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The one network that Obama won't be on is Fox. President Obama will not make an appearance on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace. In other words, he'll make a full court media blitz without showing up on the most powerful news media in the world. Let me say that again. The president will make a full court media blitz, but he'll skip the most powerful news media source. Now, many liberals hate the idea that Fox News is this powerful, but the numbers simply don't lie. Doing a media blitz without the most powerful media is sort of like having a baseball hall of fame and not including the all time hit king.
Fox, for their part, scored its own coup. They'll have ACORN's "chief organizer" Bertha Lewis. Frankly, that story is more interesting than the president telling the country yet again that 1)if you like your insurance you'll keep it 2)health care reform won't add one penny of deficit and 3) without it we'll go bankrupt. As such, he's allowed the media cycle to have a competing storyline.
It also gives Fox News a reason to say things like this.
Only President Obama knows why he won't show up on Fox News during the course of a media blitz. It certainly appears as though he's simply weak and afraid. That's clearly the way Wallace is portraying it. Here's the bottom line. Fox News' audience dwarfs all others. So, no matter the percentage make up, there's more conservatives, liberals and independents. Even if there are less of one or another on a percentage basis, there's more of all. The audience is that much bigger.
So, he allows Fox News to hyperanalyze not what he told Chris Wallace on FNS but rather why he wasn't there. That's the textbook definition of diluting the message. The president wanted his health care reform package to dominate the media for the next couple days. Instead, it will share the spotlight with ACORN and why he didn't show up on FNS. Here's the bottom line. What he's doing isn't working. His poll numbers are anemic. Health care's poll numbers are anemic. He's spent his entire presidency picking fights with his media opponents. It's not working. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. If he thinks showing up on friendly media for soft ball questions will suddenly work, he's sadly mistaken. When things aren't working, you shake them up. President Obama seems to want to test the definition of insanity yet again.
Well it holds with the view of the President's supporters that there is no place in American society for people who watch (and believe) Fox News.
ReplyDeleteIf President Bush could do Al Jazeera, Obama should be able to handle Fox News.
ReplyDeleteObama [when campaigning] did an interview with O'Reilly on Fox.
ReplyDeleteI never saw McCain or his brain;ess VP do anything other than sympathetic interviews after Palin's disastrous Couric view.
Why would Obama go on Fox? I mean seriously.
I guess you never saw McCain on the View. McCain didn't pass up interviews. He goes on all shows.
ReplyDeleteIf you do a media blitz and don't include the most powerful media that's not much of a media blitz.
"So, no matter the percentage make up, there's more conservatives, liberals and independents. Even if there are less of one or another on a percentage basis, there's more of all."
ReplyDelete*Ahem*. Excuse me, but what planet are you from? Liberals do not watch Fox news. I am one, and I know many many others, and I can guarantee you that the only occasion on which we watch Fox news is out of curiosity in an effort to try to understand those who do watch this sort of right-wind propaganda masquerading as bona-fide journalism (it most certainly is NOT journalism; it is more like the tabloid stuff in the checkout isle at the supermarket — the "anchors" do not even attempt to hide their own opinions and biases). Just because it once had an effete milquetoast named Colmes as a token liberal makes it neither "fair" nor "balanced".
Mr. Obama clearly didn't bother going on Fox because 99.9% of its viewers already had firmly held, deeply ingrained opinions about (all) his policies, and trying to sell ideas to them would only serve to strengthen their opposition to the same.
I mean, MSNBC is the left-wing version of Fox. I watch that every once in a while, but at least I'm not dumb enough to believe that it's actually anything more than tabloid garbage!
He was probably just too busy in that time-slot. Maybe he was trying to book the Dixie Chicks to play for his kids next party. JFC, when will it end and who will end it?
ReplyDelete