RNC TV Coverage
CNN vs. Fox for convention coverage
Noel Holston
NEWSDAY
August 31, 2004, 3:23 PM EDT
The difference between cable-news arch-rivals CNN and Fox News Channel couldn't have been more obvious during Monday's prime-time hours of the Republican National Convention. It's not really a matter of which is more conservative or liberal or which is more "fair and balanced." It's a matter of Old School vs. New Wave, Superman vs. the Hulk, Roy Rogers vs. Clint Eastwood, Pespi vs. Jolt.
The analogies could go on and on, but you get the drift. One network is into 'tude, the other isn't.
I monitored Fox for three-plus hours live on Monday night and then, on Tuesday morning, watched the corresponding CNN coverage I had videotaped.
CNN did what the "Big Three" broadcast networks' news divisions did for decades (and still do when they occasionally interrupt their entertainment programming to ration us an hour of live convention coverage). During the 8-9 p.m. segment, anchor Wolf Blitzer and his CNN cohorts Jeff Greenfield and Judy Woodruff collegially talked politics among themselves and with the occasional guest. At regular intervals, CNN cut away for some convention "flavor" – a bit of a speech, a singing group's show-tune medley – or a video "diary" entry from one of the delegates they loaned a mini-camcorder or a floor report from one of its correspondents. From the latter, CNN viewers heard about the "Band Aid" controversy – GOP delegates sporting adhesive bandages embossed with tiny purple hearts, a satiric slap at Democratic candidate John Kerry.
Nobody mentioned the Band Aids during Fox's 8-9 p.m. program, "The O'Reilly Factor." Indeed, the convention was scarcely seen or heard, except on an occasional split-screen shot, as star Bill O'Reilly went through his usual list of segments – a "Talking Points" blasting The New York Times, the day's "most ridiculous moment," the mailbag – and six interviewees, including Bush-Cheney advisor Mary Matalin and Miss America 2003, Erika Harold, an abstinence proponent and scheduled GOP speaker.
Except for Harold, O'Reilly badgered and interrupted all his guests, and none of them wilted. At one point during their disagreement over the wisdom of invading Iraq, longtime conservative pundit (and current Bush administration critic) Pat Buchanan exhorted, "Bill, use your head!"
It was a lively hour, full of sound and exasperation, if not fury, and yielding an occasional surprise. Former Massachusetts Gov. William Weld, the Republican Kerry beat for his Senate seat, allowed that a Kerry win wouldn't be cause for moving to Canada. But the hour was mainly about O'Reilly, the guy who's looking out for us and never shy about saying so, not the convention.
The contrast was almost as sharp from 9 to 10 p.m. The convention was again little more than rumor as the stars of the hour, conservative Sean Hannity and liberal Alan Colmes, took turns interviewing guests who included White House Chief of Staff Andy Card, Sen. Trent Lott, former Rep. Newt Gingrich and former Bill Clinton advisor Dick Morris, who called Kerry a "moron" for overemphasizing his Vietnam service and leaving himself vulnerable to attacks from Bush supporters.
On CNN's "Larry King Live," meanwhile, the host and his panel, Washington Post writer Bob Woodward and former sensators Bob Dole and George Mitchell, chatted and interviewed guests – Gov. Geroge Pataki, David and Julie Nixon Eisenhower -- every so civilly. Andy Card showed up, but whereas Hannity had a love-in with him and Colmes had challenged him on the convention's show of false moderation, King, always keener on human-interest angles, asked Card about breaking the news of the 9/11 attacks to President Bush as he read to preschoolers in Florida.
Both CNN and Fox finally gave the convention their undivided, un-interrupted attention at 10, when Sen. John McCain and then former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani come on to disparage Kerry's leadership ability and extol Bush's. In the analysis that followed, Fox's pundit panel, heavy with conservatives (Morton Kondracke, Fred Barnes, William Kristol), was more enthusiastic than CNN's Blitzer, Woodruff and Greenfield, but it was only a matter of degree. It was universally agreed that McCain had done well and that Guiliani had outdone himself.
The thing is, this was the only time Monday evening when CNN and Fox were doing the same thing. Most of the time – and this is the real difference in the two channels – CNN covers the news and Fox puts on entertainment shows in which news is a component.
Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc. |
