Is Canada Ready for Loudmouth TV?
Rude and Rabidly Pro-Bush, Fox News is Aiming North.
CHARLIE GILLIS
THERE IS A RHYTHMIC thrumming deep in my skull, timed to the metronome voice of a newscaster I can't identify, and broken periodically by the chime of the Fox News Alert bell. The host -- John Something, I think -- is on again about what is clearly Fox News Channel's favourite story: the suspect documents CBS aired a few weeks ago, and their potential links to John Kerry's campaign. It's not Watergate, of course, but 18 hours of Fox News immersion tends to skew one's sense of perspective. Dan Rather's on-air apology has begun to sound as laughably inadequate as Fox personalities keep saying it is, while the artful juxtaposition of Kerry clips (for the war? against it?) makes the Democratic nominee appear grubby and desperate -- the kind of guy who just might stoop to dirty tricks.
Suddenly, we cut to the President, who is rising to address the United Nations. My most enduring images of George W. Bush date back to the fall of 2000, when I spent a week covering his victorious campaign. He struck me at the time as a pretender, a bit-player cast as male lead, and nothing I've seen since has changed this perception. But on Fox, where he's treated with deference, Bush somehow comes across as earnest and poised -- nothing like the strutting charlatan I'd filed in my mind. At 11 a.m. on a Tuesday, I feel the need for a beer.
(snip)
They'd been turned down once before, but this time their chances look better. The public input phase wound up last month without a hitch, and a decision is now imminent. By Christmas Day, Bill O'Reilly, the network's pugnacious star, could be beaming into your living room.
(snip)
So what, if any, are Fox's thoughts on Canada? Hard to know, unfortunately. While it touts its own journalism as "fair and balanced," the network doesn't exactly roll out the red carpet for Canadian reporters seeking the same. An Ottawa Citizen writer who contacted Fox last fall made the mistake of mentioning the ideology issue, and was refused an interview. My own requests to visit the network's New York studios were politely rebuffed. Spokeswoman Irena Briganti told me staff were too busy with the election to chat, and advised me to call back in a month. When I observed that the election would be even closer by then, her tone turned frosty. "As I said earlier," she wrote in an email, "we're extremely busy right now and inundated with requests."
WHICH LEFT ME no choice but to judge Fox by its product -- balance be damned. So here, in a motel in suburban Rochester, N.Y., I've holed up with an emergency six-pack of Budweiser for a 48-hour marathon of news alerts, talking heads and old-fashioned partisan bickering. For sanity's sake, I'll permit myself a few forays onto rival networks, plus the odd break for meals. Otherwise, I'm confined to quarters.
(snip)
But I've hardly been watching an hour when the obvious sinks in.
My first clue comes from Carl Cameron, Fox's chief political correspondent, during a report from the campaign trail. Earlier in the day, Kerry had attacked what he saw as the president's stubborn attachment to a foundering war effort in Iraq, but Cameron has recast this as Kerry "trying to turn Bush's consistency into a weapon to use against him." And compared to his colleagues' bombast, Cameron's ham-fisted attempt at counterspin proves positively subtle. When a guest has the temerity to suggest Osama bin Laden remains at large and dangerous, John Gibson, host of The Big Story, begins shouting the poor man down. "He's in his cave!" hollers Gibson. "Just like Saddam was in his box! He's in his cave!"
Thus begins an onslaught of anti-Democrat, anti-liberal, pro-Republican rhetoric that only a true believer could construe as impartial. Softball questions for Bushies, sneers for Kerry backers; lingering shots of Bush noshing with the regular folk and brief clips of Kerry looking tired and awkward. Right-wing partisans billed as impartial experts fill the channel's prime-time shows. One teaser promises to "get to the bottom" of the controversy over Bush's Vietnam-era military record, yet throws to an interview with Byron York, a political writer for the conservative biweekly National Review. Citing information supplied by the White House, York authoritatively confirms that Bush fulfilled his obligation to the Texas Air National Guard -- forget those reports suggesting he was truant during the last two years. Untroubled by a need for documentary proof, York assures us Bush was flying "several times a month" during those last 24 months to meet his minimum of service credits. "Well," concludes host Brit Hume, apparently satisfied, "that seems to be what he did to get those points."
This curt dismissal of a key election issue -- the military credentials of a commander-in-chief who has twice sent troops into battle -- leaves me a tad stunned. But it does clear the decks for the story Fox really wants to tell. For the next two days, I will watch near wall-to-wall coverage of what Fox hosts are calling "Docu-drama," CBS's mea culpa for using suspect documents in a report alleging that Bush got into the Guard through political favouritism. Anyone can see the attraction of this saga for Fox: a legacy broadcaster with liberal leanings, while its brash, right-leaning successor enjoys its best ratings ever. And they're certainly taking full advantage. By 8 p.m. The O'Reilly Factor takes over, its host ecstatically repeating reports linking CBS's key source to the Kerry campaign. When guest Michael Isikoff, an investigative reporter with Newsweek, remarks that the uproar makes CBS look as partisan as Fox, O'Reilly beams his assent and declares his employer "the big winner" from the scandal. Fox he adds piously, "would never do anything like this."
