In today’s Washington Post, Lisa de Moraes reports on the increasingly destructive war… between U.S. news networks.
Fox News, the channel that laughingly refers to itself as “fair and balanced”, is insisting that Geraldo Rivera, laughingly referred to as “a journalist”, was not removed from Iraq, but simply voluntarily left after giving specific location information on a unit over live television. Funny, they don’t dispute what he did in his ongoing attempts to appear relevant, hip, and macho.
MSNBC fired Peter Arnett for giving an interview to Iraqi TV wherein he claimed that the US war plan had failed. MSNBC should never have hired this guy to begin with.
So, to divert attention from their own blunder, MSNBC is running crawls across the bottom of the screen about Geraldo’s disgrace. Fox, not be outdone in the fair & balanced department, is running full-fledged promos lambasting MSNBC for the Peter Arnett affair.
FNC brought out its heavy artillery: a sensational 15-second ad blasting the network it had until that moment steadfastly referred to as “irrelevant.”
“He spoke out against America’s armed forces,” roared the ad, which featured footage of Arnett giving his career-busting interview to Saddam Hussein’s TV network.
“He said America’s war against terrorism had failed. He even vilified America’s leadership.
“And he worked for MSNBC.
“Ask yourself,” the ad continued, “is this America’s news channel?” (FNC apparently did not get the memo that MSNBC had dumped its short-lived “America’s NewsChannel” brand in favor of “NBC News on Cable 24/7.”)
The ad ends with FNC’s usual sales pitch: We report, you decide, fair, balanced, blah, blah, blah.
Anyone wonder why I never, ever watch these news channels, especially when I can get BBC News? These people are not in the news business. They’re in the reality TV business. de Moraes continues:
“It’s interesting that they now find us relevant, since as recently as just a few weeks ago they deemed us irrelevant,” MSNBC spokesman Jeremy Gaines told us. “I find it outrageous that they’d run this promo while they continue to employ Geraldo Rivera.”
MSNBC also says the promo that ran following its Geraldo segment had been produced during the war in Afghanistan. Who knew news channels kept promos in the can so long.
Over at FNC, the response was no longer that “MSNBC is irrelevant” — which was some progress, since that line was getting really stale.
“MSNBC should be more concerned about being an embarrassment to GE than [about] who we employ,” the network said.
In their spare time yesterday, both news networks covered the carnage in Iraq.
