TVBlog's Perspective on Jon Stewart's Interview with Chris Wallace on Fox

Over at TVBlog's David Goetzl provided a recap of Jon Stewart's interview by Chris Wallace on Fox News.  What I found interesting is that it proves the challenge of political bias because we took the same interview very differently.  You can check out his article here.

Here's my perspective.

1. Chris Wallace wanted to nail Jon Stewart to admit that Stewart is biased.  Wallace said he was just trying to understand Jon Stewart, but many of his questions seemed designed to elicit one response: to get Stewart to admit that he's biased and that he's out to get Fox News. What Stewart said was that say while his ideology informs his comedy, his main goal as a comedian and political satirist is to make people laugh by spotlighting absurdity, hypocrisy and corruption. 

2. Was Wallace unfair to Stewart? If saying Wallace is a counterweight to Hannity and Beck, as Stewart alleged, is unfair to Wallace (and I'm not sure it is) -- wasn't it also unfair of Wallace to make the same point about Stewart and other Comedy Central programs? (Wallace had prepared footage of Comedy Central programs and said he sat through hours of "South Park.") By the way, Stewart agreed that his show serves as a counterweight to "South Park" and other shows.

What's striking is that in responding to Stewart's point that Wallace is a counterweight to other more opinion-based Fox programming, Wallace responded by making the same point about Stewart, thus equating a news network and a comedy network.   It should be apples to oranges, but Wallace made a direct comparison.

3. Stewart may have a left-wing bias, but Fox doesn't admit that it has a right-wing bias. I understand the point Wallace was attempting to make about Stewart and newspapers like the New York Times and Washington Post. but if it's important to understand left-wing bias of the media, shouldn't it be important to understand the right-wing bias of the Wall St. Journal, New York Post and Fox News?

In fact, the concept of objective journalism in the U.S. is a modern contrivance. In the mid-1800, newspapers openly declared their perspective, whether the Waterbury (CT) Republican-American, which was founded in 1844 and takes a conservative perspective, or the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, founded in 1833. Interestingly, given's Fox's slogan, the Democrat and Chronicle was first called the Balance, before becoming the Democrat (and later the Democrat and Chronicle).

Perhaps it would be better if all media acknowledged the filter that its editors take on the news it covers.  And it certainly would be better if those who use sweeping negative terms to describe the other side were to stop doing so and to accept the fact that they've done so. At the end of the interview, Stewart said he was guilty of that himself, but you don't hear anyone else coping to that. Partisans on both sides are to blame for this.

4. Taking facts and delivering perspective that makes people laugh does seem like more work. So, does Stewart work harder than Wallace? Stewart can be more selective in what he covers -- he's putting together a comedy show after all, not a news program. But in covering the same story and when conducting interviews on those topics, Stewart also has to make people laugh. That's definitely a tougher challenge.

5. Stewart's biggest point got left out of the recap. His goal is to follow a tradition set by Mark Twain: to hold up absurdities of American life and politics -- and now, its 24-hour saturation media.  

Lessons to be Learned When Politicians Attack the Media

Politicians who gripe about the media should be taken with a grain of salt. Because they weren't complaining about agendas and getting the story wrong when the media wrote positive stories about them.

On the other hand, Fox News didn't really do any positive stories about Obama, so perhaps it's not a typical love-hate relationship...since there was never any love to begin with.

But I think we can learn some interesting lessons from what's going on now.

1. Media on both sides of the aisle (whether they admit that or not) find the fact that Obama thinks Fox News is biased is a great story. The Times has written about it extensively ("Fox’s Volley With Obama Intensifying). So has the Wall St. Journal. The latest entry is from the Journal: "Obama Is Right About Fox News."
2. Fox News LOVES the controversy, becoming the Dick Cavett of News by making itself part of the story as I blogged earlier in the month.
3. The public actually doesn't care about the story at all. Ok, I can't back this up with a specific survey, but with the two wars, the economy, the foreclosures, etc., it's difficult to imagine that most people care one way or the other.
4. Obama's claim that Fox is biased is actually silly because no one really thinks it isn't. Instead, conservatives think of it as an alternative to liberal media.
5. Fox's claim that it's being bullied by the president is equally absurd because they constantly find ways to play up small, negative stories about Obama (the Town Hall shouters were promoted and reported by Fox) -- and because Fox is able to play the valiant hero to its base, saying it's able to take on the president.

