[Howard Kurtz:] The networks were all geared up for that big Washington event, the State of the Union. The pundits all suited up to analyze what Barack Obama was going to say and then
[Chris Matthews, Msnbc:] We're focusing on two people tonight this guy, Christopher Dorner, and the president of the United States. One is giving his State of the Union address and the other is, perhaps, in that burning cabin.
[Kurtz:] Should the cable news channels spent so much time on that fatal California shootout with a cop killer? As for the Republican response the moment everyone was talking about.
[Wolf Blitzer, Cnn:] Some are jokingly calling it water, yes, water-gate.
[Matt Lauer, Nbc News:] Seriously, why was the water so far away? It makes no sense.
[Unidentified Female:] At that point, it's better to have no water.
[Kurtz:] Why was the press so upset with Marco Rubio's water bottle? It was a battle of the titans. I head into the no-spin zone for a one-on-one showdown with Bill O'Reilly. I already won this round on points because the other day with Bernie Goldberg, you said, yes, I guess I should have mentioned it. The NBC's scoop was the elephant in the room that kick-started this debate.
[Bill O'reilly, Fox News:] OK. Number one, I said to Goldberg, I should have mentioned it only because it would have avoided all of this nonsense. All right?
[Kurtz:] But who's right about the media coverage of the president's drone warfare? Plus, "Esquire" lands a gripping series of interviews with the former Navy SEAL who shot and killed Osama bin Laden. But did the magazine leave out crucial facts? We'll ask the author, Phil Bronstein. I'm Howard Kurtz and this is RELIABLE SOURCES. The murderous rampage of Christopher Dorner had already drawn national coverage in part because of his bizarre manifesto popping of on among other things television pundits and anchors. And the manhunt came to a deadly climax in the hours before President Obama's annual address to Congress. The networks left facing a dilemma, which story to cover and practically until the minute the president started speaking, the one in California won out.
[Matthews:] We're going to go now to probably the biggest story of the night, which is clearly the story we planned on covering on MSNBC and my colleague Rachel Maddow is going to be going picking up in a minute for NBC's coverage of the president's State of the Union address.
[Blitzer:] We're also following breaking news out of California right now. We're going to get back to the president's State of the Union address. But authorities are now telling CNN that the fugitive ex-policeman Christopher Dorner is dead.
[Bret Baier, Fox News:] We'll get ready to hear from the Republican response, Marco Rubio. We want to update you on a story we've been bringing you all night here on FOX News Channel. The fugitive LAPD cop wanted in connection with a shooting spree, is believed to be barricaded inside a burning cabin in Big Bear Lake, California.
[Kurtz:] So, was that the right call, or did important national news get overshadowed by a fleeting tale of crime? Joining us now here in Washington: Jane Hall, associate professor of American University School of Communications, Frank Sesno, director of the school on media and public affairs at the George Washington University and a former CNN Washington bureau chief. And in New York, Paul Farhi, media reporter for "The Washington Post." Frank Sesno, should the cable networks gone virtually wall-to- wall with the Christopher Dorner drama as the president was getting ready to deliver the State of the Union?
[Frank Sesno, George Washington University:] Well, they didn't have a choice actually because the drama was playing out and this is the world of cable.
[Kurtz:] They didn't have a choice?
[Sesno:] When you go wall-to-wall
[Kurtz:] Executives make choices every single hour.
[Sesno:] What they didn't do, they didn't interrupt the speech itself. They didn't split screen the speech itself. So, the speech itself stood there. Now, would I have liked to have seen more about the president and what was going into the State of the Union? Yes. Is there a clash here? Fundamentally right, the Dorner story is a local story, mostly. But it was getting national attention. So, it was both. The presidential story was a global story. This is this is O.J. on steroids. I mean, we've been here before.
[Kurtz:] The reference, of course, made to Bill Clinton's 1997 State of the Union which was split screen with the O.J. Simpson verdict in that civil trial. OK, local story, Jane Hall, national attention. Why is that?
