New York Times media reporter David Carr (11/12/12) had some kind words for Fox News Channel‘s Election Night coverage:
NYT‘s David Carr (photo: Debbie Galant)
On Tuesday night, the people in charge of Fox News were confronted with a stark choice after it became clear that Mr. Romney had fallen short: was Fox, first and foremost, a place for advocacy or a place for news?
In this moment, at least, Fox chose news.
After relating the story of Karl Rove’s contrarian insistence that Obama had not won Ohio and thus the election—including the oddest part of the story, which is that one of Fox News‘ featured commentators on the election was someone who had just spent $300 million to try to affect its outcome—Carr continued:
While Fox News allowed him to say his piece, it didn’t cave—and, more important, it didn’t question the legitimacy of the election over all, a move that could have led to all manner of unhealthy speculation.
The best journalistic instincts of Fox‘s news people kicked in and the hard reality of Mr. Obama’s triumph was allowed to land as it occurred. In doing so, the network avoided marginalizing itself and ended, at least for a night, its war on the president.
Well, maybe that’s how it looked on David Carr’s TV. On my set, Fox News was reacting to the news that Obama had won by speculating deliriously about a popular vote victory for Romney:
Fox News‘ Brit Hume
BRET BAIER: It looks now that this president will be reelected with fewer electoral votes than he won the first time. First president ever to be reelected with fewer electoral votes than the first time, and probably a popular vote total that is very, very close. The split being very narrow.
BRIT HUME: Which will add to the feeling among a lot of people this is a winnable election.
BAIER: Now, it stands at 114,000. Separating the two candidates in the popular vote.
HUME: That is smaller than the margin by which George W. Bush won Ohio in 2004.
BAIER: With Romney leading in the popular vote.
JUAN WILLIAMS: My prediction was that President Obama, again, would win battleground states, win electoral college votes, but I thought would lose the popular vote. That tells you something about who we are. You said we’re polarized. You look at the map behind you. That is a very small population. You look where big populations are, where college educated and where the economy is growing, that is where blue is.
HUME: Now, if Mitt Romney were to win the popular vote, it will be fun to see whether there is an outbreak of shoe-on-the-other-foot disease, Republicans deciding, the way Democrats did in 2000, this Electoral College has got to go. Remember California had a measure passed which meant whoever won the popular vote nationally would get all of California’s electoral votes?
WILLIAMS: Remember that the electoral college is never going to be given up by Republicans because small states—
MEGYN KELLY: It would be quite a reversal.
Later, Baier gave his viewers an update: “We have called this race for President Barack Obama, reelected, yes, he’s trailing now in popular vote. As you can see, take a look at that. It’s closing, but he’s still trailing Mitt Romney at this hour by 21,000 votes.”
Now, it was perfectly obvious to anyone who had watched an election before that if the popular vote was basically tied before the West Coast states were counted, then Barack Obama was going to end up winning the popular vote—as he did, by some 3.5 million votes. This was not exactly a squeaker; it was bigger in percentages than 11 other popular vote margins since 1824, including George W. Bush’ s 2004 win over John Kerry, Jimmy Carter’s 1976 defeat of Gerald Ford or James K. Polk’s 1844 triumph over Henry Clay.
So why didn’t the Fox News team explain this to their audience? One possibility is that they were doing what Megyn Kelly described as “math you do as a Republican to make yourself feel better”—in which case they were not, in fact, choosing news over advocacy, even for one night.
Or maybe none of them actually knew that the West Coast states are heavily Democratic and would inevitably run up the popular vote total for Obama. Maybe it’s just that the “the best journalistic instincts of Fox‘s news people”—are not very good.
Dear Fox News:
At the quantum level, the world is very different; you news guys should take a serious look into physics.. Like you, Fox reporters , Karl Rove, who was looking for a wormhole, was sucked into a black hole, of his very own making. : )
The whole reaction by FOX was laughable. But I commend the American people for not going along with the rich assholes who plunked down all that cash hoping to buy their politicians through negative ads, Citizens United didn’t help the rich as they hoped it would, and I have gained a new respect for “We the People” who saw through the ruse, The only reason Dems didn’t sweep Congress was due to gerrymandering of Repugnant districts.
All this “he’s trailing in the popular vote” was to help set up the entire “Obama didn’t win a mandate” argument. Faux was just working off the RNC talking points.