In the end, the White House needs to back off, because it's providing the oxygen to keep this fire burning. and it does the administration no good.

So the lessons:

1. Be careful of who you fight with. The old adage was never start a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel. Now, you no longer have to worry about the ink, it's the pixels. And Fox has a lot of 'em.
2. Decide what's a reasonable outcome. What could the Obama administration think could be a positive resolution to this situation? Fox chief, Roger Ailes, isn't going to slap his forehead, and say, "Y'know what, Barack is right, we need to deliver truly balanced news."
3. Develop a plan to achieve that reasonable outcome. Not sure there could be a plan -- other than to not engage with Fox. That's still a plan.
4. Enlist partners to make the case. Fox has done that. Not sure that the White House has.
5. Sometimes the smartest decision in a fight is not to start the war in the first place. I learned that lesson from "War Games," and it still seems like a smart line.

Are there any lessons you think I missed? Let me know.

Meanwhile, check out "Veteran reporter's 5 lessons for Obama" by Helen Thomas.

Fox is the Dick Cavett of News: It makes itself part of the story

Fox News is becoming the Dick Cavett of the news business.

For those young enough not to know Cavett or old enough to have forgotten him, Dick Cavett used to have a talk show in the 1960s. Actually, he's had several talk shows along the way.

Often, he would ask questions of his guests that had more to d to with Cavett than with the guest. I remember a segment (though I can't find it on YouTube) when Groucho Marx was on the show, and Cavett asked, "Remember the first time we met?"

According to Brian Stetler in the New York Times, "Fox’s Volley With Obama Intensifying," "Fox has made the channel’s tensions with the White House a story."

And, now, so has the Times.

CNN Drops "The Crawl" -- Are "Crawls" Dead...Yet?

New York Times' new media/tech reporter, Brian Stelter reports that CNN has dropped its crawl -- "the unending stream of news capsules that have inched relentlessly across the bottom of cable news programs for seven years, disappeared from CNN last Monday."

Survivors include CNBC, Fox and other cable and broadcast news programs.

Now I wish CNN would stop proclaiming everything it covers as "breaking news." Turning to CNN at random times over the past week, every story seemed to be accompanied by on-screen graphics claiming this to be "breaking news," but most were not. Brian, can you get on that, please?

Meanwhile, check out the story, "The Flipper Challenges the Crawl."

NY Times' Ombudsman Column Focuses on Biases -- But It's Not What You Think

There's heightened sensitivity about media bias because of the presidential election, especially about the usual suspects like the New York Times, Wall St. Journal and Fox News.

The Times' Ombudsman, Clark Hoyt, wrote an article, "Keeping Their Opinions to Themselves,"
about readers' reactions to Times political coverage, making a couple of interesting points:

1. "There is an entire body of scholarship devoted to what social scientists call the 'hostile media' syndrome, the belief of people with strong feelings about an issue -- any issue that the news media are hostile to their side."
   
2. Speaking at a group in Montclair, NJ, Hoyt asked how many felt Times' coverage is biased, and more than half the hands went up. One audience member complained that the Times "always plays up scandals involving Republicans and buries scandals involving Democrats." Hoyt pointed out that the Times broke the Spitzer scandal and published extensive reports on Rep. Charles Rangel. The audience member's response: "I'd call that good journalism."
3. Journalists "do have personal biases, and a long line of studies has shown that they tend to be more socially and politically liberal than the population at large...." but Hoyt cited a study that said "a link between reporters' political beliefs and news coverage has never been convincingly established." Just ask Democrats who work for Fox News.

What's most interesting, I think, is that Hoyt acknowledges that journalists do have biases -- but it's not the kind most would consider, though it is important for PR departments to be aware of them. "Journalists are biased:

1. Toward conflict.
2. Toward bad news because it is more exciting than good news, and, obviously,
   
3. Toward what is new.

Now conflict and bad news are things most organizations want to avoid in their day-to-day operations as well as in their media coverage. The challenge is to come up with something news -- not just for the company. That's an important criteria all of us in PR need to work harder to define and achieve.

Do We Really Want Our News to be Fair & Balanced?

I think the news should always be fair.

But I think the news-consuming public, to a significant degree, is saying that it doesn't really want balance.

