| Congressman Bridenstine's effort to get his message to the citizens of Oklahoma requires an objective media. Sometimes that leaves any elected official very frustrated and even apprehensive about the fairness of the press. At tonight's town hall event I decided to focus on how the professional media does their job and what kind of package of information they produce. I talked with several of them and found them all to be engaging, courteous, and intent on getting the information they need. Then I came home and saw what they were going to do with the information they got and the scene they experienced. Tulsa has One print newspaper with daily widespread distribution. There are also 4 TV stations with nightly news coverage. This reporter doesn't claim total objectivity and no effort is made to cloak my conservative underpinnings. Having said that, I'd like to refer my readers to my own coverage of the event, at both my blog and my Facebook group. |  |
Taylor Newcomb - Taylor Newcomb and the KOTV News On Six had perhaps the fullest and most balanced coverage. She captured the drama well and fit a lot into her short segment in their 30 minute news format.
- Randy Krehbiel of the Tulsa World had a good, balanced report, but having been there myself, I saw his report as perhaps mostly written before the evening event finished. He seemed to focus on the early portion of the night.
- Jonathan McCall & KOKI Fox23 focused on the 20% of the crowd which were opposed to Bridenstine's representation. They implied Bridenstine was trying to duck out of the contentious showdown with his joke about asking the orchestra to return for another song. They provided less actual coverage of his actual answers to questions. Bonus points go to Fox23 for live streaming the full event on their website, and even leaving it up at the time of this posting.
- Ashley Holt and 2News KJRH had a much abbreviated coverage. She had just a paragraph on the news website, but her video report included more. She just lacked the substantive discussion points. She also fell into the trap of reporting the protest message more than the expressions of the 75% who continually demonstrated support for their congressional representative.
- Tyler Butler and KTUL News8 focused on the protests and whiners even more. Butler said the crowd exceeded 500. In reality, there were roughly 2000 in attendance by most media outlets' observations. Butler also claimed Bridenstine had difficulty and even failure to provide answers to the questions. It seems to most that the questions were thoroughly answered, just not to the satisfaction of those sharing the radical discontent of the 100 or so unruly demonstrators.
