Mediaite’s Steve Krakauer rips FNC for its coverage of the Obama town hall meeting. I hadn’t expected FNC to cover it much given past behavior so I wasn’t surprised. But Krakauer makes a pretty damning case here…
Jumping out of coverage after just two questions, FNC anchor Trace Gallagher cut in: “The White House says they expected people to come in and yell and shout a little bit. We have not seen that. We have seen a very friendly crowd here so far.”
Then he and other FNC analysts debated whether it was right for Obama not to take questions from those who disagreed with him. Juliet Huddy, guest anchoring, noted, “granted we’ve only seen a couple questions here,” before launching into a question that assumed she knew how the rest of the town hall would play out. It was Huddy who later referred to the “plants” in the crowd, and the event as “theater.”
What did Fox miss while it was busy knocking the President? Questions from Republicans, those who strongly disagreed with the proposed plan and specific calls by Obama for harder questions. Obama said he wanted questions from people who had “concerns about health care,” and people who were “skeptical or suspicious.” “I don’t want people thinking I have a bunch of plants in here,” he said.
When a network devotes precious air time to a car chase earlier in the morning but then dips out of a Presidential Town Hall just when things start getting interesting, serious questions have to be asked of its news judgement. And I too heard the first Republican step up to the plate…and I wasn’t expecting to hear from any Republicans. Obviously I was watching another channel.
