J$P Instant Transcript! Carl Cameron responds to John Kerry's email blast at Fox News.

From Studio-B with Shepard Smith, November 19 2004:

RICK FOLBAUM [FOX NEWS]: Joining us now from our Washington newsroom, our Chief Political Correspondent Carl Cameron, and Carl I want to ask you about this scoop that Geraldo got. I also want to ask you about an email that I know that Sen Kerry sent out to his supporters in which he mentions Fox News. What’s that about?

CARL CAMERON [FOX NEWS]: Well, the Senator wrote an email out to his supporters. They’ve got a massive email list, having campaigned across the country the last year and a half. And in this particular email, it’s talking about how he wants to continue the fight and he’s got priorities and principles that he will continue to battle for as a member of Congress and as a national Democratic leader. And it specifically says that he has to keep up the fight against right-wing groups, and he mentions Sinclair Broadcasting, right-wing talk radio, he mentions Fox News as well, suggesting that perhaps he didn’t get exactly the kind of message that he wanted. That’s sort of secondary and perhaps another example of what is almost something you can set your clock to in the aftermath of a failed election, and that’s partly the blame game.

Sen Kerry earlier this week suggested that the reason he didn’t win is because they didn’t get out enough of the vote, a suggestion perhaps that his ground game organization didn’t live up to expectations. But Sen Kerry did in fact get more Democratic votes than any Presidential candidate in history, and by all accounts it was a stunning organizational effort, just one that wasn’t quite as good as the one that the Republicans had. Yesterday at Little Rock at the dedication of the Clinton Library and in other conversations Sen Kerry has had with friends and family and political confidants over the course of the last week and a half, he has suggested that the emergence of the Usama Bin Laden videotape Friday afternoon directly before the election ultimately was a wild card that upset the apple cart. Democrats and Kerry aides and presumably the Senator himself all note that the polls were essentially a dead tie on Friday afternoon leading into the general election. The national polls were knotted. Many of the battleground state polls in fact had leads for Sen Kerry and were looking quite favorable. And then came the terror leader. And when it came out, it was certainly viewed by many as a potentially critical moment in the campaign, a defining moment potentially. And Sen Kerry did comment on it on Friday afternoon before the election, and he talked about it sort of in general terms on Saturday, but then for the remaining Saturday afternoon, Sunday-Monday-Tuesday campaign, the last three and a half days of campaign time, Sen Kerry did not mention it. So he has complained that he felt like he didn’t have time to actually respond to it and address what some have called the chill that that Usama Bin Laden video provided the national electorate, and yet Sen Kerry himself did not take advantage of all the opportunities to talk about it.

The polls indicate that indeed it was something of an event. There was a blip that favored the President on Saturday and Sunday in a couple of polls, and obviously the President won. But when you take a look deeper into exit poll information, it’s a difficult argument to say that it was something that was just positive. The number one issue in the polls according to voters in the exit polls was moral values, and President Bush clobbered Sen Kerry on that score by a four-to-one margin. There’s something of a countervailing aspect to it, because the number two issue was the economy and jobs, and on that Sen Kerry beat President Bush in the exit polls by a four-to-one margin. But the number three issue was terrorism, and on that one it was a blowout: 86%-14% in the exit poll went to George Bush and not John Kerry and it’s entirely possible that that Usama Bin Laden video contributed to it.

But there’s three things that it takes to have a winning campaign: you need money, you need a get-out-the-vote organization, and you need a message. Sen Kerry had tons of money, in fact there are a lot of Democrats that are upset that he left 17 million dollars in the bank before his convention, didn’t spend it in battleground states or donate to other Democratic candidates. His organization as we said got record turnout. The one thing that Democrats do concede was a problem was John Kerry’s message. It wasn’t always consistent, it wasn’t always clear. He was criticized for it mightily, and that was, of the three things you’ve got to have for a winning campaign, perhaps his biggest weakness. Rick?

FOLBAUM: Speaking of being clear, and you might dismiss this email where Fox News is mentioned, I don’t want to beat a dead horse, but this email that you’ve just put into our internal computer system here at Fox, it mentions Fox News. You’re the guy that covered the campaign, and I’m just wondering what you’re hearing from some of the people that you worked with. I mean, I was always under the impression that they were pretty happy with the coverage they got from Carl Cameron, that it was pretty fair and balanced, just as advertised. Why all of a sudden is he changing tune now and blasting us?

CAMERON: Well, in the closing days of the campaign in fact, a number of top Kerry aides, kindly in my context, said that they thought that my coverage was quite fair and balanced and that they were satisfied with it, and though it was tough, they thought it was reasonable and it was a fair reflection of what was going on. There has been some criticism from Democrats of Fox News for years obviously, but they don’t really lump in what we call the beat coverage, our news coverage per se. They talk about the pundits; they talk about some of the marquee folks. They had some criticism of Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity, but of course those are people whose jobs it is, is to offer up opinions. And when it came to the actual fact-based news reporting, they didn’t have complaints. But some of the punditry, I think, they felt was pretty aggressive. But it wasn’t just Fox. In fact, if you take a look at a lot of the media studies, the media in general was considered to be very favorable of Sen Kerry on most cases, and even our news coverage among them was considered fair by most of the analysts.

FOLBAUM: Well, as two guys who are paid to just give the facts, not the commentary, Carl Cameron, thank you very much.

CAMERON: We report.

FOLBAUM: You decide.