In an effort to lower the number of employees present at both the Democratic and Republican National Conventions amid the coronavirus crisis, the cable news networks are working together to pool their coverage of the events, The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday.
Although pool coverage has always been used for election coverage, MSNBC and NBC News senior vice president Rashida Jones said such coordination between the networks has been significantly increased due to the pandemic.
"It's not at all clear that the events in Milwaukee and Jacksonville are going to be anything like a normal convention," CNN Washington bureau chief Sam Feist said. "That will affect our coverage."
MSNBC intends to have a "light footprint" at the conventions with remote coverage and reporters positioning themselves outdoors where social distancing is possible, Jones said, telling the Journal that "Our focus is covering the story. It doesn't mean we have to be in the middle of the story, if it's going to put our people in danger."
Cherie Grzech, Fox News' vice president of politics and the Washington bureau, said, however, that some of its reporters will be at the conventions because "it's very important that people understand the responsibility that we hold as journalists to be there and to cover the event in the best way that we possibly can by keeping our personnel safe."
Ironically, BuzzFeed News political reporter Ruby Cramer told the Journal, "The saying among every political reporter is that you're lucky enough to get to cover the biggest story in the world every four years, [but] that is not the case in 2020, it turns out."
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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