MRC/NB's Tim Graham Debates Pelosi Plane Story on FNC's 'Hannity & Colmes'

MRC/NB media watcher Tim Graham was interviewed on the Fox News Channel show "Hannity & Colmes" on Wednesday night on media coverage of Speaker Nancy Pelosi's request to be flown to San Francisco on (some say extravagant) military aircraft with 42 seats and a crew of 16. The other guest was former ABC News veteran Bob Zelnick. Video: Windows (2.4MB) or Real (2.86MB) Plus: MP3 (1.1 MB)

Zelnick expressed satisfaction that the story was being aired. Tim disagreed, saying the Pelosi story has not aired on ABC, NBC, NPR, and so on. (CBS aired their first story on Wednesday's Evening News.) Print coverage is also lacking: no story in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, or USA Today. The Washington Times was first on the story last week, and the Washington Post ran a small 273-word piece on A-15 on Tuesday.

Tim also said that at this point in Newt Gingrich's new job as Speaker in 1995, the networks had aired 27 stories on his $4 million book deal with HarperCollins, making Gingrich's ethics a major theme. Stories uncomfortable for Pelosi, from the plane story to the Star-Kist minimum wage exemption in American Samoa, are not being judged as newsworthy by the media powers that be.