Gen. Wesley Clark takes aim at McCain's war record

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Real @ Jul 7 2008, 09:12 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div><div class='quotemain'><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Denny Crane @ Jul 7 2008, 10:47 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div><div class='quotemain'>It's 6% of people who give a shit at this point. When the Democratic convention is on all the networks and cable channels, and the Republican one is only on Fox, the masses will be behind Obama by a huuuuge margin.</div>

You mean MSNBC and CNN won't be covering the Republican convention?
</div>

They didn't in years past. I don't think they covered Bush I's convention.

 

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html...agewanted=print

July 26, 2004
THE EYES OF THE NATION: THE NEWS MEDIA; Network Anchors Hold Fast to Their Dwindling 15 Minutes
By JIM RUTENBERG

Peter Jennings, the ABC News anchor, explaining how he and Tom Brokaw, his rival at NBC News, have different philosophies about the political conventions, said: ''Perhaps for Tom it's as much a social occasion as it is for some of the delegates. I think of it more as a target of opportunity.''

Mr. Brokaw, in turn, ridiculed Mr. Jennings's plans to cover the convention on the Internet and on digital television. ''If I were Peter I'd be frustrated,'' he said. ''They can talk all they want about the two-person digital channel, or whatever it is -- I'm not sure they even understand it. They will have eight people exposed to what he's doing gavel to gavel.''

While he clearly relished the sniping, Dan Rather, the CBS News anchor, dared not join in, saying, ''I'm not going to touch that one with a 15-foot pole.''

For four decades, the nominating conventions served as great gladiator coliseums for the three old-line networks and their anchors. The conventions were where they went all out to be the first to break news over several hours of broadcast television coverage. But in separate interviews in New York last week, as they were preparing once again for one of their highest-profile roles presiding in their high-tech booths, the three anchors seemed oddly diminished. They may be known by more Americans than John Kerry, but besides sniping at one another, the anchors expressed their resignation that they are not quite the giants they were as they fight for more prominence in a media world crowded by newcomers, a political world where conventions have become far more scripted and a corporate culture that is unwilling to give them more than one hour a night -- for just three of the four nights -- to cover them.

This has left the anchors seeking new ways to stand out on a landscape that has changed vastly since Mr. Rather, 72, Mr. Jennings, 65, and Mr. Brokaw, 64, covered their first conventions in 1956, 1964 and 1968, respectively.

In a particularly uncomfortable moment, the three men found themselves on the wrong end of a lecture on Sunday about their networks' paltry convention plans in a panel discussion at Harvard University. Stern words came from the PBS anchor Jim Lehrer and the CNN anchor Judy Woodruff, both of whom work for networks that are offering many more hours of coverage.

''We're about to elect a president of the United States at a time when we have young people dying in our name overseas, we just had a report from the 9/11 commission which says we are not safe as a nation, and one of these two groups of people is going to run our country,'' Mr. Lehrer said. ''The fact that you three networks decided it was not important enough to run in prime time, the message that gives the American people is huge.''

As the lecture hall echoed with applause and the three men bristled, Mr. Lehrer added, ''As a citizen, it bothers me.''

The three anchors of the biggest networks -- whose newscasts' combined audience of nearly 30 million still dwarfs that of cable news -- were hardly in a position to disagree.

''I can't believe that anybody in the news business who enjoys politics and thinks particularly this year that politics are important is not somewhat frustrated that we're not doing more on ABC, NBC and CBS,'' Mr. Jennings said in an interview on Tuesday. ''This is clear to my bosses, it's clear to my colleagues; I think you'll find the same thing in every newsroom. Could we, should we be doing more than one hour a night in prime time? The answer is yes.''

But the networks have been increasingly unwilling to give their news divisions much time to cover the conventions, arguing that they produce too little real news to warrant the pre-emption of lucrative reality shows, sitcoms and dramas.

David Westin, the ABC News president, said he did not see fit to ask for more time from the ABC network headquarters in Burbank, Calif. ''If I think there is really a justified claim, I will go to the mat like the dickens to get that done,'' Mr. Westin said. ''What we've been given is not something I can take to the West Coast in good conscience and say this is something we need to cover on the broadcast television network.''

Mr. Brokaw said he came up against the same sentiment at his network when he asked for more time, which, he said, he did again this weekend only to be rebuffed.

