‘Fair and equitable coverage’

September 13, 2006

Looking at the three “major public-relations offensives” the Bush gang has launched over the last year on Iraq and national security, there are a few subtle differences, but one constant: every time the president speaks, he gets blanket media coverage.

No matter how similar Bush’s comments are to every other time he’s spoken on the subject, the White House asks the networks to air all of the speeches, in their entirety. Even though the networks know there’s unlikely to be anything new or newsworthy, they always oblige.

Dem leaders are sick of it, so they’re starting to work the refs.

Frustrated by President Bush’s receipt of near-constant media attention on national security, Democratic Congressional leaders on Tuesday accused the major television networks of unfair coverage and demanded equal time for their ideas.

In a letter to the networks, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) charged Bush with politicizing security matters for partisan gain and urged the nation’s five major network executives to give them time to present their competing viewpoints. They said that “until now, there been a complete absence of balance in the news coverage.”

Obviously, the bully pulpit is a perk of the presidency. But every time the networks offer the White House blanket coverage for yet another speech with the same ideas, arguments, and words as the last 50 similar speeches, the broadcasts effectively become hour-long commercials — which neither the RNC nor the administration pay for.

“The issue of national security has regularly been politicized and exploited for partisan gain by the Bush Administration and Republicans in Congress,” the Democrats wrote.

“The president’s recent speaking schedule and his nationally televised prime time speech last night strongly suggest that similar tactics will be employed in the coming weeks leading up to Election Day to heighten public anxiety and promote partisanship.”

Well, of course they will. It worked perfectly in 2004, the networks apparently didn’t learn anything from the experience, so the Bush gang naturally assumes the same scheme will work again. And they’re probably right.

“In order to provide the American people with complete information to make the best choices come Election Day, we ask that you commit your network to providing fair and equitable coverage to the viewpoints of both Republicans and Democrats on these crucial national security debates,” Reid and Pelosi wrote.

Any chance a letter like this will have an effect? Yeah, I doubt it too.

It’s getting so bad they have to interrupt Republican propaganda movies like “Path” so that Bush can further propagandize in person.

  • Frankly, Reid and Pelosi don’t present well enough to make me want to see them on camera more.

    We need Howard Dean to take the mic, and start pounding these clowns, not a couple of people who act like Mr. and Mrs. Rogers.

    If we had the Harry Reid who shut down the senate, I’d say yeah, that guy. But he’s gone AWOL.

  • Oh who cares what the networks do? Message to the DNC: Stop whining, get off your butts and come out and talk to us, the people who will vote for you.
    Hello, this is the real world sweetheart. The bullies have the networks by the goolies (granted the networks may have willfully and joyfully placed their goolies in the bullies’ hands) but we, the people don’t have time for you to waste asking them to play fair. They don’t have to and they ain’t gonna. So why don’t you come out and talk to us? One thing Bush doesn’t excel at is public speaking. That is speaking to the real public not a carefully vetted audience that will baaa a long with whatever he says. He can’t answer questions on the fly. If you do it enough, if you hold a meeting and 50,000 people show up, if you blow off the knuckle-dragging Go Team Bush cheerleaders, the cameras will follow. Just stop wasting time!

    Gah. I feel like I’m on a sinking ship and people are worried whether the colour of the life boats clashes with their socks.

  • I have wondered over and over of the last few years, why the press bothers to show up. They have to know that the pResident is not going to say anything new. They have to know that he is going to trot out the same old tired talking points rewritten to sound new. What is the point… seriously? Is it to give their respective talking heads TV time? Justify their salaries? Fill up air time? Don’t want to miss Big News (not that that has ever been likely)? What? I wonder when or if they will ever get tired of being used as part of the PR arm of the White House. I guess they really don’t have any self respect.

  • Gotta agree with The Answer is Orange. Go after the 2/3rds of this country that doesn’t vote! Don;t think the networks are gonna give you a fair shake, they’re not. Plus, most everyone watching TV absolutely HATES when they preempt regular programming for another Presidential speech.

