-Caveat Lector-
<http://opinionjournal.com/diary/?id=85000566>
JOHN FUND'S POLITICAL DIARY
Out-Foxing the Experts
Asking everyone tough questions doesn't make a network conservative.
Friday, February 9, 2001 12:01 a.m. EST
Cable news now is a three-ring circus, with CNN, Fox News Channel
and MSNBC all jostling for an advantage. The latest news is that
during the past two months Fox's ratings have risen to the point
that in the 45 million homes that receive all three networks, Fox
is No. 1.
This intense ratings war means that folks at every network snipe
at their competitors so that it's often hard to sort fact from
spin. I've defended CNN against charges it was the Clinton News
Network, although insiders there admit the network is now less
biased since it let Rick Kaplan (a friend of Bill) go as
president last summer. I've dismissed complaints that MSNBC is
putting celebrity profiles and crime stories in its prime-time
hours. Why let the vast film archives of NBC go to waste, and who
says each network has to have the same type of programming during
slow news cycles?
Recent increases in ratings for Fox News have rekindled old
allegations that the network is nothing more than a right-wing
propaganda hobbyhorse run by Rupert Murdoch. Alan Dershowitz, the
liberal Harvard Law professor, refuses to be interviewed by Fox
News. The Village Voice claims that Fox employs conservative
"extreme rhetoricians" such as Dick Morris and me. (Until
recently, I was a Fox News political analyst.) Funny, during the
last Fox show on which I appeared with Mr. Morris, he criticized
me for attacking Bill Clinton's policy record. He argued that
while Mr. Clinton had perjured himself, "as president, he has
been a raving success."
TV critics also love to point out that Roger Ailes, president of
Fox News, used to work for GOP candidates and Tony Snow, the host
of "Fox News Sunday," worked in the Bush White House a decade
ago. They seldom mention that CNN honcho Tom Johnson worked in
Lyndon Johnson's White House, that CNN's Jeff Greenfield was a
speechwriter for Robert Kennedy, or that NBC's Tim Russert worked
for both Pat Moynihan and Mario Cuomo.
Recently, suspicions that Fox is an aid-and-comfort station for
Republicans were fueled by an article in The New Yorker that
darkly hinted that Fox's premature call of Florida on election
night may have been influenced by the relation between John
Ellis, the head of Fox's decision desk, and his first cousin
George W. Bush. Liberals promptly claimed that Fox had stampeded
other networks into calling Florida for Mr. Bush at 2:15 a.m.,
thus giving him an aura of legitimacy as the victor.
Mr. Ellis gave some foolish quotes to The New Yorker in which he
bragged about swapping insights about the exit polls with his
Bush cousins on election night. It would have been better if Mr.
Ellis had been merely a consultant without a decision-making
role. But an internal report from the Voter News Service, the
consortium that collected all the exit-poll data, found no
evidence that Fox had jumped the gun in its election calls.
Indeed, an exhaustive analysis of the controversy in the latest
issue of Brill's Content concludes that "Ellis had no control
over the VNS numbers that showed it was 99.9% definite that Gore
would lose." The magazine interviewed Warren Mitofsky, the
founder of VNS and an election-night analyst for CNN and CBS, who
said that "this business about Fox pressuring other people to
call, I never made a projection in my life because of some other
network. . . . We were about to make the projection."
There is no question that Fox gives conservatives at least equal
time and often reports stories--such as Jesse Jackson's curious
finances or the missing e-mails at the Clinton White House--that
other networks ignore. But if Fox appears to be further to the
right, it is precisely because other cable outlets have given
short shrift to conservatives and their views. I'm sure there
have been times when Fox spent less time on GOP scandals than
other networks, but it also was the very first network to report
details of George W. Bush's hidden DUI incident last November.
Fox News Channel's prime-time talk shows, which are combative and
can draw blood, are the basis for much of its conservative
reputation in media circles. But they are balanced by a lot of
straight news reporting during the day and the more sober tones
of "Special Report With Brit Hume," which is now bringing in an
astonishing 800,000 households a night in its two non-prime-time
showings (6 p.m. and midnight Eastern time).
Even the prime-time talk-show lineup isn't what it's portrayed to
be. I can testify having been a guest on his show that Bill
O'Reilly, the host of the top-rated "O'Reilly Factor," is no
conservative. He's a populist troublemaker. He favors gun
control, supports many environmental restrictions, backs the
McCain-Feingold campaign-finance bill, wants a patient's bill of
rights and is against the death penalty. He once told his
audience that I was "so in love with Dick Cheney that you might
as well get engaged to him." Ouch, but a good line.
