Foxed

Fox would report — if, perhaps, a little under its breath — Franks’ disavowal, just as it has reported a crush of other stories in the past few days. But was Fox’s An Najaf bobble one of those minor journalistic fender benders that happens in times of war, when three 24-hour news networks are crashing stories minute by minute, sometimes second to second? Or did it reveal one of the pitfalls of Fox’s unique brand of war coverage, wrapped, as it were, in red, white and blue?

Unabashedly patriotic, Fox appears to have captured the mood of most cable news viewers at this moment: The network was far and away the nation’s top-rated cable network before this war, and remains far and away the nation’s top-rated cable news network six days into the war.

No surprise, but a blow to CNN, which had hoped to move ahead in the opening days and establish that viewers in US will always drift back to the world’s biggest TV news organisation during times of war. In last Friday’s ratings, Fox was seen by 4,017,000 throughout the day, or double its usual level, and by 5,586,000 in prime time, also double.

Likewise, CNN and MSNBC also posted dramatically higher numbers: 4.3 million and 2.4 million in prime time, respectively. MSNBC nearly trebled its usual prime-time performance. ‘‘All three of the cable news operations have been doing some outstanding things but there’s no question that Fox’s anchors … bring all of their agendas to the news portion (of the broadcasts) that are traditionally things that have been kept separate,’’ says Alex Jones, director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University.

‘‘I remember several times in which I’ve seen anchors interviewing someone and that person said something they disagreed with, and then start yelling at them, ‘How can you say that!’ It’s very outside the professional way of doing things.’’

Not surprising at all, but did Fox pump the An Najaf story because it was the patriotic thing to do? ‘‘Look, we have to be honest with ourselves and admit it is a war and we’re doing the best job we can, and have information coming into the building fast and furious…while we’re trying to get this stuff confirmed and verified,’’ said Bill Shine, network executive producer of Fox.

‘‘Every once in a while, we’re going to make a mistake, and we’re trying to learn our lessons and move on.’’ On Fox’s flag-waving, he said: ‘‘You don’t give up your American citizenship when you’re a journalist. There isn’t anyone here who doesn’t wake up every day and says to themselves, ‘Wow, I’m an American and there are American troops over there …’ ’’. (LAT-WP)