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CNN's Van Susteren
Can't we all just get along? Not in cable news.
By Jeff Bercovici
Ever happy to play the Grangerford family to CNN's Shepherdson clan, Fox News Channel has struck yet again at its rival, hiring away Greta Van Susteren to host a new daily talk show.
The move caps a round of sparring that began in September when CNN lured Fox News's Paula Zahn over to host its new morning show.
Van Susteren was one of CNN's better-known on-air personalities, though her profile at the network has diminished recently.
She made her name as a legal analyst during the O.J. Simpson murder trial, an event that yielded huge ratings for the all-news network.
But "Burden of Proof," her legal talk show, was canceled last fall, with her co-host, Roger Cossack, leaving the network.
Her other show, "The Point," was reduced from an hour to a half-hour to make room for more coverage of the war on terrorism.
Van Susteren's poaching by Fox News is seen as retaliation for the theft of Zahn, especially as Van Susteren is expected to be named as the host of the 10 p.m. talk show that has been without a regular host since Zahn defected to CNN in September. She will reportedly earn around $900,000 per year on her new three-year contract.
Fox News got a taste of revenge earlier when, just days prior to the start of the air war in Afghanistan, it hired Steve Harrigan, who had been serving as CNN's lead reporter in the war-torn Central Asian country.
"At the moment, I'd rather have a man in Afghanistan than a $2 million anchor in New York," Fox News boss Roger Ailes cackled to Reuters at the time.
The rivalry between CNN and Fox News has taken on a new dimension in the wake of Sept. 11.
After watching helplessly the steady erosion of its ratings dominance, CNN enjoyed a resurgence following the attacks, thanks to its unparalleled international resources and reputation for credibility.
Fox, meanwhile, has relied on a very different approach, adopting the strident, patriotic tone of the New York Post, which is, like the network, owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. Eschewing the usual journalistic ideals of objectivity and detachment, Fox's correspondents and commentators have cheered on the war effort while referring to Osama bin Laden and his Taliban allies in mocking or accusatory language.
Ailes, for his part, has defended these tactics by arguing that viewers prefer his network's pro-American stance. In homes in which Fox News was available, it edged past CNN in November with a 1.3 household rating to CNN's 1.2.
No one has better exemplified Fox News's approach to the war than Geraldo Rivera, who in October left his job at CNBC for a lower-paid assignment as a battlefield correspondent for Fox News in Afghanistan.
Displaying a bravado for which he has been widely ridiculed, Rivera said that he would like to kill bin Laden himself, bragged about his physical fitness and told viewers that he had armed himself against bandit attacks.
In the biggest embarrassment for him and for Fox News, Rivera, claiming to be reporting from the side of a friendly-fire accident that killed several American servicemen, recited the Lord's Prayer, apparently overcome with emotion.
It later emerged that he was hundreds of miles away from the scene of the accident when he taped his report. Rivera then compounded the deed by offering an excuse—that he had confused the locations of two similar incidents—that didn’t hold up on examination.
January 3, 2002 © 2002 Media Life
-Jeff Bercovici is a staff writer for Media Life.
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