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Wladyslaw Pleszczynski and William McGurn

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from: William McGurn

Fox News in the News

Posted Thursday, Feb. 1, 2001, at 11:52 AM ET

Dear Wlad,

I remember watching Twelve Angry Men in a hotel room in Shanghai just before we returned to America and having the same thought. A few weeks later, I found that it had already been done. It's called We the Jury, and it stars Lauren Hutton as a big-shot TV talk show hostess who shoots her husband. She admits to doing it, but the defense is that he mentally abused her for years, and initially the jury leans her way. But gradually they come to think she's guilty. The last holdout is an embittered feminist. Christopher Plummer is the defense attorney.

Did you see the Drudge item on Fox News? Drudge claims there is a big spat at Newsweek over a story that would crown Fox king of cable news and put Bill O'Reilly's face on the cover. A couple of months ago, I profiled O'Reilly for the "Taste" page. As a viewer I find him pretty obnoxious (probably the most frequently used word is insufferable), but he's great TV. The reason he's great TV is that he asks the follow-up question and pursues his quarry until they answer it or until he makes clear that they have no intention of giving a straight answer. What intrigued me about O'Reilly was that for all the fuss about Chris Matthews, MSNBC, etc., his ratings were moving upward--and yet it hadn't been noticed by the media.

But with CNN slashing jobs and Fox on the verge of profitability, it's a new story. By the way, I went back to the original 1996 Times news piece on Fox News by Bill Carter, which was pretty negative: "[W] with no name and no formal plan for distribution the promised channel inspired widespread doubts about its long-term survival among competitors and cable industry analysts."

What you miss by not being in New Jersey: Thursday is the day the local paper, the Madison Eagle, appears. Madison is a suburban, Republican town--indeed, when the Times was looking to profile a Republican town's response to the Clinton impeachment verdict, they came here. Usually stories focus on a fight over a variance, or there are local interest stories like the one about the Madisonian who reffed the Super Bowl. But today's top story was about a local Drew University professor and pastor who says he's known Hillary since she was 14 years old. Talks about her religion and how she organized babysitters for Mexican farm workers when she was 15, etc.

But just because the town is Republican doesn't mean the town doesn't have a two-party system. Here the real division is between its Country Club Republicans--largely WASP with a smattering of Wall Street Irish--and its Reagan Republicans, mostly Italians, many of whom have their own businesses in town. By and large it's a good split: The country club types have given us a stately town hall, worry about preservation, and keep the city tidy; the other Republicans, who appear to be gaining, worry about taxes, having enough firemen, etc. It's a long way from Hong Kong, which we still think of as home.

But I digress. ...

Cheers,
Bill

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the breakfast table
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from: William McGurn

Fox News in the News

Posted Thursday, Feb. 1, 2001, at 11:52 AM ET
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Wladyslaw Pleszczynski is executive editor of the American Spectator. William McGurn is the Wall Street Journal's chief editorial writer. (Read the Journal's editorial page here.)
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