| I love the fact that Bush's speech was such a ratings coup!
Lots of people don't know what to make of all the charges about "bias in the media," so setting the networks up to do an obviously anti-Bush thing was good strategy for the White House. |
Posted on 10/13/2002 4:27:59 PM PDT by Richard Poe
WHEN YOU THROW your best punch, and the guy is still standing, you’d better run, and run fast. You don’t have what it takes to beat him.
Big Media took their best punch at the American people last week. But we came back swinging. This does not augur well for the future of Big Media in America.
On Friday morning, the Senate voted 77-23 to authorize President Bush to wage war on Iraq, with or without United Nations approval. This was a crushing blow for ABC, NBC, CBS and The New York Times, all of which had made extraordinary efforts to torpedo Bush’s war resolution.
"Public Says Bush Needs to Pay Heed to Weak Economy," cried the front page of The New York Times Monday. Citing a New York Times/CBS News poll, the article claimed that Americans wanted Bush to focus on the economy, not Iraq.
Why, then, was Bush committing political suicide by demanding a war vote only four weeks before Congressional elections? The Times had an answer: Bush was being manipulated by a cabal of war-mongering Jews!
Times pundit Maureen Dowd – an Irish Catholic – explained:
"Influential Jewish conservatives inside and outside the administration have been fierce in supporting a war on Saddam, thinking it could help Israel by scrambling the Middle East map and encouraging democracy."
Talk radio host Don Imus pressed NBC Pentagon reporter Jim Miklaszewski for details on the conspiracy. NewsMax.com reported the following exchange.
IMUS: Who are these Jews 'Mo' Dowd's referring to as influencing Bush on the war? Wolfowitz? Richard Perle? Who?
MIKLASZEWSKI: Well, certainly there's that - what many would call a cabal within the administration - of not only those who are very much in favor of going into Iraq and removing Saddam Hussein a la an invasion - and one of the strongest voices within the administration, of course, is Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz.
Miklaszewski hastened to add, however, that the "cabal" included some non-Jews as well.
Cabal or no cabal, the Times’ own poll showed that Americans supported war on Iraq 67 percent to 27 percent. After sifting through the raw survey data, Brit Hume of Fox News and Dick Morris of the New York Post both concluded that the Times had misrepresented its own polling data. Indeed, the survey itself was questionable.
"The phrasing of the questions is so slanted and biased that it amounts to journalistic `push polling,’" Morris charged.
Push-polls, slanted headlines, Jewish conspiracies – this was strong stuff. But it was only a warm-up for the big event – a total black-out of Bush’s speech that night, by all three major broadcast networks. While Bush made his case for war with Iraq, tens of millions of Americans who wanted to hear him searched the air waves in vain.
"The president's 30-minute address was measured, understated, devastating and profoundly important. It's a speech all Americans should have heard," wrote John Podhoretz in the New York Post the next morning. " But only one of the broadcast networks, Fox, chose to air it."
ABC, CBS and NBC filled that time slot instead with "The Drew Carey Show," "King of Queens" and "Fear Factor," respectively. After the speech, however, the networks found plenty of airtime to attack Bush’s arguments.
Spokesmen for the networks claim it wasn’t personal – just business. Bush’s speech didn’t seem newsworthy enough to justify interrupting their regular programming.
"Hey, war's big, but this is the month that broadcast networks are rolling out or reprising their prime-time schedules," says MSNBC editor-in-chief Jerry Nachman. All-news MSNBC showed the speech, but its sister company NBC did not.
If blacking out Bush’s speech was indeed a business decision, then it was a singularly poor one. The New York Times reports that, despite the black-out, Bush’s speech "was still one of the most-watched television events of the evening."
Nielsen Media Research estimates that up to 17 million people watched the speech on the Fox broadcast network and the three all-news cable networks, CNN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC.
By contrast, only 4.5 million people watched "The Drew Carey Show" on ABC; 11.7 million watched "King of Queens" on CBS; and 12.2 million watched "Fear Factor" on NBC.
"The address handily beat its direct competition on the other broadcast networks," noted a sheepish New York Times.
If Big Media continues making these kinds of, ahem, "business" decisions, the long, slow decline of the major networks, long chronicled in the trade press, may soon accelerate into a screaming, hurtling roller-coaster ride to ratings oblivion.
_________________________________
Richard Poe is a New York Times bestselling author and cyberjournalist. His latest book is The Seven Myths of Gun Control.
Well, yes, it actually wasn't personal. It doesn't matter which Republican is in the White House these days, ABCBSNBCTIMES will try to tear him down. It wasn't personal, it was political.
We watch the ABC during dinner on a little black and white non-cable set. I didn't watch carefully, but it is my impression that Jennings, ober the entire week, did not mention anything about Torricelli and the filth and corruption that was taking place with the democrats in Jersey.
The main stream media hates America, hates Bush, protects democrats, hates guns, knows that only whites do hate crimes, and supports fairies. They do all of these very vigorously on the front pages.
An aside; on NPR today, so current events quiz program, they were taking (I think) about a decision that major league baseball owners made and the idiot talking said, "And, they were probably all smoking big expensive cigars at the time..." It was a gratuitous comment that added nothing to the "story," but pointed out how readily the lefties stereotype when they want, if the are talking, in general, about white males. Can you imagine the outrage from the NPR types if someone said of the directors of the NAACP, they when they made a decision, "they were probably enjoying watermelon."
Last night I had blundered into Jennings on TV.
I have not watched him in so long that He has AGED CONSIDERABLY SINCE I SAW HIM LAST!!!!
Why, I bet I stopped watching him sometime in the last presidency!
Are the other two even still alive? Brokaw, and ....the other one...umm...you know...?
Interesting since most of the media, especially are run by Jews. It's a published fact. Further, 95% of the media are registered democrats. So where is the balance in journalism. These people cannot report news. Everything they write is an editorial against capitalism, free enterprise and personal freedom.
Ahh, I think The Stain Man did this too after he dipped it in Monica's honey pit. Yes. the media is corrupt as most of the democrats. Too few people care about this country anymore. Even FOX News is flaming panic in the DC/VA area. The news is not not really news anymore. I get more news on FR than TV. These people regurgitate the same crap for DAYS!
| I love the fact that Bush's speech was such a ratings coup!
Lots of people don't know what to make of all the charges about "bias in the media," so setting the networks up to do an obviously anti-Bush thing was good strategy for the White House. |
This is really what it is coming down to. Floriduh and Baja Floriduh (otherwise known as the NJ Supreme Court) show that the Dems are willing to win at any cost. WE GOTTA KICK THEIR A**ES IN RESPONSE. We can't do the gentleman conservative routine any more. We have to make them look bad. Really, really, really bad. Sharpen our spikes and slide with the shoes up high. We didn't start this war. But we have to end it.
Mr. Poe, a very nice column, and I appreciate your posting it in person here.
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The White House played the networks for suckers on that one, and won big. Not only was the speech watched anyway, but all three networks got caught with their agendas showing.