The Boston Marathon bombings showed America and the world once and for all that the 24-hour cable news network model is dead. Here are some of the cable coverage lowlights of the week:
Tag Archive: CNN
CNN’s big gun mistake
Many people are still talking about the recent Piers Morgan interview of Alex Jones on CNN. We’re not linking it here in order not to give Jones more publicity, but the interview is easy to find. In fact, “interview” is the wrong term. It was a one-way crazy rant by Jones on a national platform. CNN was ill-advised to invite Jones in the first place.
First of all, Jones is well-known for his ranting, raving and conspiracy theories, including the 9/11 “truther” conspiracy. There’s plenty of footage of Jones from his radio show, yelling, wailing, sobbing, anything but talking about issues in a civil way. Again, we’re not going to link to such footage here, but it can easily be found. Suffice it to say that Piers Morgan and his CNN producers knew or should have known that they weren’t in for an interview, but rather, a food throwing episode.
Secondly, the purported immediate reason for inviting Jones was that he was behind a petition to deport Piers Morgan after Morgan took on the NRA and gun rights advocates, and called for sensible gun laws in the wake of the Newtown, Connecticut school shootings. It’s Journalism 101 that a tv news host should never make himself the story, yet that’s precisely what Morgan did by inviting Jones on his show. That’s in addition to the other seemingly obvious guideline that, just because a loony with an Internet connection starts a petition, it doesn’t mean he deserves a national television spotlight.
It is difficult to escape the conclusion that CNN invited Jones on “Piers Morgan Tonight” as a publicity stunt, knowing that Jones would be his usual uncivilized, explosive self and that the interview would make for “good tv,” good ratings, and thus good money for CNN. Such a decision fails to move the serious debate over gun violence forward, or do justice to the Sandy Hook Elementary School children and teachers mowed down in Newtown.
Will Michele Bachmann’s Robotic Answers Backfire?
In this recent clip from NBC’s Meet the Press, note how Michele Bachmann answers every one of host David Gregory‘s questions with a talking point. In fact, even where Gregory does a good job of asking a follow-up question because Bachmann avoided his original question, Bachmann comes back a second time with the same talking point. That reflects a lot of discipline on Bachmann’s part. The question is whether Bachmann’s robotic answers will backfire on her.
Even Bill Clinton Can’t Handle Wolf Blitzer’s Right Wing Talking Points
Former President Bill Clinton is considered by many to be one of the best politicians of the 20th Century. His intelligence and command of facts and figures are something to behold. But check out this recent interview regarding the debt ceiling debate, where Clinton’s skills fall short in the face of a barrage of right wing talking points in the form of questions to Clinton by CNN‘s Wolf Blitzer:
- “President Obama at that news conference this week, he really went after Republicans on, it was almost class warfare as they like to say. Does that help or hurt this effort to resolve this crisis right now when you get into that bitter kind of rhetoric?”
- “‘Cause the President’s accused of being anti-business.”
- “But the argument is, you know, the top 2% of income earners in America pay, what, 30 or 40% of the federal income tax, and half of the people in America pay no income tax.”
Clinton answers that the media need to be careful about calling President Obama’s call for shared sacrifice “class warfare”, which is a good response as far as it goes. But then Clinton embarks on long, fact-based answers that are likely to cause most viewers (and, apparently, Blitzer himself) to tune out. Such lengthy recitations, while no doubt accurate, are no match for the visceral buzz words like “class warfare” and “bitter” contained in Blitzer’s questions. That’s exactly why those words are a key part of Republican talking points.
Messaging Maxim #1: Go On Offense
“Ability to defeat the enemy means taking the offensive. Standing on the defensive indicates insufficient strength.” –Sun Tzu, “The Art of War”
As we indicated in “A Messaging Manifesto For Democrats”, during the run-up to the 2010 Congressional elections, while Republicans went on offense with charges against the “Ground Zero Mosque” and that “Obama is a Muslim,” “the Democrats weakly offered up rational rebuttals, and then wondered why most Americans weren’t swayed.” Republicans know that, to win political battles, you must go on offense to frame the political debate in your terms, using language favorable to you.
