For nearly the entire second Bush presidency, a popular theory has held that the first President Bush is, at least in the seclusion of his Kennebunkport and Houston homes, deeply distressed by his son's stewardship, especially his decision to invade Iraq (a choice that Bush 41 pointedly refused to make during the 1991 Gulf War).

Whenever he's been asked, George H. W. Bush has, not surprisingly, scoffed at this theorizing and expressed full faith and confidence in his son and the direction he chose for the country. But every now and then, clues have supposedly emerged that have betrayed the elder Bush's actual state of mind. Like the now-famous Wall Street Journal op-ed from the summer of 2004 in which Brent Scowcroft, Bush 41's confidant and foreign policy soul mate (not to mention the co-author of his memoirs) warned against an invasion of Iraq. Or the moment two years ago, when Bush 41 broke down while paying tribute to his son Jeb—evidence, some suggested, of an old man heartbroken that the wrong son had made it to the White House.

There's a certain allure to this kind of thinking. Between his academic shortcomings, his spotty military record, his business failures and his heavy drinking, it's easy to paint Bush 43's presidency as merely the latest in a lifelong string of failures to live up to the example set by his father. And it's just as easy to imagine the elder Bush haunted by the painful irony that the wisdom of his own most questioned decision as president—to stay out of Baghdad—has been vindicated by the tragedy of his son's "preemptive" war.

With his interview, Hume had an opportunity to delve, however delicately, into some of these questions. Sure, it would be futile to come out and ask Bush 43 if he thinks the Iraq war was a mistake or if his son has been a screw-up as president. Not only would Bush have provided his customary "of course not" response, he also would have clammed up for the rest of the interview, maybe even walked out.

But there are ways to get into it, and Hume seemingly had a perfect opportunity toward the end of the interview, when, seated in the Oval Office with both Bushes (each of them, presumably, relaxed by the anodyne queries Hume had been soft-balling their way), he innocuously asked Bush 41 for his "most vivid memory of your time in this office—something that happened in this very room."

The former president brought up the end of the Gulf War.

"Well, I can't think of many," he said, "but I remember Colin Powell reaching under this desk and pulling out the telephone to call (General Norman) Schwarzkopf to see if the mission had been accomplished. After that—they said it's time to shut down this war."

He continued: "One hundred hours, we'd done what we said we wanted to do, and he called up—and that one sticks in my mind as a dramatic moment."

Given all of the speculation about his opinion of his son's presidency, it's rather amazing that Bush would have brought up the end of the Gulf War—the very moment when he ruled out expanding the mission from a simple liberation of Kuwait into a full-blown invasion of Iraq.

If ever a follow-up, however innocuous, were called for, this was the moment—some effort to coax the former president into elaborating on the thought he'd just expressed. Why was that so dramatic? What thoughts were going through your mind? What kinds of decisions did you face that day?

Instead, Hume changed the subject, asking both Bushes to recall a private conversation they'd had on the day of Bush 43's 2001 inaugural, and the moment was lost. In the course of the interview, Hume also covered the following topic: Whether Bush 41 wishes his son were moving to Houston after his presidency; whether the cane he now uses will be permanent; whether it's true that he insisted all men wear jackets and ties in the Oval office; and whether Bush 43 wants his father to do any more skydiving.

It's certainly reasonable that the first-ever extended interview with a father-son team of presidents would contain its share of human interest questions. It's also not surprising in the least that a Fox News interview with a pair of Republican presidents would opt for fluff over the kind of tough questioning it used when Bill Clinton was a guest. The prospect of that kind of grilling is probably the chief reason why there has never been a Bush-Bush interview with any other outlet.

Had he been inclined to take advantage of the moment, Hume could have used the fact that the first Bush brought up the end of the Gulf War to prod some kind of meaningful statement out of the second one.

Instead, when the interview ended, we knew as much as we did before. It's still tempting to believe that George H. W. Bush is privately devastated by his son's choices. But there's still not a shred of meaningful proof that he actually is.

One fun moment from the piece: ABC News' Sam Donaldson, who is 74, questions why Mr. Hume, who is 65, would be winding things down.

