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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TopCat who wrote (361564)	12/5/2007 5:10:42 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1576170

How Fox News covers the NIE — or in this case, doesn’t Posted December 5th, 2007 at 12:48 pm Share This \| Spotlight \| Permalink Last night, Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee conceded he hadn’t heard a word about the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, and the conclusions that Iran’s nuclear-weapons program was shut down more than four years ago. There are a variety of theories as to how a leading presidential candidate could be this uninformed, but I’ve got a new one: maybe he only watches Fox News. Last night, Josh Marshall posed a fun little question to readers: How long does it take you to find a mention of the Iran NIE at Foxnews.com? At the time, it took quite a while, but it got me thinking about the network’s coverage. We know Fox News has made a conscious, editorial decision to downplay news from Iraq, which certainly contributes to conservative confusion about the war, but given the network’s interest in promoting a confrontation with Iran — Fox News recently ran a special report called, “Iran: The Ticking Bomb” — would kind of coverage would this week’s news receive? I decided to search Nexis to find out. I focused on Fox News’ four prime-time political shows: Special Report with Brit Hume, The Big Story (John Gibson), The O’Reilly Factor, and Hannity & Colmes. I then checked Monday’s transcripts, reflecting the news the day the NIE conclusions were announced, and Tuesday’s transcripts, following the president’s press conference on the NIE. On Monday, the day the NIE conclusions surprised the world, three of the four Fox News programs made no mention of the story at all. The exception with Special Report with Brit Hume, which featured a discussion between Hume, conservative media personality Fred Barnes, conservative media personality Mort Kondracke, and conservative media personality Charles Krauthammer. It was a brief discussion, but viewers heard Kondracke argue, “[Iranians] are still trying to reprocess uranium. If they find out how to reprocess uranium, it’s a short step from that to a nuclear program.” Barnes argued, “Well, look, this is not a case for diplomacy. That’s not what worked.” And Krauthammer concluded that intelligence officials might be wrong. Which leads us to last night’s programs.