriate that there be accountability for its pathologies when they’re particularly prominent. If you live by the sword, and all that…

In other news: John Hartigan responds, and takes a swipe at new media for good measure.

As practising political pragmatists, the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister both did something counter-intuitive this week. They openly and deliberately criticised News Limited.

To outsiders watching the daily cut and thrust of politics, these may seem innocuous acts. But inside the political tent there has been an unstated but closely observed rule for decades that publicly poking a stick inside the cage of the country’s biggest media gorilla is not a career-enhancing move, given News Limited’s long-standing predilection to deploy its newspapers to campaign personally and vindictively against anyone on its enemies list.

Yesterday, the PM twice attacked The Courier-Mail in an ABC Brisbane radio interview (with the wife of the editor of that newspaper, as it happens), and this morning on ABC Radio National the Deputy PM explicitly criticised News Limited for its journalism in covering the Utegate matter.

These are not uncalculating politicians. By poking a stick inside this particular cage they are making a meaningful statement about media power: how it is evolving and diffusing; how the spectre of Murdoch no longer acts as a curb on politicians doing the right thing; how new media is recalibrating the unhealthy influence of the old media establishment; and how political leaders now feel confident enough to believe that the machinations of one newspaper empire can no longer unseat governments, destroy careers or turn political tides.

Kevin 1, Rupert 0.

We seem to be getting a lot of 503 errors, which must mean either increased traffic on our server or the intertubes staggering under the weight of US election traffic generally.

But here’s a widget from MSNBC which should enable anyone checking in here to get a sense of the latest results. You can mouse over each state to get the latest count:

Other places to follow the count – Crikey has both Possum and The Poll Bludger liveblogging. At The Guardian, Anna Pickard is liveblogging the election coverage on tv (and Fox might get interesting!) while Oliver Burkman liveblogs the count. William Edelstein comments on the appalling voting process. There’s also liveblogging at Feministing, Crooks & Liars and much closer to home at Hoyden About Town.

The invaluable FiveThirtyEight.com has a post by post liveblog, and updated results graphically illustrated on the sidebar.

Lindsay Beyerstein at Majikthise has a twitter map of the US for your edification.

Update: I think scatterplot is right. Obama has won this thing.

Update: New post on the policy implications of Obama’s victory.