Meltdown Mode on FNL
Reported by Nancy - October 23, 2004 -
FNL on weekends is essentially the same as FNL on weekdays -- possibly even less "fair & balanced", especially when they're in meltdown mode, as they are today (10/23).
At 3:00pm (EDT), Rick Folbaum led off the hour by highlighting some of the stories they'll be reporting on: 1) Gore is campaigning for Kerry -- is that a good thing or a bad thing? 2) men & politics -- one of their "you won't believe this" teasers; & 3) baseball.
At 3:01pm (EDT), "Campaign Carl" Cameron [comment: does Fox think he's been rehabilitated?] reported from Miami about the Kerry campaign. Of course the Kerry campaign is still in the Southwest & won't arrive in Florida until later, so most of this segment was Cameron standing in front of a palm tree [comment: by FNL standards that's good -- they don't have to show current footage of hordes of voters cheering enthusiastically for Kerry]. Cameron said that Kerry is asking voters to rely on hope, not fear. He then claimed that Kerry is using "hotter rhetoric" & to illustrate played an audio/video clip of Kerry telling a crowd to base their votes on hope, not fear [comment: wow, that's HOT RHETORIC] -- cutting back quickly to avoid hearing too many cheers from the crowd.
At 3:02pm (EDT), Paige Hopkins noted that Bush & Kerry are very busy today -- then immediately corrected herself to emphasize that *Bush* is "very busy" today [comment: is this the FNL equivalent of "hard work"?] -- to introduce a report by Mike Emanuel. Emanuel, unlike Cameron, is actually *with* the Bush campaign, & there was plenty of footage to illustrate that. Emanuel noted that Bush is accusing Kerry of "political amnesia" & said that Bush's speech today highlighted 5 areas. To illustrate, he showed a long audio/video clip of Bush telling a crowd he's a compassionate conservative -- pause while crowd cheers -- & he's got a record of results -- pause while crowd cheers. Bush then goes on to list the 5 areas he wants voters to think about [comment: in case you care: family security, family budget, quality of life, retirement, bedrock values]. Crowd cheers after each point. Back to Emanuel, who repeated that Bush is accusing Kerry of "political amnesia" & showed yet another audio/video clip of Bush, from later in the same speech, with Bush saying that Kerry has "political amnesia".
General comment: so much for "fair & balanced". One minute for an inaccurate report on the Kerry campaign -- from a reporter known to be hostile to Kerry -- with a 20-second clip of Kerry speaking, vs 3 minutes for an extended report on the Bush campaign, with approximately 2 minutes of Bush speaking to a cheering crowd. They are definitely panicked about this election.
