News Coverage of Cheney Visit
From what I’ve seen so far on the evening news, it’s been very positive for Massa. Kuhl was nowhere to be seen, as far as I could tell, but there were shots of Cheney coming and going (that’s right, at 5:30, he’s already outta here.)
But the coverage that blew me away was WROC-TV. More on this later– I’m hoping to get a clip. But the reporter did a great job of putting Cheney’s talking points into context, instead of just being a stenographer for him. Plus, apparently they expected 180 people at the fundraiser, and 30-40 volunteers had to be shuffled in at the last minute to appear like a full house!Â
We’ll have to keep our eye on whether they even make the 100K they were hoping for. There was speculation they wouldn’t.
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I watched the coverage and observed the following:
1. I think that this was great publicity for Massa, since he got more coverage yesterday than he’s had in this area since the campaign began.
2. R News did a great profile on the race, which included extensive interviews of Massa and descriptions of his positions on various subjects, and it seems like there was less profiling of Kuhl, and Massa came off great.
3. What was one of the most interesting things to me was the lack of any coverage of support for Cheney outside the fundraiser - you might expect in different times that a sitting vice president would have throngs of people lining a motorcade route hoping for a glimpse, and waving in support. Didn’t happen.
4. Even watching the group inside, there was little enthusiasm for Cheney as he spoke. Most looked bored and clapped dutifully, but there were no cheers or standing ovations. Cheney even included short pauses in his speech, which I think were intended for the applause, and there was hesitation, and then some applause as people caught on. I might be reading more into that than there was, but it just struck me that the audience looked like my son when I bring him to an event and have to remind him to behave, stay seated, and clap.
Very interesting. Thanks for the inside look at the speech. A number of the other stations I saw basically were stenographers for Cheney’s remarks.
As for coverage of support for Cheney, you’re right. I think the media’d have to look pretty hard. The folks stlo7 photographed were the only folks. In an email, he reported: