“Heeeere’s Barack” by Mark Leibovich in today's National Post on Presidents Obama's decision to grant interviews with ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN and Univision shows a troubling bias and lack of honesty in reporting the facts.
According to Leibovich, President Obama “will sit for interviews with ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN and Univision, and the Late Show With David Letterman” but not the “Food Channel and Fox News”.
Presumably Mark Leibovich deliberately places Fox News alongside the Food Channel to marginalise the conservative news network, and minimise its importance, instead of recognising its powerful place in news broadcasting.
Fox News now claims to have more viewers than all the others combined, according to recent surveys. Would an honest even-handed reporter omit to report the place of Fox unless he’s trying to put a spin on the facts; a very strange omission in a story about news by a newsman.
Fox News reaches centre-right Americans, the very ones who are dismayed by the Presidents radical health-care reforms. Furthermore, Fox is audience has been growing as support for the President has been dropping. Could there be a correlation between dropping support for Obama and Americans switching to Fox News?
The President’s goal is to reach Americans, so logically his first choice should be Fox News. However the President did the opposite, and omitted them entirely; an obvious point completely omitted by Mr. Leibovich.
Bill O’Reilly maybe scary, but not as scary as Vladimir Putin, and besides, Mr. Obama recently went head-to-head with big, bad, Putin, plus he gave Putin a very gracious and humble bow.
Bill O’Reilly interview with Hilary Clinton was more than fair, and treated her with great courtesy and respect (as he should), and therefore the President can expect no less, and probably more, due to the respect due to the chief executive officer of the US.
Mr. Leibovich should be asking why President Obama is not meeting with Fox News, the biggest news broadcaster in the US. As it stands he missed a big part of this story, either through sloppy reporting or to satisfy his ideological agenda.
Saturday, September 19, 2009
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"Fox News reaches centre-right Americans" - Who would write this nonsense. What Drugs is he on?
ReplyDeletehopsas, Fox News has captured an audience consisting of a segment of the American population, who are predominantly ordinary Americans concerned about health-care reforms as proposed by their President.
ReplyDeleteIt's significant that those concerns are shared by a portion of the Democratic Party, generally referred to as occupying a "centre" position. Based on this, I think "centre-right" is a fair characterisation of Fox News' audience.
These terms "right", "left" and "far right" etc. are open to different definitions and interpretations, and consequently have a somewhat limited value.
Fox News has a very large audience, across the compass of the USA, consequently I think that justifies the label "centre".
The term "mainstream" media is hard to justify for the media mentioned in my post (ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN), because "main-street" USA is switching away, and that is why their audience is declining.
I am not sure why hopsas1 would dismiss your opinion with a drug reference, I could look at the facts and dismiss his/hers with a drug reference-but I won't be so lazy.
ReplyDeleteFox News' ratings have been increasing in recent months, while the traditional networks bleed viewers. These people who are tuning into Fox News are the independents, moderate Republicans, and "conservative" Democrats who were happily watching NBC or CBS news historically and have now switched to Fox (ie not right wing ideologues). These are the folks that Obama needs to reach out to and convince on his policies. Without doing so he is "preaching to the choir".
Furthermore the Sunday morning news magazine on Fox News (the one Obama has shunned) is hosted by Chris Matthews, himself an ABC news reporter for 9 years prior to joining Fox and his father a 30 year veteran of CBS news. Matthews himself is a Washington veteran, and professional and is not an ideologue.
By shunning the most watched news organization one can only conclude the president wants to duck the hard questions that Fox may ask, because, if he did face them and was able to handle the tough questions with class, dignity and strong facts it would help his image and ratings with the voters that matter (those who are independent and not left or right wing ideologues). Furthermore if Fox News treated him unfairly it would reflect terribly on their network and positively on the President.
One can dismiss Fox News as wacky, or "right wing" all they like and shun them but to do so is to dismiss the voters that the administration requires (the ones they're preaching to on NBC are already in the choir). No amount of drug taking can deny this fact.
I meant Chris Wallace in my above post. Obviously Obama would be happy to be interviewed my Chris Matthews who's idea of unbiased journalism is to pronounce that Obama gives him a tingle up his leg.
ReplyDeleteChris Wallace, father Mike Wallace; that's more like it.
ReplyDeleteI recall that bizarre comment by Chris Matthews on MSNBC.
Here's he described exactly what happens to him when Obama speaks:
"I have to tell you, you know, it's part of reporting this case, this election, the feeling most people get when they hear Barack Obama's speech. My, I felt this thrill going up my leg."