And in related Faux bullsh*t, Roger Ailes told TVNewser that “We don’t — I know no one believes it — we have no agenda,” and Bill O’Reilly did an entire segment expressing dismay that “There are entire media operations that exist solely to promote ideology — obviously a bad situation that is getting worse.”
As far as I can tell they were both being serious…
Weak article.Fox called it, and called it early.This is just gloating.I think they could of said what has become obvious after the fact.That Obama received near all the African American vote(racism?)And that of those recieving some sort of government assistance he received in excess of 90%.And since the majority of people are now under some sort f gov help we have now reached a tipping point. In 59 wards in Phila Mitt did not receive one vote.In 69 others less than 1%.One ward being michro checked- showed a 61% voter turnout in book signatures.The machine showed 94%.So Phila goes under the knife again as the poster child for stupid.Thank God for phila at least we have voter ID coming as all those numbers are statistically impossible.Investigations begin soon.All this FOX did not say.A win is a win is a win.They called it a good ground game.It took days for Mitt to tell the truth.Rs will never be able to compete in the goodie parade.Period.And people are voting their pocketbooks.Round and round it goes …where it stops nobody knows.Cant wait for FREE healthcare.There is that word again …Free!Needs a new definition in Webster’s if you asked me.It means something so different today.
Thanks for that, Raymond.
And thanks to FAIR blog fr the nice new layout. Are italics fixed? We’ll see . . . .
The only person weak here today is you. The one thing the hard cases in the Christian Republican part won’t do is change their stance no matter who many vote against it. Which means the only way they can get their way is by force as in Michigan. Sorry no goose stepping in the streets by the Dominionists just yet.
Never thought I’d be able to watch Karl Rove stutter his way out – was almost worth all the agony of the ever ongoing campaign – 7 years for some. Clearly, Mitt lost because he misjudged the American people. We are more diverse than he sees and his rich white men, at least around 800,000 of them, decided either to sit this one out or to vote for Obama. The Christian Right and the Tea Partiers have driven many people away from the Republican party and when Mitt decided to hold hands with those ideologues, people of conscience left in protest. To add to that some reflection by the GOP might reveal that Mitt lost votes for several reasons. One of these that has received little attention is that most people have no idea of how he “earns” a living. We all know he’s rich, but what, exactly, did he do to become rich – other than being born to it. The other is, of course, his unpleasant personality and the unnessary comments made by Ann about “those” people and “it’s Mitt’s turn…” coupled with Mitt’s own gaffs, i.e., your son out of work? Set him up in business. (Not very practical for someone who feels just lucky to pay his bills). Can’t get into a university of choice? Go to Full Sail – Gosh, that’s a good one. (forget that Mitt has a lot of stock in it – I think it’s “full sail” but may be wrong on that.) Then there was that business about the 47% and now we hear about voting to get “free stuff.” Please. You do not denegrate the people who might vote for you. Ever.
We were lucky in this election. Much needs to be done before the next one. Election reform and getting the big money OUT is the first place to begin. Corporations are NOT people. Victoria Collier’s article: “How to Rig an Election: The G.O.P. Aims to Paint the Country Red” in the November 2012 issue of Harper’s is worth reading. We have larger problems than most realize when it comes to having our votes count.
I hope people will begin to realize that we are close to losing our democracy and that in order to maintain it we must take a more active part in it. Our Congress needs to hear from us about what’s important to us and what we feel is going to be needed to fix the problems. Could be more effective than posting on Fair.
From day one of Obama ‘s first election win, Fox News made it clear every single day, that the were the “beat Obama Express”. What a sickening way to begin a broadcast. It was clearly NOT news, but propaganda and an insult to every independent American. I could not stand it any longer. It wasn’t even close to news. I have no respect for any Fox News anchor. Peter Jennings must be rolling over in his grave. These kinds of icons do not exist anymore. The news ended with his death.
“In 59 wards in Phila Mitt did not receive one vote.”
Not exactly news…In 2008, McCain got zero votes in 57 Philadelphia voting divisions.”
http://articles.philly.com/2012-11-13/news/35069785_1_romney-supporters-mitt-romney-voter-id-law
“That Obama received near all the African American vote(racism?)”
In 2012, Mitt Romney got 7% of the African-American vote.
In 1976, Gerald Ford got 7% of the African-American vote.
Racism, obviously.
This is what you get when you replace news with PR.