Torn Between Two Messages
Reported by Nancy - July 8, 2004 -
FNL couldn't decide which was more important today -- Kerry/Edwards bashing or touting Tom Ridge's "terror alert" -- so they alternated between both.
The coverage of Ridge's press conference -- which Fox televised in full, including the Q&A session afterward (11:12am-11:26am EDT), was exhaustive & exhausting, complete with interviews beforehand to discuss what he might say & interviews afterward to discuss what he did say, followed by interviews to discuss the possible implications of what he had said.
The Kerry/Edwards bashing was subtle, for Fox. At 10:40am EDT, I tuned in to a report already in progress on waiting for Kerry & Edwards to arrive in Fort Lauderdale, FL. Video being shown was of some guy waving his arms to position a rolling stair next to a plane exit door. Brigitte Quinn was interviewing Tony Coelho (Dem strategist) & Vin Weber (chair of Bush/Cheney campaign), & for the next 13 minutes Fox used a split screen to display their talking head & the plane video. [comment: not-so-subtle message - Kerry is boring & unimportant]. Both Coelho & Weber said what you'd expect them to say, but when Weber didn't invoke 9/11, Quinn did it for him.
At 10:56am EDT, just in case we didn't get the message, FNL replayed a 2-minute video clip from "Fox & Friends" earlier this morning, showing Ralph Nader accusing Dems of ... well, everything. If Nader was equally critical of GOPs during that interview, FNL chose not to replay that portion.
At 11:10am EDT, Molly Henneberg filed a report about Bush meeting today with the King of Morocco, while she was waiting for that photo-op to start. Rather than show video of an empty Oval Office (or of a plane door), FNL chose to replay old video from Bush's spring 2002 meeting with the same King.
At 11:34am EDT, Steve Brown reported from the Kerry/Edwards rally in Fort Lauderdale. Brown was standing far too close to the noisy center of an airplane hangar, with loud music playing & people singing & cheering, & he had to shout to make himself heard. CNN covered this at approximately the same time, but positioned their reporter slightly further away -- the energy of the rally still came through, but so did the report. Fox also positioned its cameras poorly: in the accompanying video of Kerry moving through the crowd, shaking hands, you could barely see the top of his head. [comment: not-so-subtle message - Kerry is boring & unimportant; can you even imagine Fox filming Bush this way? I didn't think so.]
At 11:37am EDT, David Asman interviewed Senators Mary Landrieu (D-LA) & John Sununu (R-NH) about the different styles of the Kerry/Edwards & Bush/Cheney campaigns. During the first round of Q&A, while Sununu was speaking the Fox cameras were trained on him for a full head shot; while Landrieu was speaking, Fox didn't show her at all, but chose instead to run an old generic video of Bush getting off a plane & waving. For the second round of Q&A, Asman switched topics, stated that he had just seen "Fahrenheit 9/11" last night, & he wondered about the "lies" that "some people" have pointed out in the film. Again, Asman went to Sununu first & allowed him a full minute to answer, uninterrupted. When Landrieu began to respond, pointing out that no one has yet found an error of fact in the film, Asman interrupted her 3 times & finally cut her short by saying that Christopher Hitchens published an article in Slate doing precisely that.
Of course I had to check that out. Hitchens' piece -- "Unfairenheit 9/11
The lies of Michael Moore" -- is a couple of weeks old & does indeed purport to identify "lies" in the film. But if you read his article, all he does is assail the spin that Moore put on FACTS. Example: Bush is shown on a golf course, making a boilerplate response to a question on terrorism & then asking reporters to watch his drive. Hitchens' response: "Well, that's what you get if you catch the president on a golf course."
A more appropriate reference for Asman might have been the lead article in Slate today: "How Does the Saudi Relationship With the Bush Family Affect U.S. Foreign Policy?: If Clinton or Gore had been such good buddies with the Saudis, the Republicans would be screaming for their heads" -- by Rachel Bronson & Craig Unger.
