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Alessandra Stanleyâs New York Times piece today on President Obamaâs health care-themed weekend media blitz included a photo montage that told the story even better than Stanleyâs words do.
There on the front page was a collection of pictures taken from the same vantage point: Obama sitting in the same leather chair, talking in succession with a rotating cast of television reporters: George Stephanopoulos from ABC, Bob Schieffer from CBS, John King from CNN, David Gregory from NBC, and Jorge Ramos from Univision. It looked like a time-lapsed photo of a speed-dating session.
The patchwork of photos was also a glaring reminder, however, that one news outlet hadnât been invited to the party. After refusing to air Obamaâs health care speech on September 9 in favor of a broadcast of So You Think You Can Dance, Fox News got the presidential snub. And Stanley did her part in pointing that out:
Mr. Obama declined to discuss his proposals on the one outlet guaranteed to find fault (or change the topic to the ACORN scandal). And that made his star turn look less like a media blitz than Medici vengeanceâŚ.
Stanley went on to say that punishing Fox in this manner makes the usually âdiplomaticâ and âeven-keeledâ White House look petty. And rightfully so: the snub did look like the kind of fifth-grade, nah-nah-boo-boo kind of behavior that Obama purports to rise above. And Chris Wallace at Fox didnât elevate matters, to be sure, when he told Bill OâReilly that White House aides were âa bunch of crybabies.â
But then, Wallace also redeemed himself. Again, Stanley:
Mr. Wallace bemoaned the presidential slight, asking, âWhatever happened to reaching out to all Americans?â
Well said. If the whole point of doing sit-downs with five different news outlets is that a) you want to reach the widest audience possible, and b) the audience is increasingly fragmented, so c) you need to conduct more interviews to reach that splintered audience, and d) you want to clear up misunderstanding about health care, so e) you donât want to preach to the choir but win the hearts and minds of people who are less likely to subscribe to your thinking, then . . . (big breath) . . . in conclusion, not only should you include Fox; you should focus on it. (Even pundits at Foxâs Sworn Enemy, MSNBC, suggested that fact.)
Stanley, however, for her part, kept her distance from âhearts and minds,â focusing her attention instead on the childish âhe hit me firstâ whine-fest between Fox and the White House. In concentrating on the slap-fight, however, Stanley ignored what should be a media criticâs main concern: the audience. She closed her write-up with Obamaâs thoughts on the news mediaâs performance these daysâand whether he thinks racism is responsible for some of the recent attacks against him. Stanley:
Nipping the hands that he was feeding, Mr. Obama suggested that the news media were fueling the furor.
âI do think part of whatâs different today is that the 24-hour news cycle and cable television and blogs and all this, they focus on the most extreme elements on both sides,â he told Mr. Schieffer. âThey canât get enough of conflict. Itâs catnip to the media right now.â
Then, in the theatrical spin that is a hallmark of any Stanley piece, the critic concluded with a kicker that succumbed to the very taste-for-conflict-and-drama that Obama was disparaging:
Mostly, however, Mr. Obama demonstrated that the news media are catnip to presidents.
Well, zing. But, again: where is the discussion of the audience in all this? In ignoring that crucial point, Stanley proved one thing about the news media: that they love talking about themselves more than anything in worldâeven more than getting at the heart of the news itself.
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