Read Online An Atheist in the FOXhole: A Liberal's Eight-Year Odyssey Inside the Heart of the Right-Wing Media by Joe Muto - Free Book Online
Authors: Joe Muto
Tags: Non-Fiction, Politics
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doors that a guard had to open for you, into another hallway, and finally through one more set of doors into the backstage area of the studio. It was about two minutes just to walk the route that we sometimes had less than thirty seconds to complete, which meant that more often than not, we had to make the journey at a full sprint. It was bad enough for me and my bleeding feet, but it must have been even worse for Camie, who clacked down the corridors like a madwoman, hauling ass in high heels, pearls chattering.
“Doesn’t it bother you to run in those things?” I asked after witnessing her third sprint of the hour.
She rolled her eyes at me. “What am I going to do, wear sneakers with this dress?”
—
Camie and I, as script PAs, were stuck in the control room all day. But everybody else in the room changed out every hour, on the hour. As the previous show wrapped up, a whole new group of producers flooded the room, standing anxiously in the back while their predecessors logged off their computers. This awkward baton handoff had only a very small window in which to happen, basically the span of a commercial break.
After two or three of these changeovers, I began to get lulled into complacency. I’d never actually watched the news for so long at one stretch. It was shockingly repetitive. Each hour had the same set of stories (Saddam, Iraq, Bush campaign update, Kerry campaign update, rinse, repeat), the same reporters in the field, the same video clips. Only the anchors and the pundits changed. And even they started to blur together after a while, just a steady stream of bleached teeth and pouffy hair and precise diction, all repeating the same conservative-leaning analysis (Saddam’s trial will help President Bush by reminding voters that he’s a strong commander in chief, the Kerry campaign is in disarray because it hasn’t yet figured out how to counter Bush’s strength, etc.)
And then all hell broke loose.
The Avstar program had a folder marked URGENT , a place to post memos so the assignment desks could keep the entire network informed of breaking news without spamming everyone with e-mails. Every time a new message was posted in the folder, the program made an obnoxious metallic buzzing noise, an electronic scream for attention. Most of the messages were useless—incremental updates about some international story that no shows on the network had been following in the first place (something like URGENT: PERU ELECTS NEW FINANCE MINISTER or BREAKING: ZANZIBAR POLICE CLASH WITH PROTESTERS; 2 INJURED ). So ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the software would buzz, everyone in the room would immediately click over and glance at the update, then close it with a disdainfully muttered “Who gives a shit?” That had happened multiple times in the few hours I’d been in the room. So Camie didn’t even bother to click over when it buzzed again. Probably just another false alarm from the assignment desk.
“HOLY FUCK!”
Camie and I both jumped as Kurt Karos, the producer for the hour, yelled and smacked his work surface with the palms of his hands, rattling his keyboard.
“Our LA affiliate is reporting that a source at UCLA Medical Center says that Marlon Brando’s dead,” Karos read off his screen.
The control room went silent as we all absorbed the information.
“I guess Sollozzo’s people finally got to him,” one of the front-row tech guys cracked, breaking the silence.
“He sleeps with the fishes,” the director said, laughing.
Carrie Lipton, the senior producer, was also studying the alert on her screen, her lips pursed as her eyes darted across the text. “Just one source for now, Kurt,” she said. “It’s still a rumor at this point. We can’t go with it yet.”
Kurt turned in his chair to face her. “I say we do it now, as soon as we come back from commercial, or one of those assholes”—he gestured toward the ceiling-mounted bank of monitors displaying our
“Doesn’t it bother you to run in those things?” I asked after witnessing her third sprint of the hour.
She rolled her eyes at me. “What am I going to do, wear sneakers with this dress?”
—
Camie and I, as script PAs, were stuck in the control room all day. But everybody else in the room changed out every hour, on the hour. As the previous show wrapped up, a whole new group of producers flooded the room, standing anxiously in the back while their predecessors logged off their computers. This awkward baton handoff had only a very small window in which to happen, basically the span of a commercial break.
After two or three of these changeovers, I began to get lulled into complacency. I’d never actually watched the news for so long at one stretch. It was shockingly repetitive. Each hour had the same set of stories (Saddam, Iraq, Bush campaign update, Kerry campaign update, rinse, repeat), the same reporters in the field, the same video clips. Only the anchors and the pundits changed. And even they started to blur together after a while, just a steady stream of bleached teeth and pouffy hair and precise diction, all repeating the same conservative-leaning analysis (Saddam’s trial will help President Bush by reminding voters that he’s a strong commander in chief, the Kerry campaign is in disarray because it hasn’t yet figured out how to counter Bush’s strength, etc.)
And then all hell broke loose.
The Avstar program had a folder marked URGENT , a place to post memos so the assignment desks could keep the entire network informed of breaking news without spamming everyone with e-mails. Every time a new message was posted in the folder, the program made an obnoxious metallic buzzing noise, an electronic scream for attention. Most of the messages were useless—incremental updates about some international story that no shows on the network had been following in the first place (something like URGENT: PERU ELECTS NEW FINANCE MINISTER or BREAKING: ZANZIBAR POLICE CLASH WITH PROTESTERS; 2 INJURED ). So ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the software would buzz, everyone in the room would immediately click over and glance at the update, then close it with a disdainfully muttered “Who gives a shit?” That had happened multiple times in the few hours I’d been in the room. So Camie didn’t even bother to click over when it buzzed again. Probably just another false alarm from the assignment desk.
“HOLY FUCK!”
Camie and I both jumped as Kurt Karos, the producer for the hour, yelled and smacked his work surface with the palms of his hands, rattling his keyboard.
“Our LA affiliate is reporting that a source at UCLA Medical Center says that Marlon Brando’s dead,” Karos read off his screen.
The control room went silent as we all absorbed the information.
“I guess Sollozzo’s people finally got to him,” one of the front-row tech guys cracked, breaking the silence.
“He sleeps with the fishes,” the director said, laughing.
Carrie Lipton, the senior producer, was also studying the alert on her screen, her lips pursed as her eyes darted across the text. “Just one source for now, Kurt,” she said. “It’s still a rumor at this point. We can’t go with it yet.”
Kurt turned in his chair to face her. “I say we do it now, as soon as we come back from commercial, or one of those assholes”—he gestured toward the ceiling-mounted bank of monitors displaying our
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