May 30, 2007
How Important Is Television News? IV Posted by John Steele Gordon at 11:15 AM EST I thank Mr. Zeitz for the information he provided, but it does not quite answer my question. What I was hoping for was “a comparison of the various news and broadcast channels’ signature evening news programs regarding Iraq coverage and fluff coverage.” (Italics added.) By signature evening news programs I meant such programs as NBC Nightly News and The Fox Report. I’m sure CNN and MSNBC have equivalent programs. In other words, straight news. Most of the evening on Fox is devoted to The O’Reilly Factor, Hannity and Colmes, and On the Record with Greta Van Susteren, which are basically opinion shows. And the last in particular seems devoted to whatever the Fox News Channel’s fluff obsession of the week happens to be rather than what Mr. Zeitz and I would consider news. Of course, Fox News Channel is in the TV business first, and their ratings via-à-vis the other news channels would seem to justify their programming, even if I have zero interest in watching it and therefore don’t. I would count Special Report with Britt Hume as a “signature evening news program,” as Hume is the Washington managing editor at Fox and the program is entirely devoted to news, albeit from a Washington perspective. In other words, if the story does not have national political implications, it will get fairly short shrift. The last 20 minutes of the program is a discussion, led by Hume, by the “Fox All Stars,” on the biggest news items of the day, news items of the Zeitz-Gordon variety. These all stars are people like Fred Barnes (The Weekly Standard), Mort Kondracke (Roll Call) and Mara Liasson (NPR), to name the most frequent ones. In other words, fair and balanced. Again, I guess that if these particular types of shows are compared, each of the various network and cable news channels will be seen to have devoted roughly equal percentages of time to Iraq and roughly equal percentages to Anna Nicole Smith. Mr. Zeitz writes, “Fox also stood out for its lack of coverage on the firings of the U.S. attorneys, compared with the other channels. The story, which gained real momentum in mid March, consumed a mere 2% of Fox’s total airtime. CNN devoted twice that percent (4%) and MSNBC four times (8%).” This would seem to prove my case of unconscious liberal bias at CNN and MSNBC, and I thank Mr. Zeitz for it. First, the story was fully covered on Special Report because it obsessed Washington and, I’m sure, The Fox Report. Perhaps the reason Fox did not cover it much outside of its straight news programs is that this is the Oakland, California, of political stories: There’s no there there. Despite the very best efforts of Democratic politicians and their water bearers in the media, no one has been able to come up with a scintilla of evidence that anything illegal took place, a hopelessly dysfunctional public relations operation at the Department of Justice not being against the law. The New York Times was even forced to posit a totally bogus distinction between firing every United States attorney for political reasons at the beginning of a Presidency, which Bill Clinton did, and firing 10 attorneys for political reasons in the middle of a Presidency, which George Bush did. Had George Bush been a Democrat, does anyone think that The New York Times et al. would have given a damn about this story?
Mr. Zeitz writes, “One last note. Mr. Gordon suggests that ‘maybe the reason CNN and MSNBC have so much Iraq news is that they are only too delighted to report the bad news,’ presumably because of their, as he put it, ‘unconscious liberal bias.’ There is a pernicious logic to this statement that I hope Mr. Gordon did not intend—to wit, that liberals delight in America’s military troubles in Iraq.” I think they delight in George Bush’s troubles in Iraq and often don’t think through the situation enough to comprehend the implications for the country.
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