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The Honolulu Advertiser

Posted on: Thursday, October 10, 2002

MIXED MEDIA
White House fumbles its own Iraq messages

By Lisa de Moraes
Washington Post

If the president of the United States gives a speech but the broadcast networks do not carry it live for their tens of millions of viewers to see, did the president actually give the speech?

ABC, CBS and NBC all decided not to carry President Bush's speech live at 8 last night. They said they made this call because the White House didn't ask them to carry the speech live.

But the White House said it did not put in the usual formal request because it wanted to keep the American public from thinking we were going to war.

Monday afternoon, the White House was rethinking that strategy. Aides called the networks' Washington bureau chiefs to get them to reconsider and offered to beef up the speech, but made no formal request for coverage.

"On this call they were saying things like 'What if we do this, what if we do that,' " one network insider said.

"It's possible they miscalculated. ... But they know how this works. If it's important, they ask for the time and we usually give it, especially given the circumstances we're in right now."

Fox executives, who originally said they would not carry the speech live, changed their minds at about 6 p.m. Monday after canvassing their stations and finding that a significant portion of them wanted the speech. The network got baseball officials to postpone the first pitch until the president wrapped up his speech, a network rep told the Washington Post.

It's customary when the president has something important to say for the White House to formally request that the broadcast networks cover a speech live. For days, the White House certainly had been hawking Monday's speech as important, promising that the president would explain thoroughly why Congress should pass a resolution authorizing military action against Iraq.

But an executive at one network news operation said of last week's briefing: "They told us this was not a policy speech. They were not billing it as an address to the nation. That's the kind of information we use in making our decision."

Bush spoke from the Cincinnati Museum Center, housed in a rail station used during World War II.

"It's a pep rally," one broadcast news executive complained of the president's speech. "They're trying to move Congress forward.

"This is a little bit of game playing, saying this is a very important speech but at the same time not taking the next step and asking the networks" to carry it. "Clinton never did this, Bush (senior) never did this; they never said, 'This is an important national speech but we're not asking you for time.' "

A senior administration official said the White House did not ask for time because a request to the broadcast networks "would have started a frenzy of people thinking we were about to go to war," the official told the Post.

Though the White House did not request live coverage, it had expected it and scheduled the speech for 8:01 p.m., allowing one minute of prime time in which news anchors could introduce Bush's speech.