From the article:

Mr. Friedman continues, "Hume's not a table pounder, he's not a yeller, he's not a preener or a screamer. He's calm and measured. And above all, incisive."

Presumably Mr. Hume's incisiveness is maximally "above all" including his drollness which, as we've learned, is above his fairness.

And now, at the Republican National Convention, the effort is underway to portray this good news as a triumph of Republican leadership.

Just before 5:00 p.m. (E.S.T.), with the scoreboards in the Xcel Energy Center prominently displaying the words “Country First,” First Lady Laura Bush was called to the stage, where she spoke of the human toll that the storm threatened to exact and the need for support from all Americans for any recovery effort.

She noted that all of the governors of the affected states are Republicans, prompting loud applause from the delegates.

Then, the lights were dimmed and a video featuring appearances from most of the Gulf Coast governors was screened. Starting with Rick Perry of Texas, each governor spoke of his state’s preparation for, and response to, the storm. Each also offered effusive praise for his fellow Republican governors and for the way the storm had been handled by the federal government.

Perry handed off to Alabama’s Bob Riley, who was followed by Florida’s Charlie Crist, who was followed by Haley Barbour of Mississippi (a former G.O.P. national chairman who invited John McCain to his state for a much-publicized pre-Gustav visit this weekend). Only Louisiana’s Bobby Jindal didn’t appear.

No Democratic office-holders were included. Granted, there is no Gulf state with a Democratic governor, but it isn't as if there are a shortage of Democrats who were part of the hurricane planning. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin or Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu, who's up for re-election this year, would have been good choices. Even former Senator John Breaux, also of Lousiana, could have provided some balance in a relatively non-political fashion.

Instead, the speakers painted a picture of cooperative and effective--but definitively Republican--leadership, all while maintaining the nonpartisan rhetoric.

“All of us have worked together and are going to continue to work together to help each other,” Barbour declared.

When the video ended, Cindy McCain joined Bush at the podium and reiterated her husband’s refrain of the past several days: “As John has been saying for the last few days, this is a time when we take off our Republican hats and put on our American hats.” The crowd roared its approval.

With that, the opening day of the G.O.P. convention came to an end. On Fox News, anchor Brit Hume quickly segued to a piece about the various ways in which delegates have put politics aside these past two days to focus their thoughts and efforts on helping the people of the Gulf Coast. On television, one woman noted that her delegation had turned its morning meeting into a prayer session.

But if last night is any indication, not every Republican has gotten the memo.

Fox News will continue its live hurricane coverage throughout the night until 5 a.m. with Gregg Jarrett, Julie Banderas, Todd Connor and Uma Pemmaraju anchoring the late night shift. Beginning at 5 a.m., Fox & Friends will take over the hurricane coverage live from the channel's makeshift St. Paul studio. 

Over at the Fox Business Network, Alexis Glick will be leading all day coverage of the hurricane from New Orleans.

Citing a number of sources close to Mr. Hume, the Times reports that, at 65, Mr. Hume is seeking to reduce his role at the cable news network where he has worked since the channel launched in 1996.

More from the post:

“He thinks the country is disserved by the absence of truth in news, by the absence of honesty in public-official presentation, by the apparently infinite cynicism of those who currently hold high office,” said Reed Hundt, the former chairman of the F.C.C.--the Michael Powell of another political age--who saw through the Telecommunications Act of 1996, as well as a close friend of Mr. Gore’s. “These things disturb him, I know that. He’s made these points to me. I think Al, and to my knowledge dozens of other progressives, would like to go beyond complaining to actually trying to fix the problems.”

If, as Mr. Gore told The Observer in December 2002, Fox News and right-wing talk radio have helped bolster the Bush administration’s message, then Mr. Gore’s buy would mark a further convergence of television and politics--the migration of power and influence to politicized media. In a cable-television world in which Fox News Channel, with its self-proclaimed corrective point of view, beats CNN’s self-proclaimed absence of point of view; in which programmers have to “narrowcast” to gain an audience; in which HBO’s K Street mixes up Howard Dean with Hollywood actors and has James Carville participate in a kind of Being John Malkovich version of being James Carville, in a reality-TV business in which all bets are off--being a media mogul may be a whole lot better than being President.

