The media pundit's pundit. Written by NYC insider Jeff Jarvis, BuzzMachine covers news, media, journalism, and politics.
Upper hand
: Dumb question: Why (on NBC, at least) is Bush 10 percent higher on the screen than Kerry?
: ALSO: I don’t mean to dwell on the inconsequential but we had NBC on one TV and CBS on another and they weren’t in sync. It sounds as if one of them is using a delay. What, are they afraid one of them will drop the F bomb?
maybe he’s standing on a phone book?
That’s funny, I was just thinking the same thing. Must have something to do with where the closest cameras are positioned, I guess.
Anyone notice John Kerry’s hand motions don’t change, he just repeats the same set over and over again? I’m watching Fox and notice the height difference too. I thought the debates were pool camera?
Part of the negotiations, I’m sure. They did that to make Bush look as tall as Kerry.
It’s because Fox News is doing the cameras.
Oldest trick in the book.
These folks don’t fight fair, and you make a mistake every time that you imagine that they might.
Its because it was negotiated and agreed to by both sides. Its not Fox news…they aren;t “setting the camera’s”..it was a deal point and everybody signed on.
But did it really make that big of a difference?
Actually, I believe FOX was “cutting” the cameras in some cases, from what I have read. But it wasn’t them doing it in any kind of “biased” way. I just thought it was curious how it was done, not that they were of identical heights, but that the podiums weren’t set up differently to do so.
this was a much more substantive debate than all had imagined (as per Glenn also). Time to talk about the issues seriously; forget about the trappings. Kerry fell short when he recommended bipartisan talks with north korea, otherwise Kerry came on strong. This was a rush to war, period.
Bush may try to pull out an October surprise when he can show that weapons when moved to Syria or that Iraqi-sponsored research was going on in Libya. You have to realize that the audience for this debate is international. How does the world appraise Kerry’s performance? Should Bush be penalized for his rashness in invading Iraq?
And what does Bush mean when he says that the terrorists are fighting “vociferously”?
Kerry showed that he is willing to listen to all sides. Kerry has effectively shed the Dukakis image; he’s on a roll. Let’s see if he can keep it up.
“TOMMY FRANKS ON CNN: Osama bin Laden is not in Afghanistan, as Senator Kerry said he is.” (from Instapundit)
Jeff, thank god *some* bloggers, i.e. Glenn are live blogging the issues of this event.
How does Tommy Franks know that?
IRANIAN MOOOOLAHS!
“JUST ONE THING: (Much, much more soon). No president who has presided over Abu Ghraib should ever say he wants to put anyone on a leash. That’s all. Stay tuned.” -Andrew Sullivan
Wow, it’s amazing how scared the bloggers are to jump in. I guess they’re waiting for the major media to speak up and then they can fisk away merrily. Mexed missages! What happened to we media?
I think the time delay is practice for the VP debate. They’re frightened of what Cheney might say.
F-bomb nothing…they were afraid of a wardrobe malfunction.
Re the delay: this occurs for any event that many networks cover at once. You’ll hear the same thing for the SOTU address, for example. I doubt there’s anything nefarious about it – just inherent delays somewhere in the transmission and reception electronics. (If you’re really geeky, you surf the tv and radio to find two stations that are only slightly out of sync and listen to them at the same time for an interesting echo/reverb effect.)
Mork wrote
It’s because Fox News is doing the cameras.
Oldest trick in the book.
These folks don’t fight fair, and you make a mistake every time that you imagine that they might.
If Fox did this on their own initiative (which I doubt, and for which you have presented no evidence, only your own mean-spirited assumptions), you won’t see it on the other debates which will be run by other networks.
If you do see it and it turns out accusing them of something they didn’t do was your mistake, will you be fair and apologize? I don’t know, but I won’t hold my breath.
I wish I could have been faster in here. I was gonna post that “Fox did it! Evil Fox” but Mork already did it for real.
I was wondering about the unlevel podiums, myself, but decided that both cameras had probably just been centered independently, nothing more than that. Usually, when we see talking heads on a split screen, we don’t have the visual clue of the top of the podium to remind us that the people in the split screen are actually being caught by independent cameras, and not just one magic camera with two independent eyeballs.
It just would have looked weird in a side-by-side shot for their heads to be at different levels, that’s all. No grand conspiracy, just ordinary television framing. In general, Kerry had the better of the appearance situation. Bush should have accepted a shorter podium so he wouldn’t have looked cut off by it.
On substance, I thought it went to Kerry. I cringed at some of his points (Vietnam references, Halliburton, etc.), but I cringed at almost all of Bush’s sorry performance.
Interesting observation on the CBS vs. NBC sync issue. I think gunshy CBS may be on a five-second delay for all live broadcasts of any kind now.
Hey, it only took 18 comments for someone (John) to get it right. Standard TV production in this type of split-screen situation is to allow the same amount of space above each person’s head. Since Kerry is taller, he appears larger in the frame. This inured to Kerry’s benefit; citing it as evidence of Fox News bias is absurd. To the contrary, FNC must have been getting angry e-mail from Bush supporters, because Brit Hume went out of his way to explain it during the post-debate coverage.
citing it as evidence of Fox News bias is absurd.
If Fox did this on their own initiative (which I doubt, and for which you have presented no evidence, only your own mean-spirited assumptions), you won’t see it on the other debates which will be run by other networks.
If you do see it and it turns out accusing them of something they didn’t do was your mistake, will you be fair and apologize? I don’t know, but I won’t hold my breath.
Nnnnnnnaaaaaahhhhh! Don’t hold your breath, honey, you’re bound to turn blue. Fox would never try to make Bush look taller. We all must just be paranoid.
Mork said: “These folks [Fox] don’t fight fair, and you make a mistake every time that you imagine that they might.”
I know, Mork. I was so incensed when Fox presented fraudlent documents as authentic, that I …. what? They didn’t? Oh. Never mind.
