Bung Radityo, FOX TV dengan FOX NEWS memang dikenal sangat radikal dan terasa
anti muslim. Stasiun televisi milik Rupert Murdoch ini memang mempunyai dua
sisi. Satu sisi dianggap sangat konservatif, anti muslim dan sangat Americanize
ini diwujudkan dalam berita2x FOX News yang cenderung berpihak pada publik yang
mengatakan dirinya adalah pemilik Amerika. Tapi di sisi lain FOX TV justru
memproduksi program2x brilian, new ideas dan breaking the rules, lihat saja
program2x produksi Fox seperti American Idol, Beverly Hills 90210, Melrose
Place dan Ally Mc Beal. Dan program2x ini justru dijual dan sukses diseluruh
dunia termasuk di negara2x dengan mayoritas muslim seperti Indonesia.
Berbeda dengan ABC,CBS dan NBC yang berusaha lebih netral, Fox memang murni
tampil sebagai media kapitalis ala Rupert Murdoch. Dan saluran FOX News yang
siaran 24 jam berusaha menyaingi CNN yang mempunyai jumlah penonton lebih
banyak. Jadi kalau Fox mengkritik Barack Obama, saya pikir publik sudah bisa
menilai kemana arah Fox News. Dan VOA juga sudah melakukan newsbalance dengan
liputan langsung ke sekolah SD Barack Obama...
Mungkin Mas Helmi Johannes dan Patsy Widakuswara di VOA bisa menambahkan?
Salam
Naratama
radityo djadjoeri <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Posted by: Ulil Abshar-Abdalla
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat Jan 27, 2007 7:31 pm (PST)
Barack Obama difitnah oleh Fox News baru-baru ini: dia "dituduh" pernah
sekolah di SD Islam yang orientasinya radikal waktu kecil di Jakarta dulu,
seperti disinggung dalam berita yang saya kirim di bawah ini. Fox News jelas
media sekuler. Tapi, anehnya, cara2 dia
yang memakai fitnah seperti ini juga dilakukan oleh banyak media yang konon
"Islami" di Jakarta.
Sementara itu, fitnah yang beredar lewat internet, sudah tak kepalang
tanggung jumlahnya.
Memang, watak manusia memang suka fitnah, tampaknya. Hanya saja, ada dua
jenis fitnah: fitnah dengan motivasi agama, dan fitnah dengan motifasi sekuler.
Tapi, dua-duanya tetap saja fitnah.
Ulil
Ulil Abshar-Abdalla
Department of Religion
Boston Universit
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Lessons for Media in Obama Case
By DAVID BAUDER AP Television Writer
NEW YORK, January 27 (AP) - U.S. Sen. Barack Obama hardly could have
anticipated that the first minor media crisis of his presidential bid would
involve where he went to school at age 7. The Illinois Democrat's welcome into
the world of modern campaign coverage last week offers lessons for both
candidates and reporters on the marathon run until November 2008. And it's
undoubtedly a sign of things to come.
Chances are "about 100 percent" that a candidate will be ruined by a story
that he or she hasn't anticipated, said ABC News political reporter Jake Tapper.
Stories seemingly trivial or even untrue will appear instantly and
reverberate madly through the media. Candidates most skillful in anticipating
them and reacting swiftly will have a big advantage. A magazine article's
charge that Obama had attended a radical Islamic school while living in
Indonesia as a boy was spread on blogs and, most prominently, on Fox
News Channel.
Other news organizations sent reporters who learned the school in Jakarta was
public and secular and has long accepted students of all faiths. CNN's Anderson
Cooper seemed to relish sticking the knife in a rival.
"That's the difference between talking about news and reporting it," he said.
"You send a reporter, check the facts and you decide at home." CNN had time to
do that because it wasn't a hard news story, said Sam Feist, the network's
political director.
"One of the things that's dangerous about a presidential campaign when it
comes to the facts is the echo chamber, where one news organization reports a
story and it's not true, and one outlet picks it up, another picks it up and
another," Feist said. "Before
long the public assumes that it's true even when it's not."
Tapper wrote about the story, with the Obama campaign's denials, on his blog
when it first
surfaced. But like CNN, it didn't appear on the air at ABC until after a
reporter had gone to
Jakarta.
Whether the same caution would have held a year later, if the charges had
surfaced in the few days between the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire
primary, is an open question.
"A long and protracted campaign like we're going to see means you're going to
have long periods with not much news and news outlets are going to want to fill
the void," said Tom Rosenstiel, a former political reporter for the Los Angeles
Times and now director of
the Project for Excellence in Journalism. "In some ways, there are more
openings for opposition research, dirty tricks, to get into play."
Back in 1992, when the story first surfaced about Bill Clinton and his
alleged affair with Gennifer Flowers, a reporter asked him about it one day and
received a response. Yet the story was left off all three network newscasts
that evening.
That notion of restraint, of major news organizations taking time to weigh
the newsworthiness of these kinds of stories, seems almost impossible to
imagine today.
Before the Internet's spread, a newsroom used to have only a handful of news
sources coming into their computers, said Marty Ryan, political director at Fox
News Channel.
"Now there are hundreds, thousands," he said. "Many of them have a political
agenda and many of them have different standards for what they put on their
blogs and their Internet sites. We just have to be real careful about what
happens in the future."
Being careful about the facts is a lesson drummed into every journalist. But
opinion-based talk shows aren't run by journalists. They're a staple of Fox's
lineup and spreading around other cable news outlets.
"You can't say it's right or wrong, it's just different," Ryan said. "We
acknowledge that. We
acknowledged the error with the Obama thing and let's just move on."
Television quickly magnifies stories that might have been forgotten or not
even noticed otherwise, with Howard Dean's scream an infamous example.
Remember: Most Americans did not have three cable news networks in their homes
until the 2000 campaign.
Similarly, it wasn't too long ago that the only Web site political
professionals watched carefully was the Drudge Report. Now, there are dozens of
political blogs that must be monitored.
Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, an expected GOP presidential candidate, has
gone out of his way to cultivate relationships with prominent bloggers. He
learned their bite earlier this month when a Massachusetts gadfly, Brian
Camenker, wrote a lengthy report questioning Romney's conservative
qualifications that spread quickly on the Web.
Most campaigns have opposition research staff, whose job it is to search for
damaging information about an opponent. The smart candidates do aggressive
opposition research on themselves, so as not to be surprised by anything.
Campaigns are actually less likely now to feed damaging material to mainstream
news organizations, Tapper said. The campaigns prefer the blogs.
"There are so many ways to get information out to people -- whether or not
that information is true," said Elizabeth Wilner, chief of NBC News' political
unit.
Many Democrats believe that John Kerry's inability to respond quickly to an
unanticipated story -- charges by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth that he
didn't deserve his Vietnam War medals -- doomed his 2004 campaign. Swift
response is now valued. So is aggressive response.
Still, the political whirlwind may not slow down because of the Obama example.
"I honestly think that no one is going to be chastened by anything this
year," Rosenstiel said.
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