“In a world of highly concentrated media conglomerates,” said Mr. Hundt, “the truth of the matter is, the personal tastes of a half-dozen people matter immensely. It’s not the case that people in the media poll their audience to see what flavors they would like. They hip-shoot on that topic, and their personal views have an impact.”

Mr. Hundt suggested that the media coverage of everything from the war in Iraq to the California election had only firmed up Mr. Gore’s beliefs.

In September 2003, The Observer reported that Mr. Gore first met with Universal executives last summer to discuss buying Newsworld, or NWI, a channel that currently packages international news from places like Japan and Canada and can reach about 20 million homes. You can watch it here in New York on the Time Warner Cable system, channel 103.

With it, Mr. Gore is reportedly working on a youth-geared “public affairs” channel that would present news and documentaries--something that would sound a bit like Son of C-Span if it wasn’t being financed by the loyal opposition. One associate has suggested that Mr. Gore’s network would employ MTV-style programming, using cheap digital cameras and user-created content to allow regular people to get stuff off their chests--but that is pure speculation, and the fact is that the whole Gore TV agenda is still to be announced.

In explaining the power of media on public tastes, Mr. Hundt didn’t bring up News Corp. and Fox News Channel boss Rupert Murdoch. But as Mr. Gore said last year, he considers Fox part of a “fifth column” within the media, responsible for injecting “daily Republican talking points into the definition of what’s objective.”

“There’s no question that Democrats are suffering in an environment where there are powerful outlets for anti-Democrat viewpoints,” said Bob Somerby, editor of influential political Web site The Daily Howler. “It’s clear that people don’t watch PBS or C-Span, so commercially you’ve got to have some point of view. It doesn’t have to be a liberal-line point of view, but it does have to have some edge or attitude while you’re there. You turn on Fox first because you know something’s going to happen.”

On Tuesday, Oct. 7, as Fox News celebrated its seven-year anniversary, Brit Hume, the channel’s managing editor and chief Washington, D.C., correspondent, wondered if Mr. Gore really knew what he was getting into.

“It’s a little unclear what he’s trying to do if he wants to start a kind of talk channel that he believes would counter-program Fox,” said Mr. Hume. “He clearly doesn’t know what we’re really doing. If he’s trying to start a serious news organization with worldwide reach, then he immediately becomes a competitor, in my view, to CNN and MSNBC, so he does us good. It doesn’t seem like it would affect us very much.”

Mr. Hume wondered if Mr. Gore had really considered the basics--like cameras and mobile trucks. Watching a live feed of the California recall on Fox, Mr. Hume said, “If you were the Al Gore News Channel, you’re going to want that signal, too. You’re going to have to hire your own truck, get your own equipment--I wonder if they’ve even thought about those things.”

If the channel is to succeed, said one cable-TV executive, the Gore group may itself have to do as Fox does by giving it the “Full Franken,” larding its programming up with song-and-dance commentators like the author of Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them. Otherwise, it might not attract viewers. “Extremes are more interesting for neutrals to watch,” said the executive, who didn’t have much optimism for Mr. Gore’s group, mainly because of Mr. Gore’s up-market sensibilities. “Given who’s involved in it, they’re all way too classy,” he said.

For his part, Mr. Franken--a friend of Mr. Gore’s, who defends him in his book--said he was busy developing a three-hour talk show for a proposed liberal radio network and probably wouldn’t have time to anchor a show for Mr. Gore. But he took issue with the idea that the left played to the same extremes as the right.

“I think, right now, there’s only one side that’s doing that, and that’s their side,” Mr. Franken said. “When I’ve talked to [Mr. Gore], he’s been talking about a whole different thing than what they do. He’s been criticized for being Mr. Policy Wonk. He’s not a tabloid guy.”

