Chris Rose was a member of Thursday’s democratic focus group that Fox News employed for the Iowa debate (he is the man in the first row, second in from the right). Rose reached out to TVNewser last week to clear up something he thought was incorrectly being portrayed during the broadcast — that the group were voters in Iowa. In fact, the group was at FNC HQ in midtown Manhattan.
Rose referenced the toss from Brit Hume to Frank Luntz after the debate. Hume said, “That gives you a sense of what some of us deep inside the beltway think about this. For a view from some Iowans able to vote in this, let’s turn to our host.” It appears this was an isolated incident, however, as the other references to the group did not include the Iowa-related intro.
Click continued to read about Rose’s experience, which he described as a “good time.”
Rose said he was “treated very fairly” and paid $100 cash for his services. He described the experience to TVNewser, saying he arrived at 12:30 and was given a survey to fill out, asking him to rate his top three candidates and say whether he would classify himself as “liberal” or “moderate.”
When they went into the studio around 1pmET, Luntz told each person where to sit. As they watched the debate, they could turn their meters anywhere from 0-100, depending on the degree they were in favor or against what the candidate was saying.
After the debate and question and answer session, the group was shown about 20 commercials by the democratic candidates, and asked to use their meters to do the same thing as the debates, most likely for a future segment.
Rose said this was the first time he had done anything like this, and that it was a good time to appear on his station of choice. “When I watch cable news, I’ll watch Fox News,” he said.
And for the record, Rose came into the debate as a Barack Obama supporter and left with the same feeling, although, he said, “I think John Edwards upped his ranking with me and Hillary Clinton dropped a little.”