The Dream PR Combo: Agency Fox, Product Trump - CommPRO

The Dream PR Combo: Agency
Fox, Product Trump
Arthur Solomon, Public Relations Consultant

Clients dream of spending as little as possible while getting
the most exposure for whatever product they promote. The
impossible client dream? Not really. Substitute Fox News
Channel (FNC) for the agency and President Trump for the
product and the dream becomes a reality.

According to a Nielsen report, FNC again was America’s most-
watched basic cable network in 2018, averaging 2.4 million
total viewers in prime time, followed by MSNBC, which gained
viewers, and CNN, which lost viewers.

So why did the Democratic
National Committee say on March
6 that they will not allow Fox
News to host any of the 2020
Democratic primary debates,
which conceivably might have
convinced viewers tired of
Trump’s vaudeville-like act to
abandon       him?      Because
commentaries     by   Fox   News
performers act as if their
scripts were written by White
House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders (assuming she can
write an original     script). Even a multi-million dollar
unlimited PR budget couldn’t insure such favorable publicity
for a client.

In my opinion, cable political news TV programming is similar
to Broadway theatrical productions. Star billing in the
performances are President Trump, who often throws away the

script, and can’t remember his lines, thus upstaging other
performers by ad-libbing. Important feature roles are played
by Rudolph Giuliani, whose role is a once respected, but now
clownish attorney without credibility for defending Trump and
thrashing all anti-Trump actors regardless of the facts and
Sen. Lindsey Graham, who plays a person who has been bewitched
by the president.

Robert Mueller, Rod Rosenstein and a host of U.S. intelligence
officials are the principal antagonists to Trump. Michael
Cohen and Paul Manafort originally played Trump’s bodyguards,
but their roles had to be refreshed and rewritten in the
second year of the performance to conform with Manafort now
being in prison and Cohen soon to be behind bars. Mike Pence
has a small mostly voiceless understudy role, but is ready to
replace the star if there is a script change.

Other feature performers include Sean Hannity of Fox News, as
the leading purveyor of pro-Trump sleazy commentary and Rachel
Maddox of MSNBC, cast in a leading anti-Trump role. Filling
out the company are numerous TV pundits, who provide comic
relief with stale and repeated analysis that are almost always
wrong, and the TV program anchors and producers, who rely on
the major morning print pubs for program content. Numerous
“eye candy” hosts, pundits, and TV reporters play important
supporting roles, augmented by the casting of reporters from
papers like the New York Times, Washington Post and USA TODAY,
who actually know what they are talking about (because their
scripts are based on facts). The directing producers are
mostly anonymous. Maybe because they are ashamed of what they
are directing?

With apologies to Theodore Dreiser, who wrote the famous novel
“An American Tragedy” in 1925, what passes for news on cable
TV is “The American Tragedy.”

Since dissecting all the political commentary and what passes
for news on the cable networks would provide enough examples

to fill up the Library of Congress, here are some prime
examples of why I believe that cable TV political reporting
resembles a show that should close out of town before reaching
Broadway.

     A few cable TV anchors seem exasperated when the Trump
     surrogates refuse to answer their questions or interrupt
     opposing viewpoints and anchor’s comments, but keep on
     inviting them back instead of cutting them off. (The
     script must not be changed, but should be.)
     A typical cable TV political report goes something like
     this: Reporter: “The Trump campaign has said the
     following (whatever) about whom ever.” A Democratic
     spokesperson is asked to respond. And cable considers
     that good journalism. In addition, all of the questions
     asked are generalizations without asking for the fine
     print specifics that appear in major print publications,
     probably    because the cable reporters don’t know the
     specifics, as Katy Tur showed appallingly on MSNBC’s
     Oct. 29, 2018, “MTP Daily.”
     In a discussion about the horrific Pittsburgh synagogue
     shooting just two days after the tragedy, Ms. Tur said
     that HIAS (Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society) was an
     organization that settles Jewish refugees. She made that
     statement knowing the shooter said that HIAS was one of
     the reasons for his terrible act. Ms. Tur’s remarks were
     wrong, nothing unusual on cable news. As the New York
     Times said in a story on Oct. 29, “Its clients (HIAS)
     have often been Jews – its first mission was to aid
     those fleeing pogroms in Eastern Europe – but the agency
     has also helped resettle many other kinds of refugees,
     including thousands of Vietnamese, Cambodians and
     Laotians after Communist victories in Southeast Asia in
     the 1970s.”A simple internet search would have provided
     Ms. Tur with correct information regarding HIAS. But
     just as important as her mistake, no correction was
     made. (On cable, it seems, corrections are never made

