The Breakfast Meeting: Obama the Aggressor at Debate, and Clark Kent Quits Daily Planet

President Obama and Mitt Romney had their third and final debate Monday night, focused on foreign affairs, David E. Sanger reports in The Times, noting that Mr. Romney “avoided the more bellicose tone he often struck during the Republican primaries.” That made for a debate with broad agreement on policies between the two, though Mr. Obama sought to highlight differences and “cast Mr. Romney as a man unwilling to recognize how perceptions of American strength have changed,” Mr. Sanger wrote. The most quoted comment of the night â€" from Mr. Obama â€" was along those lines. When Mr. Romney complained that the Navy was the smallest it had been since World War I, Mr. Obama dismissed the criticism, noting that ships were much bigger and more capable than in the past, adding: “Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets.”

• Whether because it was the third one, or because the topic was more remote from Americans' everyday lives, the debate generated les s public enthusiasm, Brian Stelter writes. (It was also up against “Monday Night Football” and a baseball playoff game.) One broad gauge involved Twitter: posts during the third debate fell to 6.5 million messages (particularly involving bayonets) from 10 million during the Oct. 3 debate and 7.2 million during the one last Tuesday.
• In her take on the debate, Alessandra Stanley viewed Mr. Romney as on the defensive, “particularly because he at times stuttered and sputtered in his haste to make his points.” It was a role reversal, she writes: “Usually, it is Mr. Obama who seems professorial and long-winded. There were long moments when Mr. Romney made the president sound succinct and sharp-edged.”

The new head of the BBC, George Entwistle, defended the institution on Tuesday before a committee of Parliament investigating a growing sex abuse scandal involving Jimmy Savile, a TV and radio personality who died last year, Alan Cowell reports. The co mmittee is also examining why the BBC canceled an investigation into Mr. Savile by one of its own shows. Mr. Entwistle, who became director general in September, conceded that the BBC's response had “taken longer to do things than in a perfect world I would have liked, but I think if you looked at what we have achieved since the scale of the crisis became clear, I think you see we have done much of what we should have done and done it in the right order with proper respect paid to the right authorities.” Mr. Cowell writes:

Asked whether sexual abuse was endemic at the BBC, as some victims have suggested, Mr. Entwistle said he did “not have enough of a picture to know it was endemic.” But he went on: “There's no question that what Jimmy Savile did and the way the BBC behaved - the culture and practices of the BBC seemed to allow Jimmy Savile to do what he did - will raise questions of trust for us and reputation for us.”

Add Ad obe to the list of companies that are using frank language (or an easily recognized abbreviation of frank language) in advertising to try to speak more naturally to their audience, Stuart Elliott writes. The Adobe campaign itself is intended to show the usefulness of social media in marketing.

A new service called Detour, which is along the lines of Kickstarter, is attempting to encourage musical acts to travel more widely across the world, Ben Sisario writes. Rather than gamble that there is an audience in Latin America waiting for an act like the songwriter Andrew Bird, the service allows fans in a city to buy tickets in advance. As is true for Kickstarter projects, the payments only go through if there is enough interest to support a concert.

Online commentators saw deep meaning in the news in Superman issue 13, which goes on sale on Monday, that Clark Kent quits his job at The Daily Planet. USA Today notes that it had been a long run for mild-mannered Clark a s an ink-stained wretch â€" dating back to the Superman issues in 1940, though The Planet has since become part of Galaxy Broadcasting. The new Superman writer, Scott Lobdell, tells USA Today:

This is really what happens when a 27-year-old guy is behind a desk and he has to take instruction from a larger conglomerate with concerns that aren't really his own. Superman is arguably the most powerful person on the planet, but how long can he sit at his desk with someone breathing down his neck and treating him like the least important person in the world?

Noam Cohen edits and writes for the Media Decoder blog. Follow @noamcohen on Twitter.