Today on Radio Rhetorica…
Just in case you missed Radio Rhetorica today, Ben Gardner and I discussed:
1- The Charlie Reina
letter to Romenesko discussing an alleged memo circulated each morning at
FOX news outlining the day’s spin points.
PoliticalWire is
asking FOX employees to send an example. My take: If true, not surprising. And,
in any case, not particularly interesting because FOX has every right to spin
the news any way its owners and editors please. I prefer that they be a little
more forthcoming about it, but I understand and appreciate the rhetorical
effectiveness of "fair and balanced." Further, nearly every decision FOX editors
make can be explained by the structural
biases of journalism.
2. The "Mission Accomplished" banner visible during President Bush’s address
from the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln. I wrote about this
yesterday. If I
were advising Bush at the time, I would have encouraged the banner’s use. But I
also would have prepped him for questions regarding it’s use. What he should
have said during the press conference: "You bet that was our banner. And we’re
proud of it, just as the fighting men and women of the Lincoln are proud of
completing their mission in service to America. Mission accomplished? Without
question. But more missions lie ahead, something I made clear on the deck that
day." How hard would that have been? But, then, perhaps Bush is correct; perhaps
his media people are not that "ingenious."
3. Howard Kurtz’s quote about what the press finds interesting in political
coverage from my post
earlier today.
The Fox News Daily Memo: Is the Fix in?
According to a former news producer there, The Memo is the daily bible at Fox News, and it tells how stories are to be played. It’s management. It’s politics. It’s fear, he says. Fox has already responded with: discredit the source. Next step?
By focusing on the banner, you miss the total production. The banner back then was only a small part of the show: the jet landing, the flight suit, the reoriented ship–so that San Diego wouldn’t show–, the “perfect” lighting on the president’s face.
Only after Whitehouse website info gets altered and more deaths since then than before does defense of the banner become an issue. Then blaming the navy for the banner was not all that becoming either.
I think you sometime narrowcast too narrowly.
thelrd in TEXAS
I do like your web log.