''We'd always like to have more time,'' said Mr. Brokaw, for whom these will be the last conventions as NBC anchor, as he is leaving his post after the election. ''On the other hand, can I go and make a strong editorial argument for the necessity of having more time? These conventions are so managed, and over-managed.''

Mr. Brokaw said Senator John Kerry's campaign staff was trying to control what the networks did to an unusual degree.

''Any entrepreneurship that we show on booking guests or unilaterally calling up people and trying to get them to come to our booth, we get a call 15 minutes later from the Kerry operation saying 'No, no, that's not part of our booking procedure,''' Mr. Brokaw said. ''There is a politburo running this convention.'' (Stephanie Cutter, a spokeswoman for Mr. Kerry, said the campaign's booking operation was set up to facilitate interviews, not restrict them.)

The campaign went so far as to try to limit the kind of questions Mr. Brokaw and Mr. Rather were to ask Mr. Kerry here on Wednesday afternoon. The staff wanted the questions to concern Mr. Kerry's expectations for the convention, nothing more, according to people at both networks. It was the sort of terms-setting that few have dared to ask of network anchors. The request was swiftly denied.

Mr. Kerry did not help matters when he failed to appear until nearly an hour before the evening newscasts, leaving the anchors to wait at Faneuil Hall with increasing anxiety. (Mr. Kerry was not running late in returning from a campaign stop but rather from his vacation home in Nantucket.)

''What that said to me was that either they don't have their stuff together, or he's ultimately responsible, or he just took it lightly,'' Mr. Rather complained.

Until now, Mr. Rather has been one of the most outspoken supporters of the conventions, an early opponent of network plans to cut back their coverage, a process that began in earnest in the 1990's.

''I argued the conventions were part of the dance of democracy and that rituals are important and that they remained an important ritual,'' he said. ''I found myself increasingly like the Mohicans, forced farther and farther back into the wilderness and eventually eliminated.''

In an interview at his office, Mr. Rather reminisced about the grandeur of conventions past, when the parties could go into them not knowing who would be their nominees. ''We broke the story in 1980 -- stunned the world, if you will -- that Ronald Reagan's first choice for vice-presidential running mate was Gerald Ford,'' he said, adding that he expected no such news now. ''If Ralph Nader comes to the Democratic Convention and announces he's withdrawing and throwing his support to John Kerry and the Democrats, that would be news,'' he said. ''I think you're more likely to see a rhinoceros in the anchor booth.''

Mr. Rather is doing the least of the three anchors when he is not the anchor of ''CBS Evening News'' or the network's prime-time convention coverage. His network has no cable outlet, and Mr. Rather said he was not interested in taking an increased role in the CBS News broadband coverage, which he equated with ''shouting into a wind tunnel.''

Mr. Jennings said he was unsure how many people would tune to the ABC digital channels -- available to people with digital television receivers or digital cable in certain markets -- and the ABC News broadband news service. But, he said, at least they were providing him an opportunity to be the anchor of gavel-to-gavel coverage, as in the old days. ''I've been told for several years that broadband is the wave of the future,'' he said. ''Well, it's the wave of the future available to me at the moment, and we have a really good political team, and what a waste if the political team were only consigned to one hour a night.''

More people will most likely see Mr. Brokaw when he is host of a daily convention special at 4 p.m. on MSNBC. But while NBC is the top-rated network news division, MSNBC is in third place on cable behind the top-rated Fox News Channel and CNN. And on cable Mr. Brokaw will also face new competition from World Wrestling Entertainment on Spike, and even from ESPN, whose morning program ''Cold Pizza'' is planning some convention-related coverage.

Yet he and Mr. Rather and Mr. Jennings agreed that the real competition would take place on broadcast television -- though at this point that competition would be restricted to a precious few minutes when the main speakers are not speaking.

''I take a back seat to nobody in being competitive -- I want to win,'' Mr. Rather said, ''whatever win is.'' He added, ''It's pretty hard to figure out these days.''

 

http://www.stateofthenewsmedia.org/2005/na...t=3&media=4

Before the convention season, there was no clear rise or drop in the volume of campaign coverage on the evening newscasts compared with previous years. The primary season was shorter than usual, and unlike those of 2000, 1992 and 1988, involved contests in only one party. As a consequence, the total number of minutes of primary-season coverage on the nightly newscasts was lower than in some previous years and higher than in others, according to tracking from Tyndall Research. That appears to be more a function of scheduling decisions made by the Democratic National Committee, state parties, and voters, not journalistic decisions made by the networks. At the peak of the primary season, in Iowa and New Hampshire, the coverage showed no diminution from previous cycles.