That's especially true when it comes to blogs, with people self-selecting those whose views validate their own.

And it's also true when it comes to TV news. Because people seem to self-select the sort of news they want to hear/watch.

That's the entire premise of Fox News, after all, which says it has the most viewers (compared with CNN). And that embrace of things more liberal is one reason MSNBC has seen its ratings improve.

Now Fox News' tagline famously says it is "fair and balanced," but after watching Fox News side-by-side with CNN this morning, I have to say I think Fox's definition of "balanced" means "when averaged in against other broadcast outlets."

Both Fox and CNN covered many of the same news items -- namely the election and the financial crisis. How could they not?

But there was a significant difference in how the two outlets approached the news.

Fox News' "Fox & Friends" had a former Wall Streeter-turned-author on to talk about the underlying cause of the current economic crisis. His point was that politicians on both sides of the aisle are to blame. One of the first questions from Fox tried to tie blame for the current crisis on the Clinton Administration for allowing deregulation to occur (irony alert: that's something conservatives usually champion).

The author pointed out that Republicans controlled Congress during the Clinton administration, and that they had pushed for deregulation. He then repeated his statement that it's a bipartisan, systemic problem in part due to lobbyists and donations to politician's campaign funds. The Fox co-anchor agreed, pointing out that Obama and Biden had accepted PAC funds. When the author pointed out that every politician, including McCain, accepts money from lobbyists, the Fox co-anchor made a distinction between PAC money and other kinds of donations. The segment appeared to end abruptly when the author disagreed, saying it is not accurate to blame one party over the other.

The Fox segment seemed neither fair nor balanced.

Meanwhile CNN featured interviews with apparent experts who tried to provide context about the current financial crisis. I did not see any attempt at finger-pointing on the part of the anchors, reporters or guests.

Next up on both networks was the claim that political ads are negative and filled with lies. Fox interviewed an editor at the conservative National Review, who said that after studying one of the ads (about sex education) and talking to a politician who helped draft the bill (no mention of her political affiliation), his conclusion was that the truth was more ambiguous. Probably more truth than not, according to the National Review. The segment did not look at Obama ads, so no attempt to be balanced there. Just felt that editorially it was okay to have a conservative review McCain's ad to say it was actually mostly on the mark.

That would be like asking someone in Boston who's been the better team over the past decade: the Yankees or the Red Sox. Yeah, the Yankees, having a terrible year, have been to the playoffs almost every season during that time but the Sox have won two World Series -- that would be fair and balanced. But there's no doubt someone from Boston would always say the Sox was better. Just as there's no doubt someone from New York would say the same about the Yankees.

Meanwhile, CNN's segment on the candidates' ads included someone from FactCheck.org, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania that says it accepts no funding from business corporations, labor unions, political parties, lobbying organizations or individuals. The segment included a look at an ad from both campaigns.

Fox claims it is more balanced than CNN, but a random 30-minutes' look at both Fox and CNN showed that Fox did not live up to its tagline.

From what I know, "balance" in journalism has not always been valued highly. Accuracy is clearly important, but many newspapers in other countries are open about their political bias. That was true in the U.S. as well. The Watertown (WI) Leader started off as the Watertown Republican in 1860. The Sonora (CA) Union-Democrat has been the leading newspaper of the Mother Lode since 1854. Objectivity in journalism is a recent change. I get my balance by reading the New York Times' editorial pages -- and the Wall St. Journal's editorial pages.

Here's where balance doesn't make for good journalism: a politician's attack ad may contains lies -- but the news media will give a he-said/she-said quote, which gives the attacking politician the chance to rebut accusations that the ad contains lies. In the need to appear objective and nonpartisan, the media diminishes its role as serving as a check-and-balance to misstatements. (As a teenager, I once tried to characterize a lie to my parents as a misstatement. They didn't buy it -- and neither should we.)

If a politician is lying, the media should report it; give him/her a chance to rebut, but then provide objective facts that the statement is a lie, and call it as such.

And if news media can connect with readers by taking a particular political stance -- I think they should. After all, if the only newspaper in a city starts tilting right or left, it may find more readers who are more passionate about the paper. If readers don't like it, even in a somewhat less free-market economy, I bet someone else will decide to publish a paper that tilts in the opposite direction.

Perhaps the future of journalism in regard to balance should tear out a page from journalism's past. Be biased but be upfront about that bias.

