Owning the Narrative: The VP Pick

Even before the official announcement went out at 3AM, the Republicans released approximately two hours earlier a web ad that is to be played in "key states," showing Biden criticizing Obama in the primary (8 months ago) and praising (the old) McCain (a clip over 3 years old).

The excitement of the day was dampened though I don't believe overcome by the torrential onslaught of McCain push to control the message. Interestingly enough who controlled the message of the day probably depended more on which network or cable news channel you watched. Here's a run down of the big three:

It goes without saying that Fox Network immediately took the talking points and stuck with them expanding on them during their normally abysmal day time programming by trying to bring in other anti-Obama groups. The naval-gazers at Fox & Friends even brought in the Clintonista hold outs who admitted that even if Hillary was the VP they wouldn't vote for the ticket, despite holding a rally for her next week at the Convention. The rolled through the McCain advisers all in front of the now well acquainted McCain Screen, all pushing the talking points of the ad, with the Fox Commentators taking everything they said and agreeing immediately and trying to expand on them with hyperbole that they try day in and day out to pass as truth.

CNN seemed rather balanced though they gave the McCain camp more than ample free air time by playing the web ad on virtual loop through out the morning and had a camp meeting to discuss the points offered by the add followed by what this means for McCain when he picks his VP. CNN also focused heavily on the Clinton questions.

MSNBC, a cable network that is heavily biased against the republican hegemonics embodied in Bush, and currently on the Obama band wagon, cut through the talking points and actually attempted to ask the McCain folks the questions the CNN guys were asking themselves. This noticeably flustered both the representatives and Chris Matthews as the aides were not able to answer the questions only repeat the talking points.

Moving away from the talking heads and their obsession with 30 second sound bites who won the day may depend on the Sunday Papers, and if the direction of the AP's Ron Fournier, is any indication (Fournier being the one who dramatically changed the stylistics of AP writing to be inclusive of and promote of biases of the individual reporter as opposed to the old notion of Journalistic integrity and presenting facts simply as such) then McCain's camp may have won the day.

Crossed posted at Crack the Bell.

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