That coverage, however, was soon overshadowed by the decision of all three networks to walk away from covering the conventions every night.

In late July, the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, part of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, hosted a panel discussion at which Peter Jennings of ABC "…[likened] conventions to 'infomercials'… There's not a great deal of reason to show up."

The NewsHour's Jim Lehrer responded: "We're about to elect a president of the United States at a time when we have young people dying in our name overseas, we just had a report from the 9/11 commission which says we are not safe as a nation, and one of these two groups of people is going to run our country. The fact that you three networks decided it was not important enough to run in prime time, the message that gives the American people is huge."

The exchange offers a snapshot of the argument over the network decision to substantially leave the conventions.

That argument, played out mostly in brief quotes and sound bites in news stories, deserves detailed examination to determine whether, as Lehrer implied, the message the networks were sending was either significant or new.

The network argument is really twofold. First, the conventions are no longer newsworthy because they are scripted "infomercials." Second, the networks are relieved of their public service obligation to air them because the conventions can be watched on cable - in particular on the three news channels, as well as C-Span - along with PBS on the broadcast airwaves.

The critics counter that those are excuses. The networks, they say, are backing away from the conventions purely to make more money - they can do better airing reality shows than the conventions - and in the process the networks now have given up not just on public service but on journalistic credibility, too.

Let's take the points one at a time.

The notion that the conventions are not news defines a news event as one at which something unexpected might happen. Certainly, the conventions are now scripted. Everything - the platform debates, the speeches, the "spontaneous" demonstrations - is controlled in advance.39 (In 1972 The New York Times discovered the GOP had a script for every moment of its meeting in Miami.)

The unexpected is not the only kind of news, however. It can also be defined as an event, however planned, that has a major impact on public opinion. The networks do cover this second kind of news when it suits them, from inaugurations and funerals to State of the Union addresses and other ritual civic events. And by this standard conventions clearly qualify as news. Not only do they represent the only time most Americans will hear either candidate explain his vision for the country at any length, but they are also the lone opportunity for the two political parties to do so, and for other party leaders to introduce themselves to the country beyond eight-second sound bites.

Once again, 2004 demonstrated that conventions make a measurable difference in who wins, and how Americans perceive the parties, as have most conventions in the modern era. In 2004, John Kerry failed to impress undecided voters, missed the opportunity to define his vision of the country or explain his record, and set himself up for subsequent attacks on his military record. The Republican Party, in turn, succeeded in defining Kerry in GOP terms, laying out a broad plan for the future, depicting itself as populist and strong. And the President enjoyed an 11-percentage-point bounce in the polls.40

So the first part of the network argument - that conventions are not news - is problematic and insufficient as an explanation.

What of the second part of the argument - that audiences can see the conventions elsewhere, so the networks need not air so much of them? Obviously people, especially cable and satellite viewers, can now go elsewhere.

The critics believe, however, that that argument is insufficient because the networks are different from other channels. As broadcasters, they are still the closest thing we have left to a mass medium, and as such, they still have an agenda-setting power. The most popular program on cable news -Bill O'Reilly - has a viewership of about 3 million, which would get him cancelled on any of the networks. If the broadcast networks choose to air something, that makes it more important, and more people watch. The networks, in other words, lead public behavior; they do not merely follow it. That endows them with social responsibility.41

 

http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uui...075F151C08D33F4

Networks wary of convention coverage
By: Michael Calderone
June 10, 2008 06:05 AM EST

When Barack Obama made his first major appearance on the national stage in 2004, giving easily the most memorable speech of the Democratic National Convention, the traditional Big Three networks—ABC, CBS and NBC—had all returned to their regularly scheduled programming.

Gone are the days when the broadcast networks' extensive coverage of the Democratic and Republican conventions was the only game in town, competing on late summer nights with a handful of television re-runs. As network viewership has declined and the political junkies have fled to cable, prime-time network coverage of the convention has dwindled.

Indeed, the Big Three each devoted just one hour in prime-time during three of four convention nights in 2004, with no live programming of that now memorable Tuesday night when Obama arrived on stage at Boston’s Fleet Center. Coincidentally, John McCain also spoke at Madison Square Garden before the networks were broadcasting live (Rudy Giuliani, though, got a coveted televised spot at the podium).

