Now that the two cable news media criticism shows go head-to-head we’re starting to see some of the same coverage on each show, even at the same time. An interesting thing happened yesterday during week two of Howard Kurtz‘s MediaBuzz on Fox News. At 11:08am, as Kurtz was talking about Charlie Rose’s big get last week with Bashar Al-Assad, his old show, “Reliable Sources,” was talking to Rose. Politico’s Patrick Gavin hosted “Reliable Sources” and interviewed Rose.
As for interviewing Assad, the NYT’s Brian Stelter has an interesting story about how Assad’s advisers are carefully choosing his interviewers. Last Monday, four days after Rose’s interview, George Stephanopoulos traveled to the region to interview Assad.
But Mr. Assad must have had a change of heart, because once Mr. Stephanopoulos was in Beirut, the interview was called off. Mr. Stephanopoulos returned to the United States empty-handed. (On the bright side, he quickly scored another big interview, this time for real: he sat down with Mr. Obama in Washington on Friday.)
Mr. Stephanopoulos’s 11,000-mile journey demonstrated the Syrian government’s sometimes-effective, sometimes-confounding strategy toward communicating with the West through major news media outlets.