Based on his book sales and the crowds he was seeing on his book tour, Mr. Franken said there would be a market for Mr. Gore’s network, too. He said the left was alienated and was hungry for news, and its hunger, by its nature, was not for tarted-up opinion. “If they’re driving around in their car,” he said, “they’re listening to NPR not because it’s left-wing information, but because it’s information. Conservatives want right-wing information; liberals want information. They need ammunition now, because they feel attacked. When I tell them about the liberal media network, they just cheer. Because they want to hear something.”

And Mr. Hundt said, “We’re not trying to fight fire with fire; we’re trying to fight fire with cold water.”

Whether or not Mr. Gore’s reading of the media landscape as a political foothold is fundamentally flawed depends on your reading of Fox’s success. Did Mr. Murdoch tap into a market of wildly underserved conservatives who yearned to see and hear their views expressed on TV? Or was it, as Mr. Gore has it, that Mr. Murdoch’s imported brand of loudmouthed, politically skewed programming bludgeoned the viewing public into submission with entertaining, right-leaning ideas? Or was it, as Mr. Hume would have it, that they simply had better news coverage?

At a special Senate hearing on F.C.C. deregulation earlier this year, Democratic Senator Byron Dorgan from North Dakota asked Mr. Murdoch if he could explain why the radio properties he owned had more than 300 hours of nationally syndicated conservative talk each week, against five hours of liberal talk.

Mr. Murdoch replied: “Yes. Apparently, conservative talk is more popular.”

He’s just giving the people what they want.

The conventional wisdom has it that cable news could become like the tabloid press of the U.K., or Mr. Murdoch’s home of Australia, where eight or nine papers each spin the news based on their own political agendas. It’s a model that leaves it to the public to sort things out based on their own leanings--even if those leanings are, primarily, the desire to see an American flag waving on their TV screen or to be entertained by angry white guys yelling at you. That’s a great market. The current ratings doldrums at CNN, which is struggling to doll itself up while protesting that it intends to keep its old blue-chip objectivity, may be the clearest harbinger yet of Mr. Ailes’ acute instincts. If Ted Turner was still there, things might be different.

But he’s not.

While Fox News may be the most popular cable news channel, however, is it also therefore politically influential?

“If the ambition is political influence, it could not be more misplaced,” said Lawrence O’Donnell Jr., the senior political analyst for MSNBC and former adviser to the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. “If you add up everybody watching MSNBC, CNN and Fox on any given night, you’re dealing with a number that would get any number canceled in prime-time television. As soon as you understand it, you realize the utter meaninglessness on the political level of Al Gore’s network. Whether it gets started, it doesn’t matter. What matters is, does it make enough money or sustain a low-enough loss margin to employ the people and pay for the cameras?”

Mr. O’Donnell said that cable news barked at the converted and changed almost no one’s mind. And he pointed to The News Hour with Jim Lehrer as liberal TV news that already exists--with more viewers than Fox News, he noted. “I don’t think there’s a liberal in America who wouldn’t say The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer is an exemplary piece of television journalism,” he said. “It’s there, but we steadfastly avoid it in a way that I think tells you the story about how much is available for some theoretically counter-programmed Fox rival.”

Even Mr. Gore’s friend Mr. Hundt said that the very nature of what makes cable TV popular was at odds with a thoughtful liberal message. Right-wing ideologues, he said, appeal to quick, emotional bullet points, which “creates in those individuals a frightening relationship to the public trust.”

Mr. Hundt also said the public has shown surprising resistance to the media’s influence. “In the face of almost no media endorsement and precious little elected-official communications, somehow, according to today’s poll, 53 percent think the Iraq war was not worth it,” he said. “How did that happen? It’s certainly not because editorial pages changed their opinion. Certainly not because the White House backed off. In fact, it’s the opposite: It has intensified its advocacy.

“Having said that,” he added, “it’s still true that if you have a political agenda, you should buy a TV station.”

Sir Howard Stringer, chairman and chief executive of Sony Corporation of America and the former president of CBS, said that audience size didn’t tell the story about TV’s influence. If, he said, what Mr. Gore called the right-wing media’s “echo chamber” affects the mainstream media via noisy accusations of liberal bias, then the ability to create its own echo is some form of influence.