because it’s correct even when it’s wrong.) Considering
the topic and situation this was more than a simple
error. It was a horrendous example of not knowing what
she, and other, cable reporters do so often – make
mistakes without anyone correcting them.
Another example of cable TV reporters’ ineptness
occurred when MSNBC’s newly-appointed “star,” Kasie
Hunt, shouted to Michael Cohen as he emerged from his
second day of hearings before a congressional committee
and asked, “Mr. Cohen. Why did you lie to Congress?”
Certainly that’s not a way to get someone to answer your
questions. More important. Ms. Hunt has been covering
the story for much more than a year and if that’s the
best question she could come up with perhaps she should
take a refresher course in journalism 101 (or ask her
producers to feed her questions). It was another example
of shockingly bad journalism (but who ever said cable
news is good journalism).
Just when you think cable TV political reporting has hit
a low point, along came Ari Melber’s comment on his
March 7 “The Beat with Ari Melber,” program, also on
MSNBC, during a discussion while waiting for the judge
to sentence Paul Manafort. Mr. Melber actually said, I
swear, It’s out of the hands of us analysts and
observers, as if it mattered to the judge what they
said. For those of you who think I’m picking on MSNBC
unfairly, I have two responses. 1) One, they deserve
criticism, as does Fox and 2) I’m a big fan of Lawrence
O’Donnell’s commentary and also tune in Brian Williams’
wrap-up late night news program, both on MSNBC.
As they were in predicting a Hillary Clinton victory in
2016, on March 7 cable TV pundits and reporters again
demonstrated why viewers should be wary of cable
commentary. This time, when after weeks of predicting a
lengthy jail sentence for Paul Manafort, a judge
sentenced him to 47 weeks.

While the above are examples of flawed (to put it politely)
journalism, at least it was an attempt to report accurately
without spin, unlike what the programs of Sean Hannity, Tucker
Carlson, Jeanine Piro and others on Fox are about. (As a
former reporter and editor and someone who taught at the Army
Information School and was offered a teaching job at a
civilian university), I would grade cable TV political
reporting a generous D.)

The above commentators and so many others and occasional
contributors on Fox should be given lifetime PRSA memberships.
because for Trump, they compose the PR Dream Team.

If I was advising the DNC, I would let Fox News host one of
the 2020 primary debates with the follow proviso: Fox
interviewers must be limited to Chris Wallace, Shepard Smith,
and Brett Baier to insure journalistic integrity during the
questioning. (There might be others in the news division of
Fox that qualify, but since I’m not a regular viewer of the
channel I can’t name them.)

Also, given Fox’s history. a representative of the DNC should
be given the opportunity to respond to the expected twisted,
biased commentary that will certainly follow the debate and
certainly extend into the next day. Doing so is the only way
to insure the messages by the Democratic candidates are
reported as they     said     and   not   reinterpreted   by   Fox
commentators.

To those who say the DNC is trying to muzzle Fox, check past
commentary. Opinions vary and should not be limited, but
outright falsehoods should be muzzled so voters can cast their
ballots based on facts, not fiction.

In the March 8 New York Times, Wallace, who I consider the
best interviewer on television, said that by banning Fox News
the Democrats are losing an opportunity to spread their
message to viewers who they are going to need in order to win

in the 2020 election. I believe he’s correct.

In the same edition, Mark Mazzetti, a Times reporter who has
been covering the special counsel investigation, said, “…we
really have to be very judicious and careful about not getting
out ahead of ourselves, not saying more than we know, not
inferring things.” If cable TV political entertainers followed
the same rule, their program content would consist of a loop
recording saying, “Breaking News.” And that also would be
untrue.

(Full Disclosure: I am a political junkie and always have
been. My first public relations job was with a political PR
firm, where I worked on local, statewide, national and
presidential campaigns. When I joined Burson-Marsteller, I
worked with political columnists. Thus, I feel that I’m
qualified to give an opinion on the state of political
reporting today: I believe that television political reporting
is as bad as I’ve ever seen it. Network political reporting
has largely been delegated to their cable kin, resulting in
panel discussions and pundits, who have an opinion about any
subject from politics to what other people think, instead of
actually having reporters dig for news. On cable TV, The
phrase “I don’t know” is equivalent to George Carlin’s famous
seven dirty words. Cable beat reporters act like speaking
stenographers, repeating almost verbatim what someone tells
them.

Their reporting mostly consists of running after a member of
Congress for a sound bite. TV political news is similar to a
headline on a print story, the exception being people who read
print stories learn the facts that make the story. With the
exception of Wallace, other Sunday program hosts ask softball
questions of guests, with nary a follow-up. In my opinion,
cable news has resulted in voters who have scant knowledge of
the facts behind the sound bite or comments by hosts or guests
made on programs. As a result, falsified opinions are accepted
as being true. The result is an uneducated voter. And that’

not good for our country.)

                         About the Author: Arthur Solomon, a
                         former journalist, was a senior
                         VP/senior counselor at Burson-
                         Marsteller, and was responsible for
                         restructuring, managing and playing
                         key roles in    some of the    most
                         significant       national      and
                         international sports and non-sports
programs. He also traveled internationally as a media adviser
to high-ranking government officials. He now is a frequent
contributor to public relations publications, consults on
public relations projects and is on the Seoul Peace Prize
nominating committee. He can be reached at arthursolomon4pr
(at) juno.com and artsolomon4pr (at) optimum.net.