Fox outraces the old dogs: in only six years the Fox News Channel has established itself as the premier cable-TV news operation with objective reporting on stories that the mainstream media are afraid to tackle and without the liberal orthodoxy that pervades American broadcast and print journalism today

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Oct 29, 2002 | by J. Michael Waller

What about Rivera, the uberdefender of Bill Clinton during the obstruction-of-justice scandal whom Fox picked up as its war correspondent in Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom in November 2001? Rivera made a fool of himself and the network, critics complained, by reporting he was at the site of a friendly-fire accident when he really was hundreds of miles away. "He made a mistake," Hume concedes, while defending him. "Geraldo's always controversial and flamboyant. He's fearless" Indeed, Rivera's born-again patriotism on the ground in Afghanistan--patriotism being a staple at Fox, in comparison with CNN which forbids its on-camera people to wear American flags on their lapels and tries to shun the word "terrorist" when referring to terrorists--has won converts. "People have responded to him very well," says Hume.

Maybe it's Fox's snazzier graphics and more informal style that attracts the viewers. "Others are changing their graphics and changing their marketing and changing their talent," says Shine. "You're hearing more of the `we're fair and we're balanced,' and that's more of a compliment as well."

With the defection of Rivera and Van Susteren, CNN management suddenly discovered hard-core conservative politicians, think-tanks and Washington policy shops that it virtually had ignored. Network executives feted conservative leaders on Capitol Hill, polling Republican politicians to try to find what they wanted and how they might fit into Ted Turner's old network.

Walter Isaacson, the chief executive officer at CNN, even did the unthinkable, calling conservative policy groups and eagerly taking calls from Reaganite leaders whom the network elites had shunned. "Being fair and balanced is a lot more than hiring a token conservative," says Shine from New York headquarters.

"CNN's Crossfire is a wonderful illustration of the problem," adds Hume. "Two conservative journalists versus two political operatives. It's not a fair fight. [Robert] Novak and Tucker [Carlson] are confined to facts. Those other two dillies on the show [James Carville and Paul Begala] can do and say what they want. That asymmetry seems lost on CNN management."

When Fox News started running a ticker-like crawler of moving headlines across the bottom of the TV screen, CNN pounced on the idea and had its own ticker up and running within 20 minutes, Fox and CNN insiders say. The reworked graphics of both CNN and MSNBC bear an uncanny resemblance to Fox. In April, MSNBC repackaged itself, proclaiming it was now "America's News Channel," changing its multicolored peacock logo to a patriotic red, white and blue and touting itself as "fiercely independent." The problem, say critics on the right, is that MSNBC seems to view "fiercely independent" as a synonym for militantly liberal. A network fact sheet touting the newly undead Phil Donahue show calls the ultraliberal talkmeister "fiercely independent," too.

What does CNN have against being fair and balanced? "Our colleagues don't believe it," Brit Hume responds. "They don't get it. We don't want them to get it. They share similar frames of reference and points of view because they're not cognizant of their bias." Kim Hume agrees, "They're imitating what they think we're doing. They're taking our graphics; changing their pace and style; being more casual. But that's not it. They don't get it. They don't understand what we're doing. And we're happy about it."