Now That Dems Will Be in Charge, Darfur Jumps to Top of Fox News' Agenda
Reported by Judy - December 13, 2006 -
For three years, Fox News has largely turned a blind eye to the humanitarian crisis in Darfur, but now that Democrats will be in charge of Congress in January, Darfur has suddenly jumped to the top of Fox News' agenda.
Fox News signaled Tuesday (December 12, 2006) that it will be looking for every opportunity to embarass Democrats, especially House Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi, and that Darfur will be one of the issues it uses. As Martha MacCallum, host of the "Live Desk" put it, "We’re going to watch very closely how Nancy Pelosi acts and how she puts this on her agenda.”
Those who have been watching MacCallum very closely the last few months may have noticed a total lack of interest in Darfur on her part until Tuesday. Tuesday's show teased her segment on Darfur, running in the news program a public service announcement by savedarfur.org of white people reading the words of Darfuri refugees and a string of photographs showing suffering Darfuri while sad music played in the background.
Although this crisis has existed for years, MacCallum and Fox News rarely found it crucial enough to air such images before, let alone to ask the questions of Republican congressional leaders that MacCallum did of Democrats on Tuesday -- questions such as: “So the big question for the new Congress: Can they work together and with the U.N. to finally stop genocide in Africa?” and "Now that she (Pelosi) is in charge will the Democratic leadership do anything?"
MacCallum also featured the issue on her "A-List" panel discussion, where Angela McGlowan, a GOP strategist, took a cheap shot at Democrats, stating, "The Democats are always saying that they care about the interests of black people so why is this on this bottom of the list ? Why aren’t they doing something about this now?”
One reason they're not doing something about this "now," Ms. McGlowan, just might be that they don't take office until January.
Or to put it in parlance McGlowan and MacCallum might understand, the Republicans have had three years and the Democrats have had three weeks to do something about this, so whose fault is it really that nothing has been done?
