-Caveat Lector-
<http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/2001-03-22-media.htm>
03/22/2001 - Updated 11:40 AM ET
Bush, aides boost access of conservative media
By Mimi Hall
USA TODAY
WASHINGTON ‹ On his fifth day in office, Vice President Cheney
granted his first radio interview to Common Sense Radio and its
conservative host, Oliver North. At his first news conference as
president, on a trip to Mexico last month, President Bush skipped
over the major TV network correspondents and turned to Fox News
Channel's Jim Angle. "You're next," he told the cable network's
correspondent after wire service reporters, who by custom go
first at presidential news conferences, asked their questions.
And this month, when Cheney gave his first vice-presidential
interview to a Washington newspaper, the outlet he chose was not
The Washington Post, the capital city's traditional must-read for
politicians and journalists. Instead, Cheney talked to The
Washington Times, a much smaller newspaper known for its
conservative tilt ‹ and its access to important conservatives in
government.
In the Clinton White House, newspapers with conservative news or
editorial pages, and broadcasters with conservative programming,
were ostracized.
How times have changed.
West Wing television sets that were almost always tuned to CNN
during the Clinton years are now on Fox News Channel, whose
political talk shows are dominated by conservative commentators.
And after eight years of feeling frozen out, reporters from news
outlets with conservative programming are winning a much
friendlier reception from Bush and his aides.
The shift started on the campaign trail. Bush's audiences
occasionally booed CNN reporter Candy Crowley and held up signs
slamming the "Clinton News Network." Sometimes they cheered Carl
Cameron of Fox News. "It was flattering and unsettling," says
Cameron, whose fellow reporters say he's as objective as any of
them. "It suggested a perception that I would often disabuse
people of."
Now that Bush is in the White House, the reporters warmly
received on the campaign trail are getting more access to top
aides. It's part of a strategy to get more coverage ‹ and more
positive coverage ‹ by spending time with right-leaning and
outside-the-Washington-beltway journalists.
Talking to news outlets with conservative audiences, and to local
newspapers and TV stations, "gives you an opportunity to take
your message unfiltered to voters who are listening," says
Cheney's press secretary, Juleanna Glover Weiss.
Earlier this month, Bush gave interviews to three of the biggest
newspapers that cover the White House ‹ The New York Times, The
Washington Post and USA TODAY ‹ and to The Washington Times.
Wesley Pruden says, editor of The Washington Times, says, "I
think the Bush White House figures they're going to get a fair
shot with us, and I think that's true."
But Bush and Cheney have spent considerably more time talking to
reporters from other parts of the country. Last week, Bush
promoted his budget and tax proposals during an interview with a
half-dozen regional newspapers, including The Indianapolis Star
and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
White House aides say local reporters tend to be less jaded than
their Washington counterparts, and local newspapers are more
likely to print big stories even if Bush and Cheney don't say
anything new. "You get more play, more column inches, more time
on the evening news," Weiss says.
Interviews with outlets favored by conservative voters are meant
to energize the party faithful.
Inside the White House, "now they're listening to me instead of
NPR," North crows, referring to National Public Radio, which has
a generally liberal audience.
In the Clinton White House, press secretaries were sometimes
dismissive of reporters from conservative newspapers and stations
‹ or they ignored them.
Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer says he calls on most everyone
who raises a hand at his televised daily briefings. "I don't
think the press secretary should pick and choose based on an
agenda or ideology," he says. But North says the administration
will turn to shows such as his, which he boasts has "2 million
right-wing radio listeners," to help rally the Republican troops.
North, who was a Reagan aide, says he doesn't "pitch softball"
questions. But when he interviewed Cheney on Jan. 24 and Cheney
noted that the U.S. military has a new commander in chief, North
replied, "Thank God!" He called Vice President Gore's efforts to
streamline the government a "colossal failure" and called
Clinton's energy policy "incoherent."
This month, after Cheney spoke to The Washington Times, the White
House was rewarded with four-and-a-half pages of coverage and an
editorial that began, "There is no doubt that Washington has
benefited vastly from President Bush's first six weeks in
office."
But while conservative talk-show hosts gush, reporters bristle at
the notion that they're playing into Bush's hand. Bush and his
aides may call on Fox News reporters more often and they may
spend more time watching Fox than CNN, but the Fox reporters who
cover the news are generally regarded by their peers as fair and
unbiased. No one in the White House press corps, for example, has
said that Angle, a former NPR reporter, is giving the Bush
administration an easier time just because his network is owned
by conservative Rupert Murdoch.
The treatment Fox News is receiving from Bush aides is "certainly
different than it was when the Clinton White House was doing
everything it could to strangle Fox in its crib," says Washington
bureau chief Brit Hume, referring to Clinton aides' favoritism of
CNN when Fox News went on the air in 1996. Now Fox competes
effectively with the three big networks, for example, in booking
top administration players for the political talk show Fox News
Sunday.
But Fox News correspondents attribute that more to ballooning
ratings than to the fact that its so-called political
entertainment shows feature conservative commentators such as
Sean Hannity and former GOP House speaker Newt Gingrich. CNN is
available in 20 million more households than Fox News is ‹ but in
the 59.3 million households that have both, more people watch
Fox.
"We've had no favoritism from the Bush administration," Hume
says. "They've just been treating us fairly, which is all we've
ever asked and all we would ever expect."
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Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF:
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
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