Saturday, February 02, 2008

Huckabee Fires Back At Romney

"A VOTE FOR ME . . . IS A VOTE FOR ME."
Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee visited Springfield Friday night, while both Mitt Romney and Barack Obama spoke to KY3 News by satellite.

Watch my Friday KY3 News @ 10 report HERE.

By the way . . . I heard people began lining up for the President Clinton event early this afternoon.

Watch KY3 News @ 6 and 10 for full reports . .
***ALSO -- Sen. John McCain had to cancel his satellite interview with us Friday due to a schedule change. His campaign says they plan to reschedule.

7 comments:

Gena said...

I'm tired of hearing about how Huckabee doesn't stand a chance. Over 2600 people were at the rally with very little advertising or support from the news stations. You have seven pictures from Clinton's visit and one from Huckabees on here. Not very neutral reporting I would say. You need to start taking the Huckabee supporters serious, you are doing us all a disservice with your one sided reporting.

David Catanese said...

Gena,

We went to cover Mike Huckabee in Iowa back in April before anyone else started paying attention to him.

We went back to cover Huckabee in the Iowa caucuses in January. We went to Jefferson City to cover Huckabee last week. And again, we were there when he visited Springfield.

If you search Huckabee on our blog, you will find there's no Springfield media outlet that has covered the former Arkansas Governor more than us.

I don't think you will find we have ignored him. We have covered him thoroughly.

Jackie Melton said...

What you did in the past in no way changes the point that Gena made.

I agree you (your station) have covered Huckabee a lot in the past but the appearance by Huckabee in Springfield was local news for your local station to report and it wasn't reported nearly at the scale Bill Clinton's appearance was reported (In fairness, it wasn't given the same level of coverage at any of the other Spfld local stations either).

Sorry, I just can't let that slide. Gena made a good point and citing PAST coverage doesn't reply to her valid questions about the vast difference in coverage in this case where it involves local appearances by opposing parties.

I wonder if you'd like to try to answer her question again?

Jackie Melton said...

Some elaboration on my previous comment:

April in Iowa is not 4 days out from Super Tuesday's vote.

January Iowa caucuses were not 4 days out from Super Tuesday's vote.

Jefferson City last week is neither 4 days out from Super Tuesday's vote or an opportunity for Springfield voters to hear directly from Mike Huckabee.

Friday night was.

As far as Springfield voters are concerned, I'd have thought they'd have been interested in what Huckabee said to THEM, not to Jefferson City or Iowa last week, last month and months ago. But, heck, you've covered him so much already why would covering him 4 days out from Super Tuesday be important? Why would it matter now? ;)

For me it's local governmental issues. What's your excuse?

David Catanese said...

In a perfect world, we could give everyone equal time every night. That's not how television news works. We do our best trying to cover each candidate and believe we have. Our blog has tried to go above and beyond any other coverage around and we believe we have achieved that goal.

But there are also realities. Bill Clinton is a former president. Those visits don't come often. And if you want to get into political viability, right now, Hillary Clinton's campaign has a better shot at ultimate victory than Mike Huckabee's.

Now, that may not sound fair. But it's also the nature of our business. I'm sure it doesn't satisfy you, but I hope it gives you a better glimpse at the challenges we face every day.

It's never perfect, it's a work in progress. But we work really hard, and always aim to cover everyone as best as possible.

Jackie Melton said...

I don't get to cover everything I want to cover either. There just isn't enough time in a day or week or two week time period. We all do the best we can with what we have, I guess.

I only commented because I didn't feel you really addressed Gena's comment.

But since you raised the issue of how you feel, and other media covering the campaigns of primary candidates seem to feel, that Hillary Clinton has a better chance of ultimate victory than Mike Huckabee, some people might, just might, feel that the lack of equal coverage of some of the *lesser* candidates may contribute to them BEING lesser candidates and HAVING less "viability."

I'm satisfied with your answer, I'm usually satisfied with honesty and with honest effort, not that you are required to satisfy me, personally, anyway.

But the larger issue is that the race is still going and it is the media who is telling the voters who are the "viable" choices and who are not "viable" choices and I don't think it is unreasonable to suspect that such statements could influence people to vote against candidates they might have voted for because the media has convinced them that, say, Mike Huckabee doesn't have a chance anyway so not to throw away their vote.

Instead, those who might have voted for Huckabee and want to vote for Huckabee may not, may decide to vote for McCain, or if they don't like McCain, Romney because they'll buy into the Romney line that a vote for Huckabee is a vote for McCain.

Naturally, you may not care for my preference, but my preference would be equal coverage of ALL candidates with less speculation about "viability" on the part of the media.

Just my opinion.

Jackie Melton said...

Or, again, let me put it this way:

I don't think it is the media's place to tell the voters who is a viable candidate. I think it is the voter's place to tell the media who is viable.