Apparently, there’s going to be some very interesting counter-programming on the night of John McCain’s convention acceptance speech:
CHICAGO — Before Senator John McCain delivers his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention on Thursday, Senator Barack Obama will make a marquee appearance of his own.
Call it counter-intuitive. He will appear on “The O’Reilly Factor” on Fox News Channel.
For Mr. Obama, it will be the first time in his presidential candidacy that he’s on Bill O’Reilly’s prime-time program. The appearance is intended to put Mr. Obama before a conservative audience, one week after drawing 40 million TV viewers at his own acceptance speech.
Mr. Obama has had a strained history with the network, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch. Is this a sign of burying the hatchet or simply politically smart programming?
Well, Howard Kurtz reports today as well on what seems to clearly be a burying of the hatchet:
ST. PAUL, Minn., Sept. 2 — At a secret meeting with Barack Obama three months ago, Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes says, he tried to clear the air with the Democratic senator by saying that his organization was determined to be fair but would not be “in the tank” for Obama’s campaign.
During the sit-down in a Waldorf-Astoria hotel suite in Manhattan that included Rupert Murdoch, the network’s owner, Obama expressed concern about the way Fox was covering him. “I just wanted to know if I’m going to get a fair shake from Fox News Channel,” Ailes recalled him saying.
“Senator, you’re the one who boycotted us,” Ailes says he replied. “We’re not the ones who boycotted you. Nor did we retaliate for your boycott.”
The meeting appears to have eased tensions between the two camps, which began when all the Democratic candidates, complaining that the network favors Republicans, refused to hold any primary-season debates on Fox
(…)
Ailes said in an interview Tuesday that he would never have discussed the matter publicly had Vanity Fair not published an account of the earlier portion of the meeting, in which Murdoch sat on one side and Obama and advisers David Axelrod and Robert Gibbs on the other. The article, based on a forthcoming book about Murdoch by Michael Wolff, says Obama told the Australian-born mogul that he didn’t want to waste time talking to Ailes if Fox was going to keep attacking the senator and his wife and portraying him as suspicious and foreign.
Asked for comment about the meeting, Murdoch adviser Gary Ginsberg said both Ailes and Murdoch “had a really cordial and constructive conversation” with Obama.
“They had a frank discussion, aired concerns on our side, and we’re happy we were able to air our concerns,” said Obama spokesman Bill Burton.
Ailes, who joined the meeting in progress and spoke to Obama for 20 to 25 minutes, disputed the article’s assertion that the candidate had “lit into” him. He called Obama “a very charming guy” who is “very smart” and was “gracious” throughout the meeting.
Underneath all the politeness, each side clearly wanted something. Ailes was interested in smoothing relations and having Obama appear on his network, and the senator from Illinois hoped to neutralize a potential adversary and improve his treatment on the nation’s top-rated cable news channel.
And, it now appears that they’re both going to get what they want.
H/T: Alex Knapp
