Fox's Baier: Success due to "scrappy" attitude
June 09, 2009 12:43 pm ET by Karl Frisch
Mediabistro.com's TVNewser points to a Fresno Bee profile of Fox News' Bret Baier who took the reins of Special Report from Brit Hume about six months ago.
Says Baier of his early success (emphasis added):
"I have a lot of people tell me they establish a relationship with an anchor. It is about believability and trust. It is about inviting that person into your home, into your living room, every night," Baier says in a telephone interview. “It is about the product that goes on the air. It is about being true to our motto which is 'being fair and balanced.'
"I am proud of what we have been able to do and I think our numbers and the network numbers show that we are striking a chord."
Too bad the "chord" Baier and his Fox News buddies keep striking is so badly out of tune.
The piece goes on to note that Baier attributes Fox News' success to its "scrappy" early days as a new kid on the cable news block. How touching, they only had bagels and a moving truck (again, emphasis added):
Baier knows what it means to fight for viewers. He's been with Fox News since 1998 when he started the network’s Atlanta bureau out of his apartment only two years after the channel launched.
Two years later, the presidential race between George W. Bush and Al Gore rested on "hanging chads" in Florida and a Supreme Court decision in Washington, D.C. Baier was dispatched to Florida.
"I remember CNN had all of these trucks. And they had this buffet set up. We were working out of the back of a Ryder truck and eating bagels," he recalls. "That is the beauty of Fox. We have always been scrappy."
I don’t know if "scrappy" is the right word for what Fox News has "always been."
Seems to me there may be an extra letter in there somewhere.
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The ONLY possible way that they can actually BELIEVE this Fair & Balanced baloney is to believe that ALL OTHER news media is completely just a bunch of left-wing liberal loons and that it is Fox News' moral duty to play everything on the Right.
But even then, how does that seem fair or balanced??
Neither. They are under draconian editorial discipline. If they stray from the right-wing propaganda formula, willingly or otherwise, they pay the price:
Former Fox News reporter Jon Du Pre:
"Ronald Reagan's birthday was something akin to a holy day. This was Ronald Reagan's birthday. So my assignment was to go to the Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley California, and to do live shots before dawn until dark. There weren't very many people at the Presidential Library. There wasn’t a celebration in any organized way going on. You know there was a class of fourth graders who came to the library that day to take the tour and they were lined up and they sang happy birthday. But that was pretty much the extent of the celebration. They saw my first three or four live shots and Mr. Moody called in to say, 'what is he doing out there?' Apparently, my live shots weren't celebratory enough. And I was frankly at a bit of a loss as to what to say, or do to make it seem like there was a big celebration. So I got in trouble for that one. I got in big trouble for that one, in fact I was suspended."
"Scrappy" connotes that they are some kind of "underdog."
Sorry, Fox, you can't simultaneously trot out your network's high ratings AND claim to be "scrappy."