(snip)
But beyond these bits of guilty fun, Fox is so relentlessly American, so unabashedly navel-gazing, you can't help wondering what it could possibly offer Canadians. CNN, for all its faults, has the virtues of a far-flung news team and a reasonably enlightened world view. On Fox, a dispatch from Iowa seems exotic. Reports from outside the country that do make its newscasts tend to be disasters, oddities or outrages against right-thinking patriots back home. Canada surfaces only once while I'm watching, in a story about plans to erect a monument in Nelson, B.C., honouring U.S. draft dodgers. "I think they're spoiled, snivelling little finks," opines a Vietnam veteran in the report. I'm not sure whether he's referring to draft dodgers or Canadians.
(snip)
AT 6 A.M. ON DAY 3, I rise cotton-mouthed from two beers I'd downed to get myself through The O'Reilly Factor, and flick on the breakfast show, Fox & Friends First. The title couldn't be more appropriate: throughout the next three hours, the show's hosts alternately chide and mock CBS over the document scandal, as if no such disaster could have befallen them. There's some sombre tut-tutting about the beheading of a second American hostage in Iraq -- but only after Dr. Georgia Witkin, the channel's in-house psychologist, stops by to discuss the effect of Dan Rather's apology on the American psyche. "There's still some information missing," the doctor says ruefully. "It needs to come out before the public believes."
Next come some amiable questions for White House communications director, Dan Bartlett ("Could someone from the Democratic National Committee have created these documents?"), and a public relations expert to decide whether Rather has "lost all credibility." It might seem a bit rich for a network that has just aired a full hour of rumour and innuendo to discuss writing off the career of a distinguished journalist like Rather. But at this stage practically nothing these people say surprises me. Canadians should be applauded for inviting in a network that challenges prevailing values. But if the upstarts at Fox have anything to teach us, it's that fairness and balance are highly elastic terms.
charlie.gillis@macleans.rogers.com
http://www.macleans.ca/culture/media/article.jsp?content=20041004_89710_89710
____________
As Fox spends little or no time focusing on issues beyond US borders (the odd foray into Iraq, of course, followed by routine boycotts of countries who don't agree with the Prez do occur from time to time) it will not likely have much appeal to Canadians. Since the network won't be here (if at all) until after the election, there may be little reason to watch. Besides, we don't tend to like bigmouth journalists (even Andy Rooney is widely disliked here -- dismissed as 'arrogant') so O'Reilly and Gibson may be way too much for the average Canadian to withstand. Myself, I will watch for a week. Then I will subscribe to Al Jazeera. Just to piss them off.
Rude and Rabidly Pro-Bush, Fox News is Aiming North.
CHARLIE GILLIS
THERE IS A RHYTHMIC thrumming deep in my skull, timed to the metronome voice of a newscaster I can't identify, and broken periodically by the chime of the Fox News Alert bell. The host -- John Something, I think -- is on again about what is clearly Fox News Channel's favourite story: the suspect documents CBS aired a few weeks ago, and their potential links to John Kerry's campaign. It's not Watergate, of course, but 18 hours of Fox News immersion tends to skew one's sense of perspective. Dan Rather's on-air apology has begun to sound as laughably inadequate as Fox personalities keep saying it is, while the artful juxtaposition of Kerry clips (for the war? against it?) makes the Democratic nominee appear grubby and desperate -- the kind of guy who just might stoop to dirty tricks.
Suddenly, we cut to the President, who is rising to address the United Nations. My most enduring images of George W. Bush date back to the fall of 2000, when I spent a week covering his victorious campaign. He struck me at the time as a pretender, a bit-player cast as male lead, and nothing I've seen since has changed this perception. But on Fox, where he's treated with deference, Bush somehow comes across as earnest and poised -- nothing like the strutting charlatan I'd filed in my mind. At 11 a.m. on a Tuesday, I feel the need for a beer.
(snip)
They'd been turned down once before, but this time their chances look better. The public input phase wound up last month without a hitch, and a decision is now imminent. By Christmas Day, Bill O'Reilly, the network's pugnacious star, could be beaming into your living room.
(snip)
So what, if any, are Fox's thoughts on Canada? Hard to know, unfortunately. While it touts its own journalism as "fair and balanced," the network doesn't exactly roll out the red carpet for Canadian reporters seeking the same. An Ottawa Citizen writer who contacted Fox last fall made the mistake of mentioning the ideology issue, and was refused an interview. My own requests to visit the network's New York studios were politely rebuffed. Spokeswoman Irena Briganti told me staff were too busy with the election to chat, and advised me to call back in a month. When I observed that the election would be even closer by then, her tone turned frosty. "As I said earlier," she wrote in an email, "we're extremely busy right now and inundated with requests."
WHICH LEFT ME no choice but to judge Fox by its product -- balance be damned. So here, in a motel in suburban Rochester, N.Y., I've holed up with an emergency six-pack of Budweiser for a 48-hour marathon of news alerts, talking heads and old-fashioned partisan bickering. For sanity's sake, I'll permit myself a few forays onto rival networks, plus the odd break for meals. Otherwise, I'm confined to quarters.