    BTW Love your moniker, orange! I didn’t get it till I went to post this!

  • We heard a lot about targeting first-time voters in 2004. What happened with that? Nothing much as I recall. People who don’t vote tend to have serious obstacles to political involvement in their life circumstances or their thinking apparatus. It might take a Head Start type program to even get them ready to consider and evaluate a political message. CB and Digby have posted in this vein about Christopher Hayes’s accounts of talking to undecided voters.

  • Does anyone watch Bush’s speeches? I’m a political junkie, but I can’t bring myself to bother; I’ve heard it all before. Does Nielsen pay attention to the numbers?

  • The Democrats should speak directly to the American people about the problem. And they should publicly acknowledge the problem with the press that they know is happening.

    The Democrats are de facto agreeing to continue to play handicapped, otherwise.

    And maybe this should read:

    “In order to provide the American people with complete information to make the best choices come Election Day, we demand that you commit your network to providing fair and equitable coverage to the viewpoints of both Republicans and Democrats on these crucial national security debates,” Reid and Pelosi wrote.

  • I’m kind of new at this,but have to vent.

    As much as I fear the “real” Republicans currently running America, very few Democrats offer any sort of clarity. I have to conclude that no loyal opposition exists. If any Congressperson held country over party, then we’d be hearing a lot more specifics regarding our plans for Iraq.

    Anyone who’s been to Balad can see that the US isn’t leaving Iraq for a very long time. Maybe we can send the guard and reservists home (a thoroughly Republican constituency whose loyalty must be eroding), but we’ll have many thousands of troops in Iraq for many years, just like in Cuba, Italy, Phillipines, Germany, or almost any other place we’ve ever occupied.

    The announced Pentagon intentions appears to amount to withdrawing from the streets of Iraq into defensible bases, and letting the Badrists, Sadrists, fedayeens, takfiris, etc, have it out until somebody wins or they’re ready to negotiate with each other. Maybe this is the only pragmatic way forward. Even so, it represents a huge betrayal of the people in Iraq who have worked with us. Fairness would indicate a resettlement plan like we gave the Vietnamese who were friendly to America. Sadly, no one will discuss this kind of ramification. The “real” Republican people think it’s treasonous, and the rest seem to believe that it’s not their war and not their problem.

    The country never mobilized for this “war”, it seems more unlikely by the day that we ever will. The funds for nation building are gone now, and never were more than a small fraction one year’s military expenditures in Iraq. No doubt some hard choices must be made at this made. The most honor we can salvage comes from an open-minded debate involving the whole of America, explaining our hopes and true intentions, accounting and trying to remedy our shames and mistakes, and moving forward as a nation in open-eyed agreement.

  • Message to Dems: Win a presidential election an you too can get hold that valuable bully pulpit! Or are you saying that Bush is getting more media coverage than Clinton or any other president got — which I find hard to believe

  • JRS Jr. Of course you find it ‘hard to believe’. You probably also thought that months of Monica was justifiable. We are all shaped by our own biases.

    In baseball, you don’t expect every umpire to call the same strike zone, but you do expect the umpire to call the same strike zome for both teams.

    Dems resent that the press frequently took Clinton to task, despite a solid economy, good popularity, and some legitmate policy successes.

    On the flip side, Bush took the office with the majority of voters preferring his opponent, has run the treasury dry, and has pounded the military to a bloody pulp. In terms of popularity, is about two steps shy of a French Kiss at a family reunion, and *widely* described as a liar and an idiot. Yet, along with the womanizing, birds bred in captivity slaughtering, war profiteer, Dick “Go Fuck Yourself” Cheney, he frequently gets a free pass when making bold faced lies to the Amercian people.

    I personally believe that Clinton’s lying to the American people about an affiar was a mistake. He should have told the truth and lying should have consequences. But as a Christian, lying about war, poverty, and justice are all important to me to. If the press can work up a lather for ‘ick’ on a blue dress, it can damn well work up a lather for bold faced lies intended to make us all cowering sheep for personal gain.