And he has tackled some big issues others shied away from. His
investigation into Jesse Jackson's finances and fund-raising
tactics is paying off as other media outlets are now asking more
questions. Mr. O'Reilly's show first floated the possible
connection between contributions to Bill Clinton's presidential
library and White House favors over a year ago.
Bill O'Reilly can be an obnoxious self-promoter, but he's also a
news hound who not only sniffs out good stories but won't let go
until he's satisfied he has everything. A member of Congress who
attended a presentation Mr. O'Reilly gave in Washington last
month told me, "He doesn't look fully comfortable doing the
schmoozy Washington scene, and there's a market niche for guys
like him and Chris Matthews when they stir up trouble."
The premise of Fox's debate show, "Hannity & Colmes," is that a
conservative talk-radio host (Sean Hannity) starts and never
finishes an argument with a liberal talk-radio host (Alan
Colmes). Liberals sometimes complain that Mr. Colmes isn't
aggressive enough for their taste, but the nature of the
talk-radio medium is such that it has spawned dozens of
conservative hosts and only a few liberal ones, of which Mr.
Colmes is one of the most successful. The two fight but unlike
some co-hosts seem to get along well.
Fox's other prime-time show is "The Edge With Paula Zahn." I have
yet to detect a bias in Ms. Zahn's approach, although I clearly
remember being nettled by the liberal premises of her questions
when she co-hosted the "CBS Morning News." On Fox, she asks tough
questions of both sides, and while she doesn't go in for the
kill, she extracts the relevant information.
This mix has resulted in a ratings phenomenon that threatens to
overturn CNN's comfortable 20-year dominance of cable news. For
all of 2000, CNN won the prime-time race with a 0.8 Nielsen
rating, Fox posted a 0.7, and MSNBC came in with a 0.5. But a
special study by Nielsen found that in the 45 million cable homes
that get CNN, MSNBC and Fox, Fox pulled ahead of CNN by the end
of the Florida vote controversy in mid-December. Its success is
all the more remarkable because it has only about 880 employees,
vs. CNN's 3,950 world-wide staffers after some recent budget
cuts.
Still, Fox News Channel has occasionally overhyped its ratings.
It ran full-page ads in major newspapers after the November
election claiming it was TV's No. 1 network for politics because
6.8 million viewers watched its coverage. In fact, many of those
viewers saw a simulcast feed on Fox's broadcast network, leading
Nielsen Media Research to call the ad "misleading."
Given its recent ratings, there's no reason for Fox to airbrush
anything. Fox went on to beat CNN during December and to dominate
ratings during the presidential inauguration. In January, "The
O'Reilly Factor" was the most popular cable-news show with a 1.3
rating (about 1.3 million households), beating out CNN's "Larry
King Live" (1.2 million). "Hannity & Colmes" took third place
with a 0.9 rating, and Paula Zahn was tied for fourth with a 0.7
rating.
So far in February, the rout is continuing. On a majority of
weeknights so far, Fox has beaten CNN in the actual number of
viewers, even though it is available to only 59 million homes vs.
CNN's 81 million. MSNBC does decently during daytime hours and
has a top-rated Internet news site, but at night its ratings
plummet to less than half those of Fox.
Twenty years ago, CNN discovered there was an audience for an
all-news cable channel, and it revolutionized many Americans'
viewing habits. CNN's news resources still give it a powerful
advantage during high-drama news events (especially overseas).
During such times its ratings, along with MSNBC's, clearly
outperform Fox's, with its more meager news resources. But such
events are rare, and Fox has proved that a large chunk of the
news-junkie audience was tired of coverage that too often
coincided with the news priorities of the New York Times and
Washington Post.
The major networks failed to see the market opportunity for an
alternative cable news source, even after Rush Limbaugh attracted
millions of listeners in the early 1990s. When NBC and Microsoft
launched MSNBC in 1996, the new network exploited its Internet
connection in an attempt to appear different, but the news
judgments of its NBC mother ship largely prevailed. When Fox went
on the air a few months later, Mr. Ailes took a risk in heading
in a completely new direction by covering subjects the other
networks ignored and adding sassy and sharp commentary. It's a
model that will be studied--both by detractors and admirers--for
a long time to come.
=================================================================
Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF:
*Michael Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
=================================================================
<A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A>
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html
<A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html">Archives of
[EMAIL PROTECTED]</A>
http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
<A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/">ctrl</A>
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