(snip)
But I've hardly been watching an hour when the obvious sinks in.
My first clue comes from Carl Cameron, Fox's chief political correspondent, during a report from the campaign trail. Earlier in the day, Kerry had attacked what he saw as the president's stubborn attachment to a foundering war effort in Iraq, but Cameron has recast this as Kerry "trying to turn Bush's consistency into a weapon to use against him." And compared to his colleagues' bombast, Cameron's ham-fisted attempt at counterspin proves positively subtle. When a guest has the temerity to suggest Osama bin Laden remains at large and dangerous, John Gibson, host of The Big Story, begins shouting the poor man down. "He's in his cave!" hollers Gibson. "Just like Saddam was in his box! He's in his cave!"
Thus begins an onslaught of anti-Democrat, anti-liberal, pro-Republican rhetoric that only a true believer could construe as impartial. Softball questions for Bushies, sneers for Kerry backers; lingering shots of Bush noshing with the regular folk and brief clips of Kerry looking tired and awkward. Right-wing partisans billed as impartial experts fill the channel's prime-time shows. One teaser promises to "get to the bottom" of the controversy over Bush's Vietnam-era military record, yet throws to an interview with Byron York, a political writer for the conservative biweekly National Review. Citing information supplied by the White House, York authoritatively confirms that Bush fulfilled his obligation to the Texas Air National Guard -- forget those reports suggesting he was truant during the last two years. Untroubled by a need for documentary proof, York assures us Bush was flying "several times a month" during those last 24 months to meet his minimum of service credits. "Well," concludes host Brit Hume, apparently satisfied, "that seems to be what he did to get those points."
This curt dismissal of a key election issue -- the military credentials of a commander-in-chief who has twice sent troops into battle -- leaves me a tad stunned. But it does clear the decks for the story Fox really wants to tell. For the next two days, I will watch near wall-to-wall coverage of what Fox hosts are calling "Docu-drama," CBS's mea culpa for using suspect documents in a report alleging that Bush got into the Guard through political favouritism. Anyone can see the attraction of this saga for Fox: a legacy broadcaster with liberal leanings, while its brash, right-leaning successor enjoys its best ratings ever. And they're certainly taking full advantage. By 8 p.m. The O'Reilly Factor takes over, its host ecstatically repeating reports linking CBS's key source to the Kerry campaign. When guest Michael Isikoff, an investigative reporter with Newsweek, remarks that the uproar makes CBS look as partisan as Fox, O'Reilly beams his assent and declares his employer "the big winner" from the scandal. Fox he adds piously, "would never do anything like this."
(snip)
But beyond these bits of guilty fun, Fox is so relentlessly American, so unabashedly navel-gazing, you can't help wondering what it could possibly offer Canadians. CNN, for all its faults, has the virtues of a far-flung news team and a reasonably enlightened world view. On Fox, a dispatch from Iowa seems exotic. Reports from outside the country that do make its newscasts tend to be disasters, oddities or outrages against right-thinking patriots back home. Canada surfaces only once while I'm watching, in a story about plans to erect a monument in Nelson, B.C., honouring U.S. draft dodgers. "I think they're spoiled, snivelling little finks," opines a Vietnam veteran in the report. I'm not sure whether he's referring to draft dodgers or Canadians.
(snip)
AT 6 A.M. ON DAY 3, I rise cotton-mouthed from two beers I'd downed to get myself through The O'Reilly Factor, and flick on the breakfast show, Fox & Friends First. The title couldn't be more appropriate: throughout the next three hours, the show's hosts alternately chide and mock CBS over the document scandal, as if no such disaster could have befallen them. There's some sombre tut-tutting about the beheading of a second American hostage in Iraq -- but only after Dr. Georgia Witkin, the channel's in-house psychologist, stops by to discuss the effect of Dan Rather's apology on the American psyche. "There's still some information missing," the doctor says ruefully. "It needs to come out before the public believes."
Next come some amiable questions for White House communications director, Dan Bartlett ("Could someone from the Democratic National Committee have created these documents?"), and a public relations expert to decide whether Rather has "lost all credibility." It might seem a bit rich for a network that has just aired a full hour of rumour and innuendo to discuss writing off the career of a distinguished journalist like Rather. But at this stage practically nothing these people say surprises me. Canadians should be applauded for inviting in a network that challenges prevailing values. But if the upstarts at Fox have anything to teach us, it's that fairness and balance are highly elastic terms.
charlie.gillis@macleans.rogers.com
http://www.macleans.ca/culture/media/article.jsp?content=20041004_89710_89710
____________
As Fox spends little or no time focusing on issues beyond US borders (the odd foray into Iraq, of course, followed by routine boycotts of countries who don't agree with the Prez do occur from time to time) it will not likely have much appeal to Canadians. Since the network won't be here (if at all) until after the election, there may be little reason to watch. Besides, we don't tend to like bigmouth journalists (even Andy Rooney is widely disliked here -- dismissed as 'arrogant') so O'Reilly and Gibson may be way too much for the average Canadian to withstand. Myself, I will watch for a week. Then I will subscribe to Al Jazeera. Just to piss them off.
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