    -jjf

  • Fitz, I’m pretty sure if (or as many people might believe, when) Bush is caught lying to a federal prosecutor or convicted of any other crime leading to his Impeachment, the press would spend the same amount of time chasing the story down with the same vigor. Also, you have to blame the American public for creating the demand for such coverage of the issue. Without any interest, the national press would have been forced to move on…

    But the point is, Bush is the President, and like every President before him, he has the mic. If the dems find someone electable, then they can get that very same mic. Maybe the party leaders should spend more time finding that person and crafting an electable platform vs. bitching about the harsh reality of the power of the bully pulpit.

  • There are entire stations devoted to re-runs and most networks re-run programs during the summer. Why should Bush behave differently? The ratings drop slightly for the second time around, and even more for the third, fourth, fifth…. But the avid fans will watch regardless.

  • Nobody’s tuning into these speeches to hear the President talk. Anyone who does is politically aware enough to be bored silly by the repetition. For the most part, the speeches are seen by regular TV viewers, who would rather be watching the shows they had planned on watching. I don’t know if irritation at having one’s show interrupted has ever swung a vote, but there’s a cost in there somewhere. I bet that cost is closer to benefit than the administration thinks.

    An interesting tactic might be for Pelosi/Reid to lobby for 30 seconds. Not boring long-winded speeches, not equal air-time, just 30 seconds. It would be easier for the networks to agree. They could then use those 30 seconds to 1: point out that the preceding speech was repititive and partisan 2: Reffer viewers to a website which outlines the Democrats ideas on the matter at hand (maybe also reference an add in a national newspaper the next day for people who don’t have internet). 3:Thank the veiwers for their thirty seconds and apologize for interrupting their show.

  • I’m with Racerx. Watching Reid and Pelosi is like watching paint dry. Frankly, the Democrats would get some coverage if they raised some hell. A lot of hell. They shouldn’t say a certain republican bill is “not in the best interests of working Americans.” They should say the bill is a “pile of crap!” And, once attention is gained, explain why it’s a pile of crap.

  • “Garbage” would be more polite, I guess. — Alibubba (16)

    And wouldn’t get the station in trouble for dirty language.

  • There’s a point I kept trying to make last week again in the run-up to ABCs 9/11 schlock-u-drama: A corportation isn’t a person. It doesn’t have a conscience or a sense of shame. It has a balance sheet and a bottom line. If you want to modify the behavior of a corporation, you have to either regulate it or find a way to make the undesirable behavior unprofitable (or alternately, make a desired behavior more profitable).

    In some cases, the individuals making up an organization may even want to do the right thing but unless they can demonstrate that doing it will make the company money or failure that to do it will cost them money, their hands may be effectively tied. After all the mission of most corporations is make money for their shareholders. They’re not supposed to do anything just for the joy of it. It’s in their charters.

    I really think we should be studying how the religious right has browbeaten the MSM into carrying their water because frankly, if they can do it, anyone can. Most of them aren’t all that bright and in a lot of cases there aren’t even that many of them. It’s not like you actually have to organize a consumer boycott every time some company does something you don’t like. I supect pulling off one or two successful mass letter writing campaigns even threatening some sort of boycott or unfavorable legeslative initiative would soon have network exec’s diving under their desks every time someone on the left says “boo,” the same way they do now every time someone on the religious right even looks at them crossly.

    Corporation are also sensitive about their images, because they do understand that public perceptions have direct implications on their bottom line. So while writing a letter, or even a thousand letters, to a large company asking them to do the right thing typically won’t have much effect, loudly and publically calling them out about doing the wrong thing often can. And here, the potential of the internet both as a parallel news media in itself and as a medium for organizing actions simply cannot be overstated. There’s really no reason I can think of why we shouldn’t be winning a lot more of these fights.

    Anyway, it’s something to think about.

  • One of the many reasons that MSM has swung to the right is the constant and largely uncontested claims of “liberal bias.” An official counterpunch from the left is long overdue. I hope others join in.

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