Published Wednesday, October 20, 2004
TV Occupied, Embroiled in Politics
By FRAZIER MOORE
The Associated Press

Around the time the presidential race began, Janet Jackson came undone on the Super Bowl telecast, giving rise to the term "wardrobe malfunction" and igniting a public outcry heard all the way to Capitol Hill.

Now, as Election Day nears, CBS News is nose-deep in hot water for its recent expose on President Bush's military record that relied on apparently fake documents. Among viewers who long ago branded Dan Rather a liberal boogeyman, this was the last straw.

Such events bookend a year during which TV wasn't just a medium for political expression, but a political battleground as well. Viewers, polarized by sights as far afield as the Super Bowl and Baghdad, suspected television of furthering the rift with secret agendas that distorted the truth of what they had seen -- or didn't see.

What did it mean when CBS News announced recently that it had shelved a "60 Minutes" report on the rationale for war in Iraq because it would be "inappropriate" to air it so close to the election? Was this an act of journalistic responsibility? Or a desperate bid to make peace with the Bush administration?

Meanwhile, what did it mean that ratings for Fox News Channel soared -- even beating ABC, CBS and NBC in head-to-head competition at the Republican convention? Easy, said fans of the network: Here was a rare outlet for fair-and-balanced journalism. Easy, said others who regard the network as a mouthpiece for a vast right-wing conspiracy: With Fox, that conspiracy has tightened its grip.

And what did it mean when NBC's "The West Wing," which dramatizes a progressive Democratic presidency, announced Alan Alda would join the show as a Republican senator with aspirations for the White House? Was his addition just a way to rejuvenate the ratings of a series past its prime? Or a sop to conservative viewers who always thought "The West Wing" has a liberal tilt?

As questions like these danced in the viewer's head, a grating tune still resonated from the Super Bowl.

First, Justin Timberlake had exposed Janet Jackson's right breast to 89 million viewers. Then that audience, along with the rest of America, was exposed to another unseemly display: lots of finger-pointing, as everyone tried to dodge the blame for what was labeled both a regrettable accident and a clear sign of TV's moral decay.

The subsequent, um, fallout was significant. Taped delays were imposed on what had formerly been live telecasts, like the Grammy awards. A surge of overanxious primness was typified by NBC, which blurred an "ER" surgery scene that, for a couple of seconds, flashed the bare breast of a cancer patient in her 70s.

Then, last month, CBS was fined $550,000 by the Federal Communications Commission for the Super Bowl fiasco.

"As countless families gathered around the television to watch one of our nation's most celebrated events, they were rudely greeted with a halftime show stunt more fitting of a burlesque show," huffed commission Chairman Michael Powell, who at the same time had been fighting for deregulation measures that would let media giants become bigger and less responsive to the public than ever before.

Viacom, the giant media conglomerate that owns CBS, took another -- unintended -- shot from the FCC earlier this month when radio superstar Howard Stern announced he would be leaving his show long aired on Viacom-owned Infinity Broadcasting stations. Charging harassment from the Republican-dominated FCC for his often racy program, Stern said in 2006 he would jump to XM Satellite Radio (outside the FCC's control), while continuing to bash Bush "for taking away your rights," particularly after the Super Bowl brouhaha.

The presidential campaign's version of the Super Bowl kicked off Sept. 30 with the first of three televised debates between Bush and his Democratic rival, Sen. John Kerry.

But supplementing those unique joint appearances, Bush and Kerry each was popping up just about anywhere that promised a cordial reception. Kerry tried to lighten things up on CBS' "Late Show with David Letterman" and Comedy Central's "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart." Bush went fishing on the Outdoor Life Network.

In separate sessions, Dr. Phil and his wife Robin talked child-spanking with fellow parents the First Couple, then with Kerry and his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry.

The candidates also popped up in dueling campaign commercials. And even more contentiously, in commercials made by supporters on the candidates' behalf. For weeks, a group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth blasted Kerry the war hero as a war coward. Other veterans fired back in ads defending Kerry's service.

If the level of combativeness reached laughable heights, it wasn't lost on TV's comedians.

"Tonight" show viewers were reminded that Bush was pledging "to destroy terror networks wherever they operate." Then host Jay Leno added, "By `terror network,' it's not clear if he meant al-Qaida or CBS."

And on "The Daily Show" parody newscast, fake anchorman Jon Stewart was hailed by many fans as not just a source of chuckles, but a refuge for political insight.

"We turn our attention," he intoned one night from behind his anchor desk, "to the biggest swing state in this year's presidential election." He paused meaningfully. "Iraq. Think of it as Ohio . . . a bloody, intractable Ohio."

Like Stewart, most of TV's political wags devoted equal time to razzing both sides. But there was one notorious exception: Al Franken, a one-time "Saturday Night Live" regular who in September returned to series TV on cable's Sundance Channel.

Franken's late-night hour was actually a cameras-in-the-sound-booth edition of his weekday program on liberal Air America Radio, where the stated mission of this author-comic-advocate was seeing Bush defeated next month.

Air America, with a lineup of liberal hosts also including Janeane Garofalo and Randi Rhodes, was born last March into a radio world ruled by conservative talk stars. It managed to jump-start a format -- progressive talk -- long dismissed as a negligible audience draw.

Even so, in fall 2004, talk radio (left and right) was just one ingredient in a bubbling media stew also spiced with growing quantities of Internet blogs, streaming-video political ads and partisan Web sites. A favorite theme: All the things deemed wrong about TV, with lots of second-guessing the networks for how they had handled this political season.

Thanks to new technologies and ever-more-receptive old media, the audience was getting heightened opportunities to speak its mind. Amid this growing racket, television kept pace as a dominant voice. But never again would it have the last word.