“When it’s fragmented, as the media landscape is now, it’s possible to have a voice that is greater in effect than the size of the audience you generate,” he said. “If you’re a reporter these days, or a Washington pundit or politician, you can get on all these cable news channels with fractional audiences and generate influence that seems to be beyond the scale of your audience to a laughable degree.”

The prime example, he said, was Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly, who has achieved a fame that would seem to belie TV numbers that are dwarfed by network news. Mr. O’Reilly reaches two million a night on average, compared to seven and a half million for CBS’s Dan Rather. His latest book, Who’s Looking Out for You?, is the New York Times No. 1 best-seller. Even if book sales don’t match network-TV numbers, cable, books and print synergize into a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts, said Mr. Stringer. It wouldn’t matter if Mr. Gore’s network matched only the viewership of C-Span, he said, because it could still have an impact.

“Influence is influence,” Mr. Stringer said. “It may be a small voice, but it’s more likely to be heard in this environment than ever. C-Span has an audience, too, you know. I was on C-Span, and I couldn’t believe the number of people who stopped me and said, ‘Hey, I saw you on C-Span.’ In a media society, any exposure is better than none.”

But Mr. Gore has some huge hurdles before he can transmit a minute of television. The first one is a lot of money.

“It is estimated that there were losses amounting to a billion dollars before Fox News turned a profit,” said Mr. Hume. “We’re talking about a grand-scale investment. If you start thinking what it could cost to start from complete scratch--with nothing to support you--we’re talking about a truly staggering sum of money, and the losses would have to be eaten along the way.”

And, Mr. Hume added, it’s not clear that any amount of money will help Mr. Gore if his view of Fox News is so fundamentally flawed.

“If what he’s trying to provide is left-wing editorial, I’ll guarantee you this: It wouldn’t compete with us,” he said. “It wouldn’t compete with anybody. It may be relevant to what they think we’re doing, but I doubt it’s relevant to what we’re truly doing.”

For Mr. Stringer, all the cable-news noise is further evidence that the news center has not held. As the former head of CBS from 1988 to 1995, and a former head of CBS News, he said the shift from “objective” news to “balanced” news had been a slippery slope that pointed to the future of media, from which there was probably no return.

“I once argued with a former news president that ‘balance’ is a dangerous word, because you could run a story called Hitler: Right or Wrong?” he said. “The job is to go after the objective truth and come to a conclusion. The fragmented media has changed that--the nature of music, the nature of movies. We don’t sit around the hearth and share the same thoughts any more, so it’s a perfect world for this kind of environment. Is something lost? Yes, I think taking your facts as presented and coming to your own conclusions felt like a healthier environment, but it’s a thing of the past.”

To Mr. Gore and his dream of starting his own TV news channel, Mr. Stringer had this to say: “You have nothing to lose but your loneliness.”

"Do you know about this Mark Halperin memo?" he asked the room full of producers, who were hunched over the dials and standing before a tall bank of flickering TV screens. "Can we talk about it on the air? It’s on Drudge. It’s all over Drudge."

In a leaked memo, Mr. Halperin, the ABC News political director, had suggested that the network should be more critical of President Bush than Senator John Kerry, a moment of potential bias casting suspicion on the debate moderator, ABC News’ Charlie Gibson. It seemed like another priceless chance to rap the knuckles of the liberal media. A producer in the control room did a mocking, throaty impression of an ABC spokesman: ABC News always adheres to the strictest standards and blah blah blah blah ….

But standing by in "Spin Alley" in St. Louis, Mo., Carl Cameron, the chief political correspondent, didn’t like what he was hearing from headquarters.

"Not a good idea! Not a good idea!" Mr. Cameron yelped to the producers from inside an eight-inch monitor labeled "Remote 7." "I’m the last person to do this."

