Wednesday, September 29, 2004
Once Per Night OR Once PERIOD?
As you know News Night is "On the Road" this week and while in Portland, Oregon on Tuesday Aaron was interviewed by The Oregonian. In the interview Aaron is asked about the Dan Rather, 60 minutes fiasco. And here's a portion of Aaron's response to that question.
"Cable rode that story forever because they hate Dan, or they think TV is too liberal, or just think all news coverage should be mud wrestling." "NewsNight," he added, tries to take a more moderate approach. "We did one story and moved on. I could probably do better numbers if I did mud wrestling. But I have to live with myself." He smiled. "OK, maybe we do a little mud wrestling. But that's not who I am."
Now to me Aaron is saying the Dan Rather controversy was mentioned once per show and not dwelled upon all through the program, every night like OTHER cable news outlets did. Meanwhile another cable news blog is interpreting the statement entirely different. They are saying Brown lied when he said "We did one story and moved on." Sounds like a "spin job" to me! What do you think? Post comments in the comments section!
Update 1:45 p. m. 09/30: That "other cable news blog" posted an e-mail received from Mr. Brown this morning:
"I believe what I said to peter was that we did "the" story and moved on. The conversation had to do with the non stop "mud wrestling" that the story generated which we did not do. But there is no doubt I considered it an important story and that we covered it. I did a page two essay on it, we looked at the backlash among some affilates and its impact on media generally. I did not and do not think it was the MOST important story and I did not allow it to dominate the program at the expense of all else as some others did. That's not what Newsnight is. That was the context of the conversation with Peter."
# posted by ATN @ 10:30 PM 
