John H. Fund
Passing Lane: Left-wing attacks help boost John Stossel’s and Brit Hume’s
audiences
http://www.jewishworldreview.com — SOMETIMES the best measure of a
reporter’s effectiveness is the virulence of the attacks against him. Case
in point: Last month, left-wing groups ganged up on two dissenters from the
liberal media orthodoxy: ABC’s contrarian reporter John Stossel and a former
ABC colleague of his, Brit Hume, who is now Fox News’s Washington bureau
chief.
Environmental groups have been furious for years with Mr. Stossel, a former
consumer-affairs reporter who is now a skeptic about ecological doomsayers.
Last year, they finally caught him in an error. They extracted an on-air
apology from Mr. Stossel after he mistakenly reported that a test had shown
organic food was no more healthy than processed food. In fact, the tests had
not been conducted; the error originated with an ABC producer. Ever since
then, every one of Mr. Stossel’s broadcasts has been subjected to
microscopic analysis by advocates who hope to discredit his work.
When the Washington-based Environmental Working Group heard that Mr. Stossel
was filming a special called "Tampering With Nature," challenging horror
stories about global warming and genetic engineering of food, they sprang
into action. After Mr. Stossel interviewed several young children about what
they were learning in school at a California Earth Day seminar, one of the
teachers conducting the seminar became concerned. She had one of the parents
contact the Environmental Working Group to express concern about Mr.
Stossel’s "confrontational" approach. Mike Casey of the Environmental
Working Group then contacted several other parents whose kids had been
interviewed by ABC.
Those parents then wrote ABC to revoke their permission for airing of the
interviews. Mr. Stossel noted that several of the parents were present for
the interviews and had been pleased with the results. But he and ABC agreed
to respect the wishes of the parents.
When the special aired on June 29, Mr. Stossel explained how the disputed
interviews came to be pulled and then showed a segment of him interviewing a
brand-new group of kids from Manhattan public schools. They confirmed that
much of what passes for environmental education in school today is bunk–the
polar ice caps are melting and the air is dirtier now than it has ever been.
Watching the Stossel special, it became clear why environmental groups are
so afraid. Mr. Stossel puts people on camera who almost never get
interviewed. Among them were a group of leading scientists who reported that
the science fueling the global warming fears is anything but settled.
Another was Patrick Moore, a former director of Greenpeace, who said the
environmental movement has been hijacked by political activists: "They’re
using environmental rhetoric to cloak agendas like class warfare and
anticorporatism that, in fact, have almost nothing to do with ecology."
The audience seemed to agree. The Stossel special won a Nielsen rating of
6.8, an audience of more than 10 million households. It had a bigger
audience than "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" and was the second-highest
rated show that evening. Left-wing pressure groups will continue to attack
ABC for giving Mr. Stossel a platform, but he really represents a limited
form of equal time for a network whose coverage usually tilts to the left.
It also takes chutzpah for the left to attack Fox News Channel for being
biased and unbalanced. For years the left ignored Fox as a hobby horse of
Rupert Murdoch. But starting last year, it caught up with and then surpassed
CNN as the most popular cable news network. June was the eighth straight
month Fox finished first in primetime, with an audience that is up 40% over
last year. The two networks are nip-and-tuck when it comes to daytime
ratings, but Fox (available in 68 million homes) is now a clear challenger
to CNN (82 million homes).
So it’s no surprise that Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, a liberal
watchdog group, has come forward to claim that Fox’s signature political
show, "Special Report With Brit Hume," is unbalanced. FAIR claims that 71%
of the show’s guests for the first 4½ months of this year were conservative
and 89% of the political guests were Republican. Mr. Hume responds by noting
that during the entire period that FAIR conducted its analysis Republicans
were the ones in power, controlling the White House, Senate and House for
the first time in 50 years.
Mr. Hume could have made more of an effort to have Democrats on his program.
But his show doesn’t follow the pattern of most other shows in which two
opposing players face off and debate a topic. The only political interview
segment is a one-on-one and usually involves a newsmaker. Mr. Hume is right
that most of the newsmakers in Washington before Jim Jeffords left the GOP
were Republicans.
Besides, liberal figures like Sen. Hillary Clinton boycott Fox. If leading
Democrats won’t appear on Fox, it seems passing strange for FAIR to complain
about the network’s lack of "balance." Moreover, other Fox shows, such as
"The O’Reilly Factor," "Hannity & Colmes" and "The Edge with Paula Zahn,"
feature debate formats. I’ve appeared on those shows, and I’ve always been
paired with a liberal. The FAIR report simply ignores those shows.
ABC News anchor Peter Jennings, no conservative, says he watches Mr. Hume
"and I don’t see the bias." In contrast with Dan Rather, Mr. Jennings is
remarkably candid in acknowledging that conservatives have a legitimate beef
about network television. Last week he told the Boston Globe that "[for]
those of us who went into journalism in the ’50s or ’60s, it was sort of a
liberal thing to do. Save the world." As a result, he says, "conservative
voices in the U.S. have not been as present as they might have been and
should have been in the media."
That’s not how James Wolcott, a contributing editor of Vanity Fair, sees it.
In a story touted on the cover as "Bully Boys of Fox News," he portrays the
network as "a vanity showcase catering to the Angry White Male in his autumn
plumage." Mr. Wolcott goes so far as to say that a regular viewer of Fox
News is subjected to a propaganda barrage in service of a "game plan." That
plan includes "an end to legal abortion, the privatization of Social
Security, a never questioning support of Israeli might, a salivating worship
of weaponry, . . . crediting the economic success of the Clinton presidency
to anyone but Bill Clinton, and glorifying Ronald Reagan as the quintessence
of American majesty." This guy is as conspiratorial as Reed Irvine.
Expect more attacks on alternative media sources, ranging from Fox and John
Stossel to Rush Limbaugh and the Drudge Report. Their success at attracting
an audience shows, as Mr. Wolcott admits, that the established networks have
"opened up a passing lane" for competitors.
Half the country, and a larger percentage of the news-junkie audience, voted
for George W. Bush. The big three networks and CNN have often failed to
treat the views of this audience with respect.That imbalance is now being
corrected, sometimes in the brash and brassy manner of a John Stossel or a
Bill O’Reilly. It’s a different style than the modulated tones of a Tom
Brokaw or Brian Williams, and it rubs liberals the wrong way. If they were
smart, they’d be trying to understand and learn from their competitors’
successes. Instead they’re lashing out. The main effect is to alert viewers
where to go if they really want something different in network news.
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