How Fox News covers the NIE — or in this case, doesn’t

December 5, 2007

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.

* Special Report ran a piece Chief Washington Correspondent Jim Angle, who told viewers, “If the latest NIE is, in fact, accurate, Iran abandoned its nuclear weapons program in 2003, not long after President Bush said it was part of an axis of evil, which made some people squeamish, raising the question of whether Iran backed off nuclear weapons in spite of the Bush comments, or in part because of them.”

* Special Report also featured a discussion — with the same four conservative voices from Monday night — in which viewers heard Fred Barnes say, “It’s an estimate. It’s a guess. And there are good guesses, and they describe this latest thing as they have high confidence. Well, I don’t have high confidence in it.”

* The Big Story led with a lengthy report on the Stacy Peterson case, another lengthy report on a Tampa teacher who had sex with a student, and then another lengthy report on Norman Hsu. After these gripping news items, John Gibson asked, “We’ve got the IAEA saying they’re not trying to make one. We have got Ahmadinejad saying we just cascaded 3,000 centrifuges, we’re on our way. Who should we believe?”

* On Hannity & Colmes, Alan Colmes broached the subject, asking for responses from Republican pollster Frank Luntz and conservative activist Kristen Powers. Both guests said the NIE is not to be trusted.

* The O’Reilly Factor featured a fairly lengthy discussion about the NIE on Iran. That’s the good news. The bad news is, the discussion was with former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, who called for a congressional investigation into an NIE he dismisses, and right-wing personality Glenn Beck, who said the NIE might be right, but it’s proof of Bush’s greatness.

And people wonder why Fox News viewers are so confused about reality.

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.

Wow, what a country we live in.

  • Kondrake and Powers are NOT really conservative commentators but are the type of self hating “liberals” Fox News loves to promote so they can claim balance

    In Conservative land since Powers and Kondrake side with Cons 99 times out of 100 they are considered liberals.

  • I’m not at all surprised by Faux News follower’s confusion. I work with a bevy of them. Professionally they seem quite mediocre but always seem well informed with respect to any and all crimes involving white blonde female victims. But with respect to their political acumen, collectively they are dumber than a sack of door knobs. At least they serve as an excellent barometer on who NOT to support in an election.

  • I took a look around the fetid dumpster called Fox “News”, and after not finding much about mideast countries and their attempts to build atomic weapons, I found this interesting:

    President Nixon’s top national security adviser worried that Israel might produce nuclear warheads “clandestinely” and that Israel’s ambassador to the United States at the time, Yitzhak Rabin — later Israel’s prime minister — might “stonewall” the White House in its efforts to ascertain the Israel’s true intentions, according to newly declassified documents.

    The papers also show the Nixon administration possessed “circumstantial evidence” that Israel built its nuclear arsenal with “some fissionable material…illegally obtained from the United States” at an unspecified time prior to 1965…

    […]

    The best leverage the White House had, Kissinger argued, was to withhold delivery of Phantom fighter jets which Israel had contracted to purchase from the U.S. in 1968, and which could be used to deliver a nuclear warhead; or to threaten “their whole military supply relationship with us.”

    However, Kissinger, a Jew who fled Hitler’s Germany before coming to the United States, also recognized Nixon would be subjected to “enormous political pressure” from domestic Jewish groups if he followed either of those courses…

    http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,313651,00.html?sPage=fnc.world/mideast

  • Ah, but the fact that the non-Fox media reported on the NIE at all, gave it any credibility, and forgot to mention how it totally validates George W. Bush just goes to show how liberal they really are!

  • It’s pretty simple, really: reject anything – regardless of the source – if it doesn’t support your position, and accept anything – regardless of source – as long as it does. These same people who rejected the statements of Saddam Hussein that he had no WMD, are embracing the comments of Ahmadinejad because he says he does, or is close.

    And then you have the contingent of people like John Bolton, who are convinced the NIE was put together by intelligence operatives who have it in for Bush.

    If there were ever a case to be made for why the Bush administration to hit the road sooner, rather than later, it’s that there little to no trust associated with anything they say and anything they do – and I would argue that it is this atmosphere which presents more danger to the nation that the so-called enemies we’ve been told are out to get us.

    Fox News would make a great state-sponsored propaganda network, and given the FCC’s willingness and interest in helping to consolidate the media outlets, and Rupert Murdoch’s efforts to own everything, it’s entirely possible that we are closer to that than we would like to think we are.

    Scary.

  • According to the Republican Handbook for the Eternally Deceased, this is standard procedure. See page 110, paragraph 2:

    In light of evidence contrary to our well crafted, narrow world view, there is no such evidence. Clinton did it.

  • Hi. I just visited the http://www.foxnews.com web site, typed in “National Intelligence Estimate on Iran” and got 102 hits in “0.21 seconds.” So maybe their web site covers the actual news better than their TV propaganda machine…

    Cheers.

    Impeach, then flush. Repeat.

  • Why is Beck appearing as a guest on FoxNews? Please, please, please tell me CNN has fired him, or at least will be letting him go soon.

  • It’s all coming down.

    That’s my new perspective. The whole edifice– fake bullshit media, fake bullshit corporations, fake bullshit religions, fake bullshit economy, fake bullshit government– is about to collapse under the weight of its own bullshit, just like the Soviet Union did.

  • What a shame. The Republican Party has been hijacked by Neo-Cons and they continue to manipulate the masses with propaganda via Fox “News”.

    Maybe, with this story out, the people will start to pay more attention to Ron Paul about diplomacy and ending the war immediatly based on going there under false pretenses.

  • Apart from Faux News’ and the right-wing’s selective rejection of disquieting data it’s also still clear that they want their war. I won’t be surprised if they commence hostilities shorty after the next election. ‘Course seven years of being “Bushed” has left me kinda paranoid.

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  • FWIW,
    on Monday when I first heard this, I did a Google search and the second article listed was from Fox News.

    It’s not that they didn’t cover it, it’s that they spun it with fear, as usual:

    The U.S. intelligence community has concluded with “high confidence” that Iran halted its nuclear weapons development program in the fall of 2003 under international pressure, but is continuing to enrich uranium, and could be capable of developing a weapon as early as late 2009.
    http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,314708,00.html

  • This must be a new record: we made it through 11 comments in a row without a mention of Ron Paul.

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  • As an anti-Bush, anti-Iraq Democrat, I still feel that Fox News gets a bad rap. Sure, the network has jerks like O’Reilley and Hannity on it, but the NEWS has remained consistently impartial. Much more than I can say for MSNBC, where Keith Olbermann (nothing against the man; happen to like him) has all but taken over. Given the choice between the two of them, I’d have to stick with Fox.

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