{"id":7111,"date":"2006-04-11T13:05:18","date_gmt":"2006-04-11T17:05:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=7111"},"modified":"2006-04-11T13:05:18","modified_gmt":"2006-04-11T17:05:18","slug":"abc-seeks-feedback-on-iraq-coverage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/abc-seeks-feedback-on-iraq-coverage\/","title":{"rendered":"ABC seeks feedback on Iraq coverage"},"content":{"rendered":"

Apparently, all the complaining from the White House and its allies about the “negative tone” of the media’s Iraq coverage has led ABC’s Good Morning America to seek some input<\/a> from viewers.<\/p>\n

On March 22, the show went beyond reporting on the war coverage to ask viewers to suggest in e-mails the stories they would choose to headline. Posed by the co-anchor, Diane Sawyer, the question came at the end of a segment in which Dan Harris, the show’s Baghdad correspondent, gave a rundown of the stories breaking in Iraq that day. They ranged from hard news, like reports of insurgent attacks on police stations, to human interest stories like the celebration of a Kurdish spring festival.<\/p>\n

“All week there was this drumbeat on the topic,” said Ben Sherwood, the executive producer. “The president was challenging the news media and saying there’s a whole world of stories that we don’t cover.”<\/p>\n

By March 23, “Good Morning America” had received more than 1,800 responses. Although the show did not give a breakdown of the results, Mr. Sherwood said the reaction “was not uncommon.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sherwood said that the invitation for input is similar to the way “newspapers seek and publish letters to the editor, and in the same way that radio programs have call-in time.” Maybe. I didn’t see the segment, but the NYT description suggested that the program asked viewers to prioritize news segments and pick which ones should be emphasized most.<\/p>\n

I’m not sure what to make of this. If a bunch of Bush supporters blitzed Good Morning America with responses, arguing that the school opening in which no one was killed is more important than a mosque bombing, should ABC rearrange its schedule? Go with “soft” news because it might make people feel better? I’d hope not. Prioritizing news by popularity contest seems like a pretty bad idea.<\/p>\n

Of course, there’s a flip side: if Good Morning America offered us a chance to vote on whether to lead with Bush authorizing a classified leak or the latest Britney Spears news, I wouldn’t mind adding my two cents to the debate. I have a hunch I’d lose, though.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Apparently, all the complaining from the White House and its allies about the “negative tone” of the media’s Iraq coverage has led ABC’s Good Morning America to seek some input from viewers. On March 22, the show went beyond reporting on the war coverage to ask viewers to suggest in e-mails the stories they would […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7111\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}