Where is Genuine Campaign Coverage?
Reported by Eleanor - July 8, 2004 -
In his daily coverage of the Kerry/Edwards campaign, Carl Cameron on Special Report w/Brit Hume (July 8, 6:08 p.m.ET) did his usual hatchet job on the democratic campaign instead of reporting the campaign news. Cameron made the report with pre-selected year old video and a script to go with it of Edwards making pre-war comments, while pretending to do an up-to-the minute, on the spot report on the campaign. (This is typical Fox.)
Cameron's first point was that Edwards voted for the Iraq war. Cameron stated that the Democrats complain that Bush said Iraq was an imminent threat; then he showed a video of Edwards saying that Iraq was an imminent threat as the reason he voted for the war. (Of course, Cameron failed to point out that Edwards comment was based on information he had just received from the administration that later proved to be false).
Cameron's next video showed Edwards telling MSNBC that he would go into Iraq without the UN, followed with the comment that now he says we need the UN. (Flip flop, anyone?)
With Cameron's usual "gotcha" smirk, he gave the knock-out punch with, "Edwards lack of experience and shifting policy positions prompted the democrats to say that Kerry will be the president, and make policy decisions, not Edwards. That is an ironic defense for a party that says the White House is run by Dick Cheney."
Comment: Wouldn't it be a hoot if every time Fox covered Bush on the campaign trail, instead of covering his speech of the day with ooh's and ah's as usual, they came prepared with video and past speeches to demonstrate that Bush is lying through his teeth on whatever topic he's covering today? I'll bet millions of Fox viewers would light up the switchboards with righteous indignation at such blatant anti-democratic use of the media.
They could rightfully complain that the media is being used to take away their right to a fair democratic election with unpaid trashing of their candidate parading as news every hour on the hour. Since this constant candidate bashing is actually true for the democratic candidates every hour of every day on Fox, and frequently on the other networks, why don't the democrats loudly object? Are we so used to it by now that we don't notice any more that our rights are being trampled every time we turn on any kind of media?
If the democrats win this election, it will be a miracle wrought by word of mouth and the Internet, the only media not yet owned by a few wealthy republican donors of free air time.