[Jane Hall, American University:] Well, I think some people try to portray him as some sort of Robin Hood. And I think while we're in the midst of a serious debate about gun control, that amount of coverage inevitably glorified this man publishing his manifesto. And then, basically, you know, it's attention. I agree with Frank, you know, newspapers didn't have won't have to choose as much as cable does.
[Kurtz:] They can just split the
[Hall:] They can split the screen. If they had split the screen, they would have been saying Christopher Dorner, a murderer, is equal to the State of the Union address by the president of the United States. That would have been pretty awful.
[Kurtz:] Although in the hours before President Obama spoke, there was a lot of split screen. And, Paul Farhi, let me ask you this is there an argument that the Dorner drama, the shootout and manhunt, the fire, was actual news, whereas the hours before the State of the Union is kind of pregame chatter?
[Paul Farhi, The Washington Post:] I think you could probably argue that there was a public safety issue here. There is a guy running around with a gun who has killed three people. It puts the people of southern California, at least, in jeopardy until we knew exactly where he was. Maybe it expanded the view on that. But, you know, I agree with Frank here. TV news is often about TV more so than it's about the news. And, in this case, you had so many elements that made it such a great TV story. You had car chases and cops and fire and so many elements that were riveting to viewers, even though the news value beyond southern California wasn't great.
[Sesno:] Let me just play on that for just a minute because Paul is absolutely right. And this is CNN learned and this was paved by the O.J. Simpson case. When the famous O.J. Simpson story took shape, CNN went wall-to-wall with it. That was really the first time cable went wall-to-wall like that, with a story like that.
[Kurtz:] With a trial.
[Sesno:] No, no, I'm talking about the car trace, the chase and all of it. And what we saw, because I was anchoring a show here at that time. My show was preemptive every day when we went to trial by the trial.
[Kurtz:] You're still angry about that?
[Sesno:] No, I was fine with that. The ratings for the trial were 20 times what the ratings were for the show that I did ever day. I was a terrible anchor, by the way, which must have been way, but you know?
[Hall:] But, I mean, Frank, I mean, where's the part where we just say no. I mean, it was really bizarre to watch the nightly newscast, you know, with all of their people assembled basically say we're not going to talk about the state what all these people are going to be talking about. We're going to go out here. I mean, it was a local story which was catnip to people. That you know
[Sesno:] That's a conflicts that Paul was just talking about.
[Hall:] Yes.
[Kurtz:] The other note here though is that there wasn't a lot of new information for hours about what was happening with Christopher Dorner and the shootout and another police officer was killed in that shootout, all we have was the static shot of the cabin and a lot of anchors killing time. Let me go to what happened after the president's State of the Union and the next day, in particular, we had a lot of this having to do with the guy who delivered the Republican response, Marco Rubio.
[Sen. Marco Rubio , Florida:] Nothing has frustrated me more than false choices like the one the president laid out tonight.
[George Stephanopoulos, Abc News:] I've got to ask you about that water bottle last night. Twitter went a little bit wild. You tweeted out the water bottle yourself. You got it there, again.
[Kurtz:] Paul Farhi, was the level of attention given to this moment when the senator felt like he had to take a sip. It was played like 155 times on MSNBC. Was that warranted?
[Farhi:] No, but, you know, again, the news is in many ways what's unusual and what's unusual here is exactly what you're showing, again, for the 156th time. It lit up Twitter. Everybody remembers it. It will be the only thing remembered about that speech in four years when Marco Rubio is a presidential candidate. Remember when you gave that response to the State of the Union and you took that drink of water? He'll be asked about it forever.
[Sesno:] Nothing is too trivial to trivialize. And I think that's what we saw here.
[Kurtz:] But we're having fun with it. I mean, there's something about it that's profoundly depressive. Obama gave himself a speech, and it's all about the Poland Spring.
[Sesno:] If you want a mood, it shouldn't be depressed. It should be outraged. I mean, the fact of the matter is that we are having I mean, State of the Union Obama and Rubio engaged
[Hall:] Some ideas.
