by Michael DeLier
As we lead up to the second GOP presidential debate, Michael DeLier, president of management consulting firm The DeLier Group (www.thedeliergroup.com) takes a critical look at the first debate.
In the time leading up to the FOX News/GOP debate, FOX’s Megyn Kelley promoted and hyped the event. Expected. My antennae grew nightly at Ms. Kelly’s giddiness punching the great and tough questions she and her cohorts had in store for the Republican candidates. Never mind they can’t seem to come to terms with Hillary Clinton’s goings on.
Nope, this debate hosted by FOX was going to propel FOX News past their already lumbering cable news competition, right up there with the likes of ABC, CBS and NBC. That’s great fodder for the viewers, but not so much for anyone who has spent anytime around a television newsroom. No news organization..0.. network nor affiliate is going to allow 3 reporter/anchor’s to develop, script and manage a televised debate on their own. It just ain’t gonna happen. Senior FOX management certainly originated some of the questions, approved all of the questions, and anointed the reporters delivery, posturing, and timing. That’s how it works folks. Practice, practice, practice so you look tight and buttoned up. The delivery of the questions especially by Kelley was most telling. Could it be that she felt this was her true coming out party as a credible journalist that would display and reassure her contemporaries of her qualifications?? Probably.
It appeared to me, and by the reaction of a great many viewers that FOX was desperately trying to interject themselves into the political discussion. The process. If so, it has certainly come back to bite FOX rather hard as witness the call of Roger Ailes to Donald Trump. I cannot think of a time in my more than 45 years in the broadcast industry that a network news executive has called a political candidate to quell a dust up. Never. If you think I am exaggerating, why did FOX release a statement letting viewers and the press know of the call and that it was Ailes who made the call? Frankly for positioning with the viewers and advertisers that’s why.
The arrogance, the idiocy of asking one candidate to turn to their left /right and address another candidate concerning remarks made by them in a previous press conference was sophomoric. Other questions were demeaning and not really worthy of an answer. They were designed and delivered more for shock effect than for substance. Titillating comes to mind.
On several opportunities to explain her professional duty as she saw it, Ms. Kelley has repeatedly fallen back on this comment. “If Mr. Trump can’t get past me, how is he going to be able to handle President Putin?” That’s self aggrandizement. Very unprofessional. I seriously doubt V. Putin cares one whit about your thoughts on political correctness, Donald Trump’s, Ben Carson’s Marco Rubio’s et al. As I might have said, I have been in the news business for a very long time. I learned from the likes of Ed Murrow, Walter Cronkite, Bill Paley, Ed Turner. Who the hell are these pretenders and how did they manage to get control of newsrooms? And while I am at it, where is your humble correspondent Bill O’Reilly? What a strange time to take a week off?? Oh, maybe he was on assignment. Whatever.
FOX is the leading cable news network. They don’t lead the Big 3, ABC, CBS and NBC in viewership. They have built their reputation on increasing viewership with bolder commentary and interviews than their cable competition. Viewers trust them, and that what they see is fair and balanced. Well, FOX has now jumped right back in the pot with the rest of the talking heads. Once you lose trust.. you just lose. That’s what Ailes call to Trump was really all about. Saving viewers that through their own arrogance and manipulation they may have lost.
Michael De Lier is president of The DeLier Group, a management consulting firm. Reach him at: [email protected].
