Howard Kurtz this morning
surveys the broadcast news networks about "Saturation
Sunday," also known as President Obama's media blitz on the
television news talk shows yesterday. As most information junkies
know by now, the president visited every major program (plus
Univision's "Al Punto") except for "Fox News Sunday." Here's the
administration's reasoning:
"It's simple," explains White House communications director
Anita Dunn. "In an increasingly fragmented audience that
gets information from a number of different sources, putting a
huge amount of his time behind one medium increases our ability
to really break through and get a message out. The effect of
one interview, given how rapidly the news environment moves,
doesn't last as long as it used to."
Pretty huge fragment he's leaving out there -- sometimes three
million viewers. Even if it's not the audience that are the
president's natural allies, he's perpetuating the perception that
he sees them as fringe racists with a mob mentality, who are
unworthy of any explanation of his policies.
But "FNS" host Chris Wallace boils the administration down to
this: "They are the biggest bunch of crybabies I have dealt with
in my 30 years in Washington."
topics:
Barack Obama, Mainstream Media, The Obama Administration
