A couple observations / questions:

- Did you ask the producer on FNC for their reasonings? Do you even think that much thought goes into making that decision? Were the same producers working both days?

- Does the number of minutes one stretch of coverage gets require or *dictate* how many minutes all future broadcasts receive? Have you complied comprehensive charts on what other channels are doing? Do you have any historical reference? Or just this one you hand-picked?

- Did you compare what days of the week each broadcast was on? What other stories were in the news?

Dunno sounds like you labeling and making judgment without knowing the whole story.

Hoboken-

I didn’t ask the producer, but the two town halls I compared were both today. One was around 9:30am, one was around 1:00pm.

And I can tell you that in this instance, Fox covered Specter’s town hall the longest of the three networks, and covered Obama’s town hall the least. And not only did they cover it the least, but they spent several segments after the town hall coverage to discuss the town hall with guests, while not actually taking the feed live.

Here’s a good round-up video of all of today’s town hall insanity:
http://www.gotchamediablog.com/2009/08/all-of-todays-town-hall-insanity-in-one.html

I watched what seemed like hours of Mr. Obama’s political rally attacking the legal and government regulated insurance business in his political attempt to increase the size and power of the Federal Government. I watched it on Fox. But when Mr. Obama took at powderpuff question from a 12 year old girl to use as a jumping off point to criticize people with different opinions – I simply turned off the TV and left. A topic as serious as creating a Federal Government – taxpayer supported – Business to compete with private enterprise is serious. The town hall supposedly gave tickets to get in by lottery. And we use precious time to get questions from a child! Personally, I didn’t find out until later that Fox had stopped covering the event – but I will tell anyone that ALL real news agencies should have stopped coverage on that silly sitcom.

Steve: At what point did FNC tune out? What it before or after the girl asked the question about the “mean signs”. At that point, anyone with an ounce of news integrity would have tuned out. I didn’t watch any of it, but…if those are the questions that are being asked at an Obama town hall event, then clearly it is a staged event and has no news worthiness.

Hoboken411, I have a couple questions for you: Have you been following Fox’s coverage of the town hall meetings? Have you been watching any coverage of the town hall meetings? Have you ever watched Fox?

Fox has CLEARLY been decidedly not “fair” in their coverage of these meetings. Just look at the way they handled the “news story” about the Dingle protester. It turned into a sob-story interview – and let’s not forget those death threats! I didn’t realize Hoboken was such a Fox-y town, but maybe it should start catching up on its homework before asking 500 leading questions, huh?

Also, Rifleman47: 1) Your username scares me and 2) If everyone’s policy was to turn away from the things we didn’t like, shouldn’t the media have nothing to talk about? I say watch the stuff you hate. I’ve watched Ann Coulter’s YAF speech TWICE in the past two days! It’s hilarious!

FOX is a well known propaganda outlet for the wealthy and right-wing… nothing new.

Oh FOX is also a shill for big business… they will spread whatever info the anti health care insurance reform lobby and front groups want :) … Watch MSNBC for more truth and reality … that’s where the mass of middle America is better represented and truth is spoken to power

The little girl who asked the “mean signs” question was the daughter of a dem operative. She was a set up for Obama. How can a “town hall meeting” to share the facts be taken seriously when the President needs an 11 year old girl to set up a softball question for him. Now that’s a news story.

Why should Fox cover what was clearly a tightly-scripted event, with hand-picked “questioners”? Would have been akin to covering a fundraiser, which no channel would cover.

I personally do not think the questions were hand picked! Bush always hand-picked questions! Also what in the world is wrong with a 11 or 12 year old asking the President a question? This young girls behavior was way better and calmer then the MOB outside. The MOB could have took up behavior lessons form this young girl! If she was a plant….maybe it was to show the MOB how to act! Fox news is very biased! It is deleted off my television. Too much hate involved and I have a 6 year old child in the home and I do not need her to hear such mess!! Fox news need to be taken off imediately or changed to HATE NEWS! LOL

Diane: The fact that former President Bush planted audience members does not make it any better – much less disprove the fact – that the girl was the daughter of a Democratic operative, and thus, the motives for selecting her are suspect: http://michellemalkin.com/2009/08/11/little-girl-at-obama-town-hall-has-not-so-random-political-connections/

I can’t stand it when politicians ask kids their opinions. I’m 20 years old. I remember that from the time I was her age (11) through my mid-teens, my opinions were nearly identical to whatever I was told. This obsession with the “wisdom” of our children is ludicrous. When you’re that young, you only think what your parents think, and this girl is no different. She may be a nice kid, but a source of legitimate political inquiry? Nah.

As for the “mob”: How are the supposedly rowdy health care protestors any worse than the SEIU thugs who beat up said protestors? http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2009/08/shocker-keith-olbermann-lies-about-tea.html I guess freedom of speech is only allowed when we like what we hear and it doesn’t hurt our feelings.

Seriously, Diane, calm down. The way you write, I’m tempted to request you take some sort of anxiety medication.

After trouncing its competition throughout most parts of the day and during the coveted evening hours, I don’t really think Fox does anything more than laugh at its detractors. Clearly the Obama ‘Town Meeting’ was just as ‘manufactured’ as they claim the other Town Meetings were. So, good. They both know how to play the game. Yawn.

Stop crying about one conservative news show, please. All the other stations are dominated by the liberal press, at least allow some element of balance in reporting in the U.S. If you want a somewhat — but not quite — even handed approach to reporting, tune into the BBC.

As a PR professional, I understand how the media works and which is slanted which way. There’s little objectivity in reporting when news stations and papers publicly endorse a political candidate.

Kevin – why the liberal use of the word “fair?” That sounds a bit elementary school-ish.

Fox News (or any other news broadcast) can essentially cover what they want to. If you don’t like the coverage, you can watch a different channel – or better yet – watch them all at once (Plasma TV’s are cheap these days).

There is no law or regulation that dictates what they show or not. I would suspect the use of the word “fair” would only come in when you feel your political god isn’t getting good coverage – and bitterness results.

Dunno – not worth getting all banged up over, IMO.

Though it may be true that Fox has a certain bias (although I personally don’t believe that), this story, unfortunately, is an example of taking facts and generating a narrative without giving them context. Now, I don’t know if this was your intention Steve, but you are clearly omitting some important points.

1) Specter’s town hall meeting was given significant coverage by ALL networks over the summer due to the real contentious nature of the meeting. As someone in journalism should understand, this makes for great news, and Fox covered and discussed this as much as CNN (I assume you were following)
2) Based on point #1, it does make sense that more coverage would be given to Specter and less to Obama. This is something called “Context”. It is also, based on point #1, more appealing to viewers.

Now if you’re issue is with the nature of journalism itself, then I agree with you. Does it often happen that important stories don’t come to the top or get significant coverage because they are boring? I am sure, as someone in journalism, you understand that it certainly does happen. But this notion that one network has a bias instead of blaming the nature of journalism itself is astounding to me. Again, you are doing exactly what you falsely claim Fox news is doing. You are taking facts out of context and generating your own narrative so that it suits your political end. We all know that many people who are on the left of center of the political spectrum have an unreasonable / illogical hatred of an entire news network.

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