People Versus the Press

AIM.org ^ | 9-27-04 | Cliff Kincaid

[FlyLow]

The liberal reaction to the Zell Miller speech attacking fellow Democrat John Kerry at the Republican convention was disgust. John Harris of the Washington Post was on MSNBC, the day after the speech, labeling Miller "unhinged." But opinion polls after the convention showed Bush with an 11-point lead over Kerry.

One reason for the Bush "bounce" could lie in the reaction to the Miller speech by ordinary people, not the press. Ironically, MSNBC had the facts about this phenomenon the night of the speech, when pollster Frank Luntz interviewed a group of Ohio voters who watched the Miller and Cheney speeches. That was the same night that Chris Matthews had unleashed a verbal attack on Miller after the speech. Miller responded by challenging Matthews to a duel and saying he wouldn't take the attacks lying down.

Liberal journalists who rejected the Miller speech were out-of-touch with ordinary people. Luntz revealed, "Even though the focus of tonight was supposed to be Dick Cheney, actually it was Senator Miller who had an even more favorable reaction from them." Speaking to members of his focus group, he asked for a word or phrase to describeMiller's speech and the responses he got back were "fantastic," "very upbeat," "energetic," "surprising," "focused on the family," "dynamic," "intellectual," and "on target." The only negative reaction was, "powerful, but one-sided,"

[The Ghost of FReepers Past]

Zell made the Republican convention bipartisan.

[smith288]

I remember when I was taught that the press was the people.... So naive I was...