Update: After I posted this article, the New York Times' Patrick Healy wrote about the use of the word "lie" in politics in an article entitled, "Let’s Call a Lie a Lie ... Finally. Check it out.

How Fox Plays Hardball -- Fox News Media Relations, that is

Fascinating story by David Carr about the challenges when Fox News is part of a reporter's new beat. Check out "When Fox News Is the Story."

The article lays out the aggressive, political-campaign-like tactics that Fox News deploys against reporters who it thinks has written negative articles about the channel. My favorite tidbit: According to Carr, despite repeated calls by Timesman Jacques Steinberg for a recent article, "the public relations people at Fox News did not return his requests for comment. (In a neat trick, while they were ignoring his calls, they e-mailed his boss asking why they had not heard from him.)"

The reason for playing hardball? According to the head of Fox News' Media Relations, Brian Lewis: “Yes, we are an aggressive department in a passive industry, and believe me, the executives and talent appreciate it,” Mr. Lewis said, adding that with the 24-hour news cycle and the proliferation of blogs, a new kind of engagement and activism was required."

The article is filled with anecdotes about how Fox News media relations operates. An interesting coda is that the online version of the article has a correction in it: Carr had referenced TV Guide as being owned by News Corp. when in fact News Corp completed its sale in May.

Rules for "American Idol"

It's that time of year...time to see how many Americans really have no singing talent. But are deluded enough to think they deserve a shot at being a celebrity.

I'm talking about the auditions part of the program.

I am not a big fan, and have only watched one season through the end. But I've seen enough audition episodes to identify some basic ground rules to get a yellow ticket to Hollywood. Ignore them at your peril.

• Have some real singing talent.
• Seriously, dude, have some talent. It helps if you actually have a regular place to sing that isn't the shower.
  
• Do not sing a a signature song from Mariah Carey or other diva. Not because you can't compete with her voice; perhaps you can. Don't do it because doing so gives judge Randy Jackson the opportunity to talk about how he knows Mariah and how he produced Mariah. Even if you're good, he's not going to like you. It's just not worth it. Sing another song.
• Do not sing a song made famous by an American Idol winner or runner up. They've already heard the song about a million times. Sung better, too.
  
• Do not sing a song you've written yourself. It's difficult for the judges to determine if you're a good singer if they don't know the song. Also, only freaks sing their own songs during auditions.
• Have an interesting back story to tell. If you're any good, the producers will help you polish it. But be careful: there's a line between really interesting and, um, singing a song you wrote.
  
• Do not bring any show-and-tell items. People have brought in fans, posters, photos of their students -- things that take time away from the main point of the proceedings: to determine whether or not you deserve a trip to Hollywood. There may be exceptions, but if you bring life accessories into the audition room, it's a safe bet that your so-called singing talent isn't what you think it is. Not surprisingly, the people I saw who expected to do some show-and-tell included people who sang their own songs.
• Ignore Ryan Seacrest. Sure he may act like he's your friend before you enter the audition room, but he's not. His so-called job is to inject some sort of tension into the audition process. Being friends with him does not help you get to Hollywood. If you get selected for Hollywood, you should be polite of course, but he's not your friend.
  
• Ignore Simon. He may get the most attention, but the most important judge for you to impress is Randy Jackson. The reason: Paula pretty much votes in a block with Randy. You only need two judges to say yes to get to Hollywood; if Randy says yes, start packing, dawg.
• If all three judges say no, it's okay to tear up, but do not lose control. Especially don't start cursing out Simon and the rest of the judges. The producers have complete control: they will bleep your voice, cover your mouth with an Idol logo (to prevent us from hearing what kind of, um, uh, person you think Simon is), and can make you look like a deranged freak. If that's really you're goal, you can get a lot more airtime on other programs. Save the effort for a program and audience that really cares, like Jerry Springer.

Good luck!

Not So Noble Wall St. Journal

As everyone knows by now, Al Gore won the 2007 Noble Peace Prize.

You might not know it from reading the Wall St. Journal's editorial page. In an editorial entitled, "Not Nobel Winners," the Journal's editorial team named a lot of worthy people and organizations who might deserve to win, but didn't.

The editorial also didn't mention Gore's name at all.

I'm not judging the Journal's editorial page. Just reporting on it. As its sister media outlet, Fox News would say, you decide.