Balloongate As Mini-disaster? CNN's actions "inadvertent"?

[mountebank]

CNN's Balloongate was a mini-disaster for the Kerry campaign. Consider that if there was any high viewership during the convention, it was probably at the moment Kerry finished his speech and the celebration began. What do these people - probably not very political people if they are tuning in just for the hoopla - see and hear when they tune in but a Kerry campaigner annoyingly chattering and dropping the f-bomb and CNN spinsters talking not about the Kerry's excellent speech and the convention, but about balloons.

In another post, a DU'er suggested it was sabotage by CNN - and in some way I agree. Not to say CNN is deliberately trying to sabotage Kerry's campaign per se. But that they are committed to sabotaging the gravity of any situation, whether it be the endless "crawl" at the bottom of the screen (Jon Stewart's priceless example of the crawl reading "BEYONCE HATES THE WORD BOOTYLICIOUS" while the screen shows photos of Uday and Qusay's mangled corpses) or situations like Balloongate - putting the mic on the event producer, not allowing the images to stand on their own.

It fed into the storyline of the "orchestrated convention," the story the major networks pushed incessantly. They couldn't let the images of Kerry, Edwards, and the Democrats rained with confetti speak for themselves without reminding viewers of the man behind the curtain - as if ALL conventions haven't had producers screaming "Release the balloons!"

Note that a blurb in the Boston Globe claims CNN "inadvertently" picked up the convention producer's profane remarks.... Right.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/07/30/balloon_drop_dribbles_instead/

It won't decide the election, and it didn't get much reporting, thank God, but I think it did some damage. Instead of seeing a great, genuine moment for Democrats, viewers of the most watched cable news network saw something scripted and unflattering.

[LittleApple81]

1. CNN did it on purpose. Randi was saying that several people had

thought the balloons would not drop because they way they put the seams in the net holding he balloons. If Randi heard it, CNN heard it too. It was intentional.

[NMDemDist2]

2. bah, no worries

I heard one of the talking heads say Dems tend to have "balloon failures" at most of the conventions. Since we have only lost the WH once in the last dozen years, I took it as a good omen

maybe i'll research other "balloon failures" and see if it's a winning trend

[LittleApple81]

3. If CNN had not done this, NOBODY WOULD HAVE NOTICED. The

balloons did eventually come down. I was watching C-Span and didn't notice anything amiss.

[Cha]

16. I didn't notice anything "amiss", either! Until I read on du

that cnn had recorded a baloon guy cussing ..which is what most of us would do if there were a balloon failure and all these Dems were counting on me to do my job.

But I say..no biggie! WE're going to win so what on a scale of relativity does it all really matter?

[knight_of_the_star]

21. Me too

I was on C-SPAN and the baloon drop didn't look like anything was wrong with it.

[havocmom]

4. anyone swayed by this wasn't a supporter anyway

And for kicks and giggles, call the FCC and sic them on CNN.

Watch C-SPAN, more news less hype and darned little shananigans.

[ClassWarrior]

5. Yeah, wow the entire campaign was railroaded...

Give up Democrats, it's over for Kerry.

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha...

[w4rma]

6. I watched it on CBS and thought it was pretty cool how the ballons fell

from the back and were bounced around to the front, but I was a bit annoyed how the announcers, as if they had ADD, immediately switched from talking about Kerry's speech to the baloons.

Ooh, look! Bright shiny object!

[West Coast Democrat]

7. Oh well...I think most people were watching CSPAN or PBS

and those who watch CNN tend to know it's gone over to the dark side.

[mountebank]

11. Most Democrats, that is....

For people just tuning in "to get a look at this John Kerry fellow," who think CNN "does pretty good reporting," it was somewhat damaging. I was surprised there wasn't more outrage on DU, actually.

To anyone reasonably aware and reasonably liberal, of course the balloon incident is totally unimportant.

[mzmolly]

8. What was said?

:shrug:

I was watching CSPAN. :hi:

[mountebank]

13. CNN had a mic near the event producer

and he was going on endlessly with "Go balloons, go balloons, all balloons, I don't see any balloons, go confetti" while Kerry and Edwards and the Dems were onstage after the speech. Somewhere in there he got pissed and dropped an f-bomb.

[mzmolly]

23. Where was CNN when Cheney told a respected official to "GO F- himself?"

I thought CNN had the most disgustingly biased coverage of anyone this year, FAUX news included!

[flordehinojos]

9. Does Judy Woodruff suffer from ANOREXIA?

Does Wolf Blitzer hear only in monotes? He certainly speaks monotonously and with the same inflection about anything and everything--he sounds canned and scripted always. Never from the heart.

Is Ms. Kagan a paid shill for bush?

Or, is CNN's version of Harry Potter a wise guy?

}(

[enigmatic]

12. Non-Story..

I'm not worried about this; CNN looked stupid any way you slice this, and only those w/ an IQ of a canned ham will use this a a reason to vote for W...

[Reciprocity]

25. Hey there’s no reason to insult Harry Potter.

BTW Olberman is going to replay the Wolfie saying the F word incident.

[iconoclastic cat]

10. Who is so bored that they will remember this 2 days from now?

And who cares?

[demgrrrll]

15. You Wish. As I wrote last night the balloon man swore, big deal

lets move on. I thought Republicans embraced the move on meme. Should bring more people to our side. <sarcasm>

[iconoclastic cat]

18. demgrrrll, you just lost me...

I'm not sure what you meant by "You wish." Do you think that this silly crap will have legs when, say, the confirmation of Shrub's AWOL-ness breaks on Tuesday?

[mountebank]

19. No one is saying it has legs in the press....

Or as a Republican talking-point or something. But we can only hope it won't have legs in the mind - maybe even subconscious mind - of the somewhat uninformed swing-voter.

[iconoclastic cat]

20. Who would care? It's funny!

I just don't get it, I guess.

[mountebank]

22. Made it look scripted and disingenuous.

To you and me, yeah, who cares. Funny gaffe. But to someone else, this might have solidified their conscious or subconscious idea of Dems - or politicians in general - as scripted and not genuine. When it clearly was a genuine, albeit scripted, moment (like every other convention, in other words). Turning someone from a potential voter to a non-voter is just as damaging for Kerry, at this point. And people are turned off by insincerity. I'm not saying the event itself was insincere, but CNN did a good job making it look that way.

[demgrrrll]

24. OOPs OOps sorry I was responding to the original post and I didn't

think about it being a response to you.

[burned]

14. This was no accident

For the balloons NOT to work combined with the 'right on time' on air feed of the producer's mike or headset, which he had been talking into all night I'm sure, combined with the MINUTES that it took to switch him off, combined with the loving camera pans of the ceiling and the rows and rows of snuggled up tight balloons not falling, would take at LEAST a little help from somebody.

I'm pretty furious about it. And what a HUGE, HUGE disappointment for all the people working that show, to have that happen on a big station like CNN.

[NWHarkness]

17. Aren't we better off

without those jackasses spinning Kerry's speech?

It's not a coincidence that Kerry timed the speech to end as close as possible to when the network affiliates in the Eastern and Central time zones cut away to local news?