[Sesno:] the big clash of what government should do and what it should be all about and how it's going to play out, and we're talking about water not how much your government is going to spend on what.
[Hall:] You know, my theory about this politicians are so stage managed, journalists are so glad when something unscripted happens that we focus on it. And you're absolutely right. He's characterizing himself. Rubio talking about his background, this is clearly the rehearsal for what Republicans are going to say about immigration, personal narrative. There was stuff there.
[Sesno:] There was so much time to fill.
[Kurtz:] OK. Talking about how you fill the time and story selection choices, Frank Sesno, there was this calamity on the Carnival cruise ship Triumph this week, where it took several days for the crippled ship to come to port, 4,000 people were affected. CNN covered that heavily than any other news organization everyone covered it renting a helicopter and a boat. Important legitimate story some TV critics saying CNN went overboard.
[Sesno:] Went overboard, no pun intended. I grabbed a life jacket and I watched a lot of it. Yes, CNN went overboard.
[Kurtz:] The ratings as well.
[Sesno:] Most people went overboard. But there is a real good story here. Two percent of Americans, millions of Americans go on these cruises. Carnival, I was reading this, this morning fascinated by this. It's a Panamanian company flying a Bahamian flag with offices in Miami. Who's in charge of this?
[Kurtz:] Right.
[Sesno:] What accountability do they have? What was happening? We watch movies about this stuff. So, it's a very good story. At times it got ridiculous. I mean
[Farhi:] I disagree with Frank.
[Kurtz:] Paul, jump in. Go ahead.
[Farhi:] I disagree completely. It was not a very important story. It was about people being inconvenienced. Again, it was a good TV story. You had CNN's coverage land, sea and air. You had helicopters. You had people on the scene. It made for good
[Tv. Sesno:] Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Paul, wait a minute. 4,000 people
[Farhi:] But the larger implications of it were not great.
[Sesno:] Wait larger but not every story has larger implications.
[Farhi:] That's right.
[Sesno:] You have 4,000 people powerless, adrift at sea, with little food or water.
[Hall:] I didn't have a problem with CNN going wall to wall with it, as long as, you know, they go back to the rest of the world. I did wince when somebody on there said, you know, I feel like I'm in a third world country and I thought, you're getting off the boat. However inconvenienced you are. They even told TV reporters to their credit. Look, this is not a natural disaster. It was riveting and reminded you of the Titanic.
[Kurtz:] Well, not quite the Titanic."
[Hall:] No, but I mean, it was riveting first time.
[Kurtz:] Everybody covered it, but not quite to this extent. I want to touch on one more thing before we go to break, and that is FOX News and contributors such as former Senator Scott Brown, this week hiring Herman Cain. Serious question. I mean, the last time we heard from Herman Cain, he was dropping out of the presidential race in the face of allegation of sexual harassment and long term extramarital affairs alleged by Ginger White, which he denied, but there's a lot of smoke, let's say. And now, FOX is giving him this platform. Does that cause you any hesitation?
[Hall:] Well, at some level, yes. Except that politicians come back to live another day after these sexual scandals. I think he's in a long line of Republican presidential candidates who cool their heels between running for president on FOX News.
[Kurtz:] And what about the women who were involved in these relationships? It's harder for them to be rehabilitated
[Hall:] Well, it is. I felt the same way about Eliot Spitzer, though. I mean, this is not this is not unique to
[Fox. Sesno:] I would call it the "former politicians full employment act", which is going to work for a cable channel or some place else. But in the case of Herman Cain and being serious about it for a minute, what you look for when you bring somebody on board for a commentary like this, is someone who's got something interesting to say, who's a good talker, who has different perspective on life and who can bring something to the conversation. Now, whether that's reality-based or information-based or real, we'll see. But I kind of like Herman Cain. I kind of like the fact that he brings something unpredictable and real world to the conversation.
[Kurtz:] I agree with that. I'm just mentioning the cloudy circumstances in which he departed the presidential race. Let me get a break. When we come back, my FOX News showdown with Bill O'Reilly. We'll look at who is right when it comes to the media, President Obama and the drone warfare program.