Indeed, the week before Mr. Cameron had come under scrutiny of his own for a fake news item he penned mocking Senator John Kerry—and accidentally posted on the Fox News Web site. Now, inside the Fox nerve center at 400 North Capitol Street, in Washington, D.C.—the de facto brain of Roger Ailes’ network, Rupert Murdoch’s crown jewel—the barrel-chested Fox machine was suffering a rare moment of self-doubt. All season, the TV media covering the 2004 election has had its coat-sleeves yanked suddenly and violently into the political machinery—and into the news—by blogging zealots, with Fox News attacked by factions on the left, and Dan Rather and CBS News by factions on the right (including, incidentally, Fox News). Now it was ABC’s turn, and Mr. Cameron wasn’t so sure he had the street cred to relay the facts.

Marty Ryan, the white-haired executive producer of Fox News’ election coverage, told Mr. Hume what he was hearing from Remote 7: "Carl’s view is he may be a bad person to ask about something like this, given recent events," he said.

"Let me talk to him," said Mr. Hume.

Mr. Ryan opened the connection.

"Hi, Brit," said Mr. Cameron, sad-eyed and weary.

"Hi, Carl," said Mr. Hume. "Suppose I came to you and said, ‘Carl, um, my e-mail is buzzing, there’s a controversy I’m hearing out there about a memo from ABC News political director, uh, that’s been received by some of the staff, what do you know about this, Carl?’ And then what you can say is, you know, ‘Yes, we know that at least one ABC News staffer or something has received the document. It’s a memo that, you know’—how would you describe it if I called on you?"

"I would read a line from it," said Mr. Cameron, "which says, ‘We have a responsibility to hold both sides accountable to the public interest, but that doesn’t mean we reflexively and artificially hold both sides ‘equally’ accountable when the facts don’t warrant that.’"

" Equally accountable," repeated Mr. Hume, honing in on the very headline blaring in a 72-point font on the right-wing Drudge Report. "Then it goes on to say what?"

Mr. Cameron kept reading the memo while political supporters in St. Louis, assuming he was on air, flashed "Bush-Cheney ’04" placards behind his head. Next, Chris Wallace, the Fox News Sunday anchor, on Remote 8, broke in on the conversation.

"Hey Brit, can you hear me? What is this that I’m hearing?" he asked.

"Oh, you’ll love it," said Mr. Hume, before the conversation was cut off by the producers.

A minute later, Thom Bird, a senior executive producer wearing a satin American-flag tie, could be heard repeating Mr. Cameron’s worries about reporting the ABC memo: "He says he doesn’t want to do it," said Mr. Bird. "He says he thinks it’s a really bad idea."

Mr. Cameron explained over the intercom: "Someone in this filing center asked me for a comment about my own problem."

It was five minutes before the official debate time of 9:01:30 p.m., and Mr. Hume had reached a decision: Mr. Cameron’s neuroses be damned, they were going to air the ABC memo. Sitting in the back row of the control room, Mr. Ryan and Mr. Bird looked like Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock at the helm of the Murdochian Enterprise, ready to navigate 7.1 million viewers through the Fox dimension of televised history.

With 20 seconds to go, Mr. Bird reminded everyone again of the trajectory: "Chris is first," he said. "Then go back to Brit, Brit will toss to Jim, Jim will go back to Brit, and Brit will toss to Carl. Ten seconds! Nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two—roll 43 track!"

The deafening Fox News theme music swooshed and the martial drums rolled.

"Stand by, Brit," said Mr. Bird.

Mr. Wallace did the introduction, threw to correspondent Jim Engle, who threw to Mr. Hume, who lowered his voice and started in on the ABC memo.

"The last thing ABC News may have needed tonight," said Mr. Hume, the Fox News logo turning in the bottom left-hand corner, "was a political controversy regarding its coverage."

Mr. Cameron straightened his back in Remote 7.

"But it seems that that is just what ABC News has,’ Mr. Hume continued. "A memorandum from his political director appears to have surfaced. Carl Cameron is aware of it. Carl, what can you tell us about this ABC News memo?"

Mr. Cameron lowered his chin in a hard-boiled game face and read excerpts from the memo.

"How confident can we be that this thing is the real McCoy?" asked Mr. Hume, the ghost of Dan Rather hovering in the room. "How confident can we be about it?"

