From The Washington Post, 6/29/05:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/29/AR2005062900035.html
Prime Time For the President
By Tom Shales
Wednesday, June 29, 2005; Page C01
Although President Bush's speech at Fort Bragg, N.C., was scheduled to
last about 30 minutes, CNN anchor Paula Zahn told viewers last night
it would "no doubt" run longer because of "interruptions by the
supportive crowd" of men and women in uniform.
Well, yes and no.
The speech -- a relatively brief status report on the war in Iraq --
may have run a tiny bit longer than was announced, but there was only
one interruption from the "supportive crowd."
In fact, since the military men and women were technically at
attention, noted anchor Brian Williams of NBC News, they didn't even
applaud when Bush walked onstage to deliver the address.
The sole supportive interruption followed a sequence in which Bush
built to the line, "We will stay in the fight until the fight is won."
NBC's Kelly O'Connell, reporting from Fort Bragg, told Williams
afterward that the applause appeared to have been "triggered by
members of the president's advance team" and that once they began
clapping, the soldiers joined in.
Wolf Blitzer, co-anchoring with Zahn on CNN, told viewers there
were"no rah-rah hooahs from this group," but no one had said there
would be.
Bush's speech aired on all the major broadcast networks, something of
a surprise since as of mid-afternoon yesterday, neither NBC nor CBS
had plans to cover it.
They felt, correctly, that the speech contained nothing new or newsy
and that it didn't merit a half-hour or more of prime time.
But something changed as the day wore on, and Bush showed up on NBC
and CBS as well as on ABC and the various cable news networks that
previously had announced they would cover the speech.
In a time when some polls show the popularity of the news media to be
even lower than the approval rating for Bush's conduct of the war, the
managements of the networks may have feared hostile reaction if they
didn't air the speech live.
Political conservatives keep up a steady drumbeat of hostility against
the media, something the Bush administration does nothing to
discourage.
Refusing to air the speech probably would have led to unpleasantness
-- or at the least given the new subculture of bellicose bloggers
another alleged media conspiracy to shriek about.
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Surprised? Of course you're not.
Harry
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