GOP frets over split-screen impact

By Nick Anderson and Scott Collins
Los Angeles Times

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WASHINGTON — The split screen gave the GOP fits.

On the day after the first presidential debate, many Republicans fretted that side-by-side depictions of President Bush and John Kerry drew attention to his expressions of irritation and annoyance while the Democratic challenger looked confident and composed.

If the camera angles were unflattering to the president Thursday, Republicans couldn't blame liberal bias. Fox News Channel, a favorite of many GOP officials, sent the feeds to all broadcast and cable networks that covered the debate.

According to procedures agreed to beforehand by the Bush and Kerry campaigns in a 32-page memorandum, the event was supposed to be televised only through isolated shots of each candidate as he was speaking.

Democrats said the Bush campaign sought that restriction, but the networks made no secret of their intention to ignore it.

Saying they were not parties to the Bush-Kerry agreement, network officials insisted on their right to use the split screen to show the reactions of the candidate who was not speaking.

That decision helped Kerry significantly at the debate in Coral Gables, Fla., many analysts said.

The reaction shots "were not that kind to the president," said Shanto Iyengar, an expert on political communication at Stanford University.

"I saw several shots of Bush grimacing and looking quite hostile during Kerry's criticisms of his Iraq actions. I certainly don't think he (Bush) came across as being especially likable."
 
When not speaking, Kerry was taking notes and restraining his facial movements.

Then there was the height differential. Bush, who stands 5 feet 11 inches, looked smaller behind his podium than Kerry did behind his. At 6 feet 4 inches tall, Kerry appeared to have a larger presence.

Fox sought to explain this phenomenon.

"There's a thing we have to worry about in television called head room," Fox News Channel anchor Brit Hume told viewers after the debate. "When you're trying to match shots side by side, you give parties the same amount of head room in the shot. Because of Kerry's height within the frame, his picture was necessarily bigger."

Kerry, Hume added, "looked taller, and the president looked smaller. That's something that I think both sides were conscious of. I'm not sure it was something anybody planned, but it worked out that way."

Kerry campaign officials were elated at the visual result. They said Bush's reactions were reminiscent of Democratic candidate Al Gore's memorable — and counterproductive — sighing in an encounter with Bush in 2000.

Bush campaign officials shrugged off questions about how their candidate fared visually.

"The president is a man of emotion who showed his passion and conviction last night," Bush campaign press secretary Scott Stanzel said.

The Democratic National Committee yesterday sought to capitalize on what it considered a visual coup, posting a 51-second video montage of split-screen TV shots on its Web site (www.democrats.org). Titled "Faces of Frustration," the video showed an apparently exasperated, head-shaking, lip-pursing president next to a challenger who was making point after point.

In its own six-minute video created after the debate, the Republican National Committee contrasted Kerry's statements on various issues against previous quotes. Republicans did not include any of the split-screen shots in their Internet clip (www.rnc.org), titled "Kerry vs. Kerry."

There was no indication yesterday that the networks would stop using the split screen in subsequent debates. An NBC official, asked if the network would change its coverage, said flatly, "No." NBC is handling network pool cameras for the second Bush-Kerry encounter Friday, to be held in a town-hall format in St. Louis.

Among outlets that carried Thursday's event, C-Span used a split screen. Other networks focused on one speaker at a time, switching occasionally to split screen.

C-Span received numerous e-mails about the split screen, some praising the network for providing "just the facts" coverage. Others were angry, however, believing that the device was unfair to their favorite candidate.