Mr. Cameron said some ABC staffers had confirmed it, but he was awaiting further confirmation.

"Mark Halperin is an old friend of mine," said Mr. Hume, grimly, like a character witness at a trial. "I’ve worked with him, he’s a good guy. We’ll wait to hear more about this."

Mr. Hume, a onetime ABC News political reporter, called ABC News’ Mr. Gibson "an old friend of mine."

ABC News was a running theme that night for Mr. Hume and Mr. Wallace—another former ABC News man, who could be heard saying of Mr. Gibson, off-air, "He’s a good man, a very nice man. Nice man."

Before show time, the director had fiddled with the test prompter, showing Mr. Gibson in both windows of a split screen. "Looks like Charlie Gibson is debating himself right now," joked Mr. Bird.

But the split screen, so powerful a tool in the first debate, capturing President Bush’s crabby demeanor, was not to appear during the second debate—at least not on Fox. As it happens, ABC News was the only network to run with the split-screen effect. While the debate was under way, Mr. Bird eyed the competing networks and noticed ABC had a camera angle Fox didn’t have.

"Look at ABC!" he said. "They’re getting other feeds that we’re not getting. How did they get that?"

"Goddammit!" yelled Mr. Ryan.

"Can Wallace’s camera get it?" said Mr. Bird.

"Can you get me Kerry, Wallace-cam?" said Mr. Ryan into the intercom.

"Unfortunately," Mr. Bird later explained, Fox News’ unilateral camera, which would have made a split screen possible, "didn’t have a clear shot of the candidate on the stage. It had a clear shot of Kerry on the side, but it looked bad. ABC had the only position that allowed them to get a split screen.

"If we had done it," he continued, "it would have been wrong and confused the viewers. So we sat back and watched the pool do it. And that’s frustrating."

That night, NBC News had managed the camera pool—the generic five-cam production farmed out to all of the networks—and the isolated shots of the candidates had been blocked whenever they stepped up to the markers taped on the red carpet. As a result, Fox was forced for much of the night to rely on the pool cut of the event. Afterward, Mr. Bird gave the production a grade B.

"The fact that we didn’t have the iso’s as anticipated set us back a little bit," he said.

At 9:54 p.m., when Mr. Kerry was asked to look into that same camera and pledge that he wouldn’t raise taxes on those making less than $200,000 a year, Mr. Ryan said, "Good thing that camera was on."

But 15 minutes later, the shot of Mr. Kerry went on the blink, then disappeared altogether.

"Rem 11 is gone!" yelled Mr. Bird. "Rem 11 just disappeared!"

"Here’s an idea," said Mr. Ryan, testily. "Don’t take it."

Ten minutes later, after a faulty downlink was repaired, the shot came back.

Meanwhile, the machine rolled on: A producer typed away, transcribing moments in the debate for the editing room to pluck out for analysis afterward. In their respective monitors, the D.C. panel, Bill Kristol and Fred Barnes of the Murdoch-owned Weekly Standard, and Mort Kondracke, one of Fox News’ Beltway Boys, scribbled notes, smirked, rolled their eyes, laughed to each other. In Camera 1, Mr. Hume had his hands crossed in front of his mouth, watching gloomily.

"You’ve got to be firm and consistent," said Mr. Bush on the screen.

At 10:30 p.m., Mr. Bush, in a longwinded filibuster, avoided listing three mistakes he’d made while President. Watching him, Mr. Kristol grinned in Camera 3. During Mr. Kerry’s rebuttal, Mr. Hume could be seen shaking his head.

In closing, Mr. Bush declared, "Freedom is on the march!"

At 10:37 p.m., Mr. Hume removed his glasses. Mr. Ryan announced that Mr. Gibson’s closer would last 40 seconds. Two minutes later, Mr. Hume, looked into the camera and said to the viewers, "The question is, of course, is whether anything about this debate is sufficient to change the race."

