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The Obama administrationâs high-profile shunning of Fox News seems, at least in the short run, to have been a publicity boon for the conservative cable network. Other news outletsâin print, online, and on airâhave grabbed on to the issue, devoting column inches and airtime to Foxâs standing with the White House. And Fox, never shy about becoming part of the story, has jumped in with both feet: not just infotainment purveyor Glenn Beck, who was busy doing his Beckian best (worst?) with the topic Monday evening, but also serious journalist Chris Wallace, who devoted a thirteen-minute segment of the latest Fox News Sunday to his inability to book administration officials on the show.
But if Wallace tires of self-pityâand expands his Rolodex beyond the likes of Terry McAuliffe and Karl Rove, his guests for the aforementioned segmentâhe might find that his apparent predicament is actually a stroke of good fortune, and one that could have real journalistic benefits. Thatâs because getting the evil eye from the White House frees him from the D.C. access game, and the peculiar passive-aggressive relationship it often fosters between journalists and people in power. It also gives him an opportunity to do something radical with his show: invite on interesting people who have interesting things to say.
As a rough sketch, these are the rules that govern Sunday morning: the shows compete to get the biggest ânewsmakersâ they can, then do their best to catch them in a gaffe. Thatâs a formula that turns political reporting into political theater (starring, of course, the showsâ hosts). Worse, most of the time, the theater is deadly dull. Gaffes are rare, and message discipline is tightâtop government officials having, in most cases, learned how to speak on camera on their way to becoming top government officials. What we are left with, then, is politicians saying things theyâve said before and will say again.
Consider the episode that first called attention the Fox/White House feud: Barack Obamaâs tour of five talk shows in one Sunday morning, from which Fox News Sunday was pointedly left out. A mere month later, does anyone remember anything that Obama said? Even at the time, what attracted attention was the stamina required to pull off something akin to âthe full Ginsburg,â and the fact that Fox was excluded. The presidentâs actual words? Not so much.
Sometimes, of course, a modicum of news is made on the Sunday shows. That was the case this past weekend, when Rahm Emanuel appeared on CBS and CNN, where he said that the U.S. would postpone a decision on sending more troops to Afghanistan until the political situation there is resolved. And in a case like that, the role of the shows in bringing that news to light amounts to⌠turning on the lights and the cameras. The White House had a message that it wanted to get out to the American people and the Afghan government, and it used CNN and CBS to do so. Thatâs a victory of sorts for those stations, but if Emanuel had opted for ABC and NBCâor, for that matter, Foxâwould anyone have noticed a difference?
The funâand the valueâin being a journalist is not being the first to tell people something they would have known anyway. Itâs giving people facts, information, and ways of seeing the world that they wouldnât have otherwise had. If your outlet is a television talk show, one way to do that is not by competing for the same guests as a half-dozen other shows, but by identifying interesting people who wouldnât normally have a platform. Being cut off from the usual suspects, rather than being a punishment, could actually be a prod in the right directionâone that Fox, if it were serious about living up to its self-presentation as a corrective to the âmainstream media,â would be well-poised to follow. This could, in theory, be an opportunity to not just present the predictable âconservativeâ slant, but to step off the access train and really find alternative voices and sources of news.
Now, I donât actually expect Foxâeven the âhard newsâ programs, as distinct from the Beck/Hannity crowdâto turn its excommunication to journalistic advantage. In a move that will surprise none of its critics, the network seems to have decidedâprobably correctlyâthat the biggest ratings gains are to be found by calling as much attention to this feud as possible. And even without White House access, there are plenty of familiar faces and conventional-wisdom suppliers that the network can call upon: see the roster of CEOs, senators and other establishment-types that have warmed the chair in Wallaceâs studio of the past month. Still, hereâs hoping that one day, someone among the talking heads and their bookers will look beyond the denizens of the halls of power (and, for that matter, the perpetual punditocracy) who now rotate through the Sunday shows.
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