Fox News really is a spin-free zone right now
News Corporation and its Fox TV network have taken some flack for electing not to broadcast President Obama’s joint address to Congress this evening. And when you consider the choice words that Rupert Murdoch’s son James Murdoch has had for BBC, calling on it to back off in Britain’s media environment, you start to wonder if News Corp. and Fox believe they own the airwaves. They don’t: in our country, they have a license that allows them to broadcast on frequencies that belong to all of us, the American people.
But when Robert Gibbs, the White House Press Secretary, got on Fox News this morning and took a dig at the network for showing reality TV instead of President Obama’s speech, Fox and Friends genius Steve Doocy said that the address would be broadcast on Fox News.
And so now I’m looking at Fox News Channel versus CNN. And on Shepard Smith’s program in the past half hour, the focus has not been health care reform, although it’s been a major story. Six minutes to go and Shep is talking about the anniversary of the Attica prison riot, and earlier he was talking about the astronauts. Health care is just another story on a busy day. “And now you know the news,” he says, before signing off.
CNN, on the other hand has a counter, counting down the seconds until Obama takes the stage, and non-stop spin and commentary from its on-air talent and pundits.
I have a knee-jerk reaction in which I say: wow, Fox News is so partisan that its burying the lede, and refusing to focus on the health care speech which is clearly THE story of the moment.
On the other hand…maybe there’s a smart insight at work here. Fox News is saying, “nope, there are other things going on today – there will be plenty of time to chew over the speech after it’s given, but for the moment, let’s talk about everything else that’s happening today in the news.”
Sometimes, getting the messaging right is the downfall of non-stop cable news. It seems like they’d rather just produce noise, gas, and frequently, garbage. There’s nothing new that they’re saying in advance of an event like this, and so we’re not really watching news – we’re watching a circus in which there’s a non-stop din of activity that you can’t turn your eyes or ears away from, even though you don’t really know what’s going on.
And in that sense, at least Fox News decided to not give us non-stop talking heads in the hour leading up to the president’s speech. I’m surprised by how refreshing I find that.
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[...] must be making the suits at Fox TV feel happy right now – instead of waiting for the president’s Cabinet to sashay its way [...]
I’d have to completely disagree. Where the President of the United States chooses to address a joint session of congress on an issue that has helped to define the legacy of past Presidents – where fox news is so obviously partisan on the issue – shows to me a lack of journalistic integrity that, although expected, is insulting. That they would choose to air “so you think you can dance” and “king of the hill” instead of a presidential address and then offer commentary that, let’s be honest, one cannot even expect to be objective, looks a little like the network was afraid of President’s charisma affecting it’s viewership. It makes it much easier to “slant” the speech, when your viewership hasn’t actually seen it in it’s entirety. I’m not saying MSNBC isn’t slanted in the other direction, but at least they trust in the intelligence of their viewership enough to air the speech in it’s entirety.
I hope that Fox opts out of airing the rebuttal tonight the same way they opted out of showing the speech.
I think you missed my point. Fox TV didn’t broadcast the speech, or the rebuttal, a fact of which I’m critical. Fox News showed both. But while the other networks were all spin all the time, flappy lips saying nothing, Fox News spent the hour before the speech mostly reporting the news of the day, not focused on health care reform. From 8 PM onward, Fox News was all health care all the time. I just liked that the hour beforehand, their cable news network didn’t engage in the usual spin-filled histrionics that were found on all of the other networks, sound and fury signifying nothing, etc.
The way i see it… two wrongs don’t make a right… but three rights make a left.