And then something strange happened at Fox News. As Mr. Hume asked his panel to assess the performances of President Bush and Senator Kerry, they each backed away from Mr. Bush, criticizing his performance, wondering why the President hadn’t attacked Mr. Kerry’s record more forcefully and, just like that, handed the night to Mr. Kerry. Mr. Barnes, the most conservative among them, called it a draw.

"I think Kerry won this debate as he won the first debate," said Mr. Kondracke. "I thought that Kerry was more aggressive, and the President was basically on the defense and didn’t have new arguments, didn’t have—wasn’t as facile as he should have been."

Mr. Barnes added: "I hope some White House aide will tell the President that it’s the ‘Internet,’ not the ‘Internets.’"

To NYTV, sitting in that control room, it had not appeared at all that Mr. Bush had lost. It seemed like an unexpected editorial tack, not unlike MSNBC’s Chris Matthews and Hardball throwing the V.P. debate to Dick Cheney three nights before. Was Fox News hedging its bets, righting its footing, preparing for a possible Kerry Presidency, when a new and improved editorial agenda might be in the offing?

Mr. Ryan, of course, said the analysts on the panel just called it liked they saw it. "What they say, we let them speak their minds," he said. "My view is they’re the best in the business, so we turn ’em loose and see what they have to say." He said he didn’t feel any pressure to carefully steer the coverage based on election pressures.

"You just want to be very, very careful that you represent both points of view," he said. "Is there more pressure? I don’t think so. You just want to make sure you get that right all the time."

But giving Mr. Kerry a gold star for Friday night’s skirmish certainly didn’t come naturally. After Mr. Wallace interviewed the Republican spinmeister, he invited Senator Hillary Clinton, in a bright robin’s-egg pantsuit, to talk up Mr. Kerry’s performance. Mr. Wallace then asked about former President Bill Clinton’s health.

"I want to assure all Fox viewers that he’s on the mend," said Senator Clinton, smiling slyly.

"We’re happy," retorted Mr. Wallace.

Senator Clinton laughed hysterically: "I’m glad you’re happy!" she said.

When the post-debate show came back to the D.C. headquarters, Mr. Kristol said to Mr. Hume, with a crooked grin, "I’m so relieved that President Clinton’s on the mend."

"I could tell," said Mr. Hume. "There was a collective sigh of relief here."

"Well," said Mr. Kristol, "I want to assure Senator Clinton that I and Fox analysts and Fox viewers wish President Clinton good health and many years of happiness …. "

"It’s fair to say that in new terms the Clintons have never let us down, have they?" said Mr. Hume.

Inside the control room, everyone grinned.

"He thinks the country is disserved by the absence of truth in news, by the absence of honesty in public-official presentation, by the apparently infinite cynicism of those who currently hold high office," said Reed Hundt, the former chairman of the F.C.C.-the Michael Powell of another political age-who saw through the Telecommunications Act of 1996, as well as a close friend of Mr. Gore's. "These things disturb him, I know that. He's made these points to me. I think Al, and to my knowledge dozens of other progressives, would like to go beyond complaining to actually trying to fix the problems."

If, as Mr. Gore told The Observer in December 2002, Fox News and right-wing talk radio have helped bolster the Bush administration's message, then Mr. Gore's buy would mark a further convergence of television and politics-the migration of power and influence to politicized media. In a cable-television world in which Fox News Channel, with its self-proclaimed corrective point of view, beats CNN's self-proclaimed absence of point of view; in which programmers have to "narrowcast" to gain an audience; in which HBO's K Street mixes up Howard Dean with Hollywood actors and has James Carville participate in a kind of Being John Malkovich version of being James Carville, in a reality-TV business in which all bets are off-being a media mogul may be a whole lot better than being President.

"In a world of highly concentrated media conglomerates," said Mr. Hundt, "the truth of the matter is, the personal tastes of a half-dozen people matter immensely. It's not the case that people in the media poll their audience to see what flavors they would like. They hip-shoot on that topic, and their personal views have an impact."

Mr. Hundt suggested that the media coverage of everything from the war in Iraq to the California election had only firmed up Mr. Gore's beliefs.

In September 2003, The Observer reported that Mr. Gore first met with Universal executives last summer to discuss buying Newsworld