REPORT: After obsessive coverage of O'Keefe's video, Fox largely ignored his arrest
Fox News' January 26 evening programming largely ignored conservative activist James O'Keefe's arrest for his alleged role in a plot to attempt to tamper with the telephone system at Sen. Mary Landrieu's (D-LA) New Orleans office, dedicating 4 minutes and 34 seconds to the story, with Fox News' three top-rated programs for 2009 not mentioning O'Keefe's arrest. By contrast, Fox News devoted more than one hour on the evening of September 10, 2009, to discussing video footage of O'Keefe and conservative activist Hannah Giles, who was posing as a prostitute while asking for assistance from employees at an ACORN office.
Fox News provided 13 times as much coverage to O'Keefe's ACORN video as to his arrest
Fox News: 4 minutes, 34 seconds to discussing O'Keefe's arrest. Fox News programming between 5 p.m. ET and 11 p.m. ET -- Glenn Beck, Special Report, The Fox Report, The O'Reilly Factor, Hannity, and On the Record -- devoted a total of 4 minutes and 34 seconds to discussing reports that O'Keefe and three alleged accomplices had been arrested the previous day for allegedly attempting to tamper with Landrieu's phone. Fox News' three top-rated shows from 2009 -- The O'Reilly Factor, Hannity, and Glenn Beck -- did not address the story. Special Report with Bret Baier devoted 1 minute and 47 seconds to the story, at one point calling O'Keefe "a hero to many for exposing ACORN"; The Fox Report with Shepard Smith devoted 2 minutes and 2 seconds to the story; and On the Record with Greta Van Susteren devoted 45 seconds to the story. Smith also discussed the story during Studio B with Shepard Smith, which airs at 3 p.m. ET.
Fox News: More than one hour discussing O'Keefe's ACORN video footage. By contrast, the day after Glenn Beck helped Andrew Breitbart publicize O'Keefe's initial ACORN video, Fox News dedicated 1 hour, 1 minute, and 51 seconds to discussing the story, according to a Media Matters review of Fox News' programming between 5 p.m. ET and 11 p.m. ET on September 10, 2009. Beck himself spent 38 minutes and 11 seconds discussing the video that night.
1.) 18 U.S.C. | 1036 : US Code - Section 1036: Entry by false pretenses to any real property, vessel, or aircraft of the United States or secure area of any airport
2.) 18 U.S.C. | 1362 : US Code - Section 1362: Communication lines, stations or systems
3.) 18 U.S.C. | 2 : US Code - Section 2: Principals
The ACORN videos were a series of videos released weakly and spanned many months of news.
How is it fair to compare these two again?
How could you POSSIBLY devote more than a few minutes of story to this? There isn't much to talk about, yet. Same thing with the original ACORN videos, Special Report dedicated... two minutes.
The audacity in this "research" is astounding.
By the way,
Glenn on the radio: "insanely stupid, not to mention illegal"
Pat: "Possibly discredits everything else they were doing"
Stu: "I'm very interested slash concerned" (using his typical hefty dose of sarcasm on "slash")
That was on ONE day during a six hour stretch on a story that resulted in no arrests. During that same stretch of time several months later, Fox spent less than five minutes on this right wing hero's epic fail that resulted in a felony arrest.
Very accurate comparison if you ask me.
This includes commentators, of which Beck spent almost his entire 1-hour program on (about 62% of all the air time as reported by MMfA). Beck prepared for that particular show, to break that news, for at least two days. Now for the arrest, he heard it secondhand, with programming already prepared, and nothing to say (at least until today). This is a case of hard news versus soft news. Now I'm no expert but hard news generally preempts soft news.
My other two questions are still unchanged:
How is it fair to compare these two again?
How could you POSSIBLY devote more than a few minutes of story to this?
Remember, this is comparing a story about someone getting federal money that eventually led to a cut of federal funding their exclusion from the census, versus someone getting arrested in what appears to be a failed wiretapping attempt with no solid evidence and no video, audio, or any other evidence to show, and having very little impact on politics.
You tell me, while both stories are pretty interesting, but what would make for more interesting news? I'll vote for the one that has cheesy undercover video about sex scandals and federal money. (And even then, their reporters never devoted more than a few minutes at a time on the subject!)
I enjoy the double standard here, that somehow FNC needs to devote no air time to the cheesy cover up that includes plenty of video but implies that they need to have an hour of breaking news coverage to a simple arrest while acting on very little information (Beck even joked about this, saying they "I don't know much about the situation but they acted stupidly" of course jesting at professorgates).
The ACORN videos? Not really news at all.
The attempted disruption of a sitting US Senator's phones for partisan political purposes? Really big news!
Your side constantly does this. Obama complained about that behavior in the SOTU address tonight even - harping on non-stories which poisons the national discourse we SHOULD be having. ACORN hasn't ever done one instance of vote fraud. The leadership of the group has never endorsed voter registration fraud. And they did nothing illegal WRT the ACORN tapes, despite what O'Keefe, et al declared.
The ACORN story was a non-story that turned into something because the rightwing has 'reduced serious debates to silly arguments."
That's a formula too good to resist for Fox News.
This is a real problem. I wrote about it on my blog. It's an interesting progressive blog, Tomorrow's Progressives(mbloomer1.edublogs.org) - read it if you like.
I love irony.
LMFAO!!!!!!!!!!!!!
In the face!!!!!!!!!
Don't drop the soap Jamie!!!!!!!!!!
Hell, they didn't even have those annoying fox news alerts that are used to intro every story.
Also, since ACORN has always been the subject of demonization from by right (and therefor FOX, of course), I automatically distrust FOX's coverage of any ACORN news. However, what those ACORN employees did took their status down a big notch in my opinion. You really can't say now that a corrupt ACORN isn't possible, unless you'll automatically cya for them no matter what they do. I'm glad they were exposed, even if I'm not happy with FOX using it for right-wing nut propaganda.
Come on people. Perspective on both sides, please. Reading most of the comments here just looks like idiots throwing mud at other idiots. It's embarrassing to see so many lefties jumping on the rightie's hate game bandwagons.
I have always felt the cable channels owed the umbrella boy a billion dollars for the hours of programming he provided.
What would they have talked about, if that balloon had not taken off. What a boring day.
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Something I heard in the Speech last night that I had misunderstood all these years.
Here is some more Reality.
I served in the Army twice at maybe 6 or 8 Army posts, the Merchant Marine to Manila, Singapore, and Calcutta, and the Ohio State Guard.
There were many a day when we normal people felt uncomfortable with one or two of the people who had that famous birth defect, came into the shower.
We always told them, If you make any move to celebrate your birth defect, out you go.
Now I found I have been misreading this little phrase that has become so popular that the Pres brought it up at the SOTU speech.
I was always satisfied with that phrase, until I found I was misreading it.
I always thought it said, like we said in the shower, "Don't act, Don't kill."
!