But now Barack and Mac are back, and will definitely be making the prime-time cut this election cycle, which, to the delight of news executives, has brought in millions of eager viewers during numerous debates and primary election nights.

Now that Tuesday night delegate counting is done, the Big Three networks can look toward programming this summer’s conventions, and the unique logistical issues created by having just three days between them. But although the public has followed the 2008 race in numbers unmatched in recent elections, the networks still might not up the ante this time around.

Phil Alongi, NBC’s executive producer for political coverage and special events, said that while the network has penciled in a similar programming schedule to 2004, he’s “always looking for a reason to get more air time.”

If the political parties were smart when putting together the schedule of speakers, Alongi said, “they’d come up with a hook to give us a reason to be on for longer than [during] the past few political cycles.”

It’s in part the over-scripted nature of recent conventions, where the nominees are known beforehand, that’s led to diminished interest. Where once conventions were where nominees were decided in backroom deals, now they’re where those already chosen are publicly coronated. And at this point, there’s little chance of a floor fight in Denver.

Even with the Democratic convention first up, kicking off on August 25, there’s still time to put together a more network-friendly schedule. In 2004, for example, Obama wasn’t announced as keynote speaker until about 10 days before his speech, and the final line-up wasn’t locked down until 4 days before the convention, according to a DNC spokesperson.

Despite only devoting an hour per night in prime-time on NBC, Alongi said he has to coordinate programming from 4 am to midnight, local time, beginning with “Morning Joe” on MSNBC and going on through the post-convention wrap-up—and, also coordinating to some with CNBC and Telemundo. With a sister cable network, MSNBC has been viewed by some as having a distinct advantage in offering comprehensive coverage with top on-air personalities jumping from one platform to the other, and a news operation running before and after the 10 pm to 11 pm hour when “Nightly News” anchor Brian Williams takes the helm on NBC.

But not everyone sees it that way.



“We don’t have the burdens of having to feed the 24-hour cable channel,” said ABC News Vice President Bob Murphy, adding that the network can focus on other platforms, like the web. And it should be noted that ABC and the other networks will all provide gavel-to-gavel coverage online, if not on the air, as they did in 2004.

“There’s a steady migration from a very static broadcast model to a more dynamic multi-platform model of coverage,” Murphy said.

While the new media world’s come a long way, the major networks still require more than a handful of bloggers on Macs to make the trains run. All three will be broadcasting in high-def for the first time, and that requires plenty of equipment, and plenty of staffers working on both sides of the camera.

In addition to having Katie Couric anchor the evening newscast on location—as will Williams and Charles Gibson—CBS will air “Face the Nation” on location, too.

In two weeks, CBS staffers will complete their next walk-through of the Denver site, checking out location for other programming, including “The Early Show,” which at this point is “likely” to broadcast from the convention, according to a CBS spokesperson.

But after Obama accepts the nomination on Thursday evening, the CBS caravan of “approximately four full-size trucks with equipment,” according to a spokesperson, embarks on the 14-16 hour drive to the Twin Cities.

For NBC, there’s a “triple challenge,” according to Alongi, with staffers spread out between Beijing, Denver, and Minneapolis-St. Paul. Although Alongi will be in China for NBC’s Olympics coverage—which closes on the eve off the Democratic convention—he expects to head back to the states early to coordinate the conventions. Alongi’s not the only one: about 50 of the roughly 200 NBC staffers working the conventions will also be at the Olympics. That includes the “Today” show’s Matt Lauer and Meredith Vieira, who are likely to split the conventions.

With so many moving parts split between two continents, Alongi said that NBC would employ three different setups, with no transporting of essential equipment between them.

For ABC, Murphy said there are two senior producers coordinating coverage in each of the two cities. While only having a three-day respite can be problematic this cycle, Murphy said that the network’s known the schedule for long enough to plan accordingly.

“It certainly does present some unique challenges,” Murphy said. “We’ve known they would be three days apart for some time. It’s not like a breaking news story where you have little time to organize and plan, and dispatch people and equipment.”

Murphy said that that while there’s less ABC personnel and equipment needed than at previous conventions, it’s still a sizeable commitment.

And is it worth the investment on prime-time for the networks, considering that ratings have dropped in recent cycles, and that this year’s conventions are sandwiched around the Labor Day weekend, long a dead zone for ratings?

“If we covered conventions for ratings, we would have gotten out of the business a long time ago,” Murphy said.

“We feel like the contribution we’re making is to the public service,” he added, “engaging the public in its rightful democratic process.”