Poynter Online
Go


Top Story

Public TV, Radio Stations to Increase Local Investigative Coverage
Most Recent Articles
1.Poynter's Times Publishing Co. sells Governing
5:15 PM Nov. 20, 2009
2.Recommendation for Fewer PAP Screens Sure to Set Off Controversy
10:32 AM Nov. 20, 2009
3.Gene Patterson to Jack Nelson: Save Us a Desk Up There in That Celestial Newsroom
7:03 AM Nov. 20, 2009
4.Public TV, Radio Stations to Increase Local Investigative Coverage
6:19 AM Nov. 20, 2009
5.Woods: Plagiarism Never Justified
3:47 PM Nov. 19, 2009
Most E-mailed
Recent Comments
Recent Tags
Community Activity

Poynter Training
Poynter Seminars
Small, in-person training experiences.
1.
A New Curriculum for a New Journalism - Jan. 6-8, 2010
Apply by November 23
2.
Multimedia Journalism for College Educators - February 1-5, 2010
Apply by December 14
3.
NewsU: Write Your Heart Out: The Craft of the Personal Essay - January 25-February 19, 2010
Apply by January 4
News University
Today's most popular courses on NewsU, Poynter's e-learning site for journalists.
Webinars
Our online classroom is just a click away. Learn more.
All Webinars

Poynter Forums

View Forum Post

Topic: Letters Sent to Romenesko
Date/Time: 1/29/2007 12:01:52 PM
Title: Ex-Fox Newser blasts "smarmy hit job"
Posted By: Jim Romenesko
 
From CHARLIE REINA: Loath as I am to criticize my former employer, Fox News Channel, I can't help but weigh in on FNC’s current public go-round with the Cable News Network. Fox's smarmy hit job on Barack Obama, which touched things off, is contemptible in its own right. But what makes this latest dustup downright nauseating is Fox’s hypocrisy in targeting one of CNN’s best for the worst of its trademark vitriol. The Mediabistro website told the story in a recent headline dripping with unintended irony: "Fox Is Going After Anderson Cooper."

You see, it’s not the first time Fox has gone after Cooper. In the past, though, its pursuit was in hopes of luring him away from CNN. Trouble is, the seduction was so self-protectively feeble that Fox never reached first base.

I watched part of the mating dance play out at FNC one day, not long after Cooper's star began rising at CNN. I was in the office of a then-senior producer who, like me, had worked with Anderson years earlier. At one point, the producer reached over and dialed Cooper's direct number at CNN, explaining that he had been sounding Anderson out, unofficially, on Fox's behalf.

Whether the game plan came from above or was the producer's own, I can't recall. But the idea apparently was for him to run interference – to sound Anderson out before Fox management risked the rejection of any formal offer.

I got the impression that even the producer knew he was on a fool's errand; that for Cooper, whose talents and instincts were in actual news, coming to Fox would be a huge step down professionally. In any case, this particular call went nowhere. The producer led with, "So when are you comin’ over?" Anderson laughed politely and changed the subject. I doubt he ever gave the absurd idea a moment’s serious thought.

Now, five or so years later, here’s Fox, the spurned suitor, engaged in a desperate effort to defame its one-time object of desire. The network’s chief attack dog, Irena Briganti, has declared Cooper "the Paris Hilton of television news." It’s a low blow, but nothing new for the lowbrows at Fox P.R. In fact, it’s a cheap shot straight from the playbook of Brigante’s predecessor, Rob Zimmerman.

One of Zimmerman’s prime targets was another rival network's rising star, Ashleigh Banfield of MSNBC. She was young, attractive and hard-working. And in the news-heavy weeks after nine-eleven, she had become a darling of the national press. A December, 2001, newspaper article profiling Banfield contained, among a variety of opinions, Fox's assessment of her, via Zimmerman, as “a lightweight … the Anna Kournikova of television news." This was so gratuitous a slur that I, in my naivete, thought Zimmerman had been sand-bagged – quoted on a remark he’d made off the record. When I saw him later that day in the FNC newsroom, I asked if that had been the case. "Hell, no," he said. “We propelled -- we generated that story. We're out to get (Banfield), to ruin her."

So now, per current Fox spokes-assassin Irena Briganti, Anderson Cooper is "the Paris Hilton of television news." I'll say one thing for Irena. What she lacks in originality, she makes up for in redundancy.

It is true that Cooper set himself up for the attack. But he did so forthrightly, by publicly criticizing Fox for the tawdry way it conducted the Omama smear. To wit, the smarmy chit-chat on Fox & Friends suggesting that as a youth, Obama may have been trained by Muslims to hate America.

On the surface, this was merely a "we're only telling you what we’ve heard" kind of thing. Three gossips dishing dirt over coffee on a show that’s not even part of the network's news report. But it speaks volumes about the people who run Fox News, because they use this morning cluckfest -- as they do O'Reilly, Hannity & Colmes, and FNC's other entertainment shows -- to set the table for what then becomes the channel’s news report./CONTINUED BELOW

View Complete Forum Topic

Username
Password
New User? Signup Now
Poynter Careers
See All Jobs
Add Your Resume
Post Your Job
Become a Member
More media jobs