Jennifer McBride’s column last week (“A plea for pure water,” ODE, May 4) makes numerous references to FOX’s decision to cut away from a primetime speech by President Bush in favor of airing “The Simple Life.” While asserting that this “invulnerable television channel … (had) made an excellent comment on the state of our society,” McBride implies that FOX was alone in deciding to leave Bush’s speech early. In fact, contrary to what McBride strongly suggests, FOX was not the only network to cut Bush off mid-sentence. According to the Drudge Report, CBS and NBC also abruptly left Bush’s speech to move onto their regular primetime programming (NBC aired “The Apprentice” while CBS aired “Survivor: Palau”).
Regardless of whether this omission was a product of poor fact-checking or political bias, McBride neglected her responsibility as a journalist when she went on at length about the significance of FOX’s broadcast, while failing to mention even in passing that two of the other major broadcast networks had done the same thing.
Miles Church Kane
Eugene