Commentary
In the home stretch of a political year marked by heated media flaps, two controversies erupted over the weekend illustrating how voters may not be the only ones who can be put into red and blue categories.
Maybe the news media can be, too.
First, with less than a month to go before Election Day, The Los Angeles Times reported Saturday that Sinclair Broadcasting, which owns local affiliates of Fox, ABC, CBS and NBC covering nearly one-quarter of the country, has ordered the affiliates to air a film, “Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal,” that attacks Democrat John Kerry’s activism against Vietnam.
According to the Times, Sinclair stations will pre-empt programming for an hour between Oct. 21 and Oct. 24. The film will be followed by a panel discussion, which Kerry will be asked to join, thus potentially satisfying fairness rules. Sinclair officials weren’t available Sunday to confirm or deny the report.
Kerry supporters call it a partisan political attack by Sinclair, which last spring drew fire when it ordered seven stations not to carry the roll call of military dead in Iraq aired by ABC’s “Nightline.” Sinclair called the roll call a political statement “disguised as news content.”
Meanwhile, ABC News’ political director said in an internal memo that while both President Bush and Kerry have distorted the truth, the Bush team has gone “way beyond what Kerry has done.”
As such, wrote ABC’s Mark Halperin, while both sides need to be held accountable, it doesn’t mean “we reflexively and artificially hold both sides `equally’ accountable when the facts don’t warrant that.”
Conservatives say Halperin’s comments prove what they’ve been saying for decades: that mainstream media tilt left. The memo “is blatantly an expression of partisanship on the part of ABC News,” said syndicated radio host Laura Ingraham. “Halperin should make it official and move down to Washington to join the Democratic National Committee.”
Along with “memogate” — in which CBS News anchor Dan Rather cited memos, later discredited, in a report questioning Bush’s National Guard service — Ingraham said that Halperin’s memo is another example of how networks are clueless to their liberal bias, which is why trust in them has declined. “They are like lumbering dinosaurs, with the Ice Age coming.”
Halperin refused to comment. ABC News spokesman Jeffrey Schneider, confirming the memo Sunday, said that Halperin “takes his responsibility to be fair as seriously as a heart attack. You will find Republicans and Democrats who have worked with him for years who know that he is fair and objective. I think our objectivity was on display for all to see Friday night when Charlie Gibson moderated the debate.”
How cable, nets view debates
Television punditry came of age during the Nixon administration, when instant analysis by talking heads prompted Vice President Spiro Agnew to complain about the “nattering nabobs of negativism.”
Those nabobs are still at it, but they’re not all negative. And an analysis of network and cable punditry after two presidential debates shows stark differences between how the Big Three broadcast networks and cable news viewed the performances.
Overall, analysts and partisan pundits in post-debate comments on NBC, ABC and CBS strongly liked John Kerry’s performance: 69 percent of comments about how Kerry did were positive, while 31 percent were negative. In comparison, comments about Bush’s performance were 45 percent positive and 55 percent negative.
Analysis by Fox News and CNN was more down the middle, finds a study by Media Tenor, a media monitoring group, and the Center for Media and Public Affairs: 57 percent of comments were positive and 43 percent negative for Kerry; Bush: 53 percent positive, 47 percent negative.
Some observers concluded that Kerry won the first debate but that the contest between him and Bush the second time around was much closer. Taken together, the analysis of 950 comments (476 about Kerry, 474 about Bush) over the course of two debate shows on TV — broadcast and cable — backed that up. But there were strong individual exceptions.