Saturday, January 19, 2008

AP: Blunt-controlled TV coverage failed to show Democrat reaction to State of the State


If anyone wondered why everyone seemed to be wildly applauding (with plenty of standing ovations thrown in for good measure) Gov. Matt Blunt's State of the State message Tuesday, wonder no longer.
The Columbia Tribune's Terry Ganey reports the governor controlled all camera angles to make sure no Democrats were shown. The Democrats, of course, were not as wild over the proposals made by Blunt:

Blunt spokeswoman Jessica Robinson oversaw elements of the broadcast, including choosing what the cameras viewed and which scenes were broadcast. The broadcast, which showed lawmakers applauding Blunt 60 times and rising to their feet 25 times, was made with state equipment and staff. The state paid for an hour of satellite time to broadcast it live.

Mid-Missouri television stations KOMU-TV in Columbia and KRCG-TV in Jefferson City said they received complaints from viewers who noted they were being shown only the Republicans' reactions.

During a newscast later that night, KRCG's Kermit Miller explained to viewers that the speech footage had been supplied by the state. He acknowledged that the station should have told viewers that earlier.

"Certainly we had no control over that feed and no control over the fact of what viewers saw was one view of how the speech was reacted to in the hall," Gregg Palermo, KRCG's news director, told the Columbia Daily Tribune. "I think moving forward we are going to do a better job on the front end telling people that this is in the information behind what you are seeing."

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It really doesn't matter if the Democrats were shown or not, none of us were fooled, other than the fool that made the speech. He's such a pitiful excuse for anything they have to pad the outcome in their favor. The TV station and media are so poor in their coverage and attention they didn't know they had been had.
The little boy Gov better enjoy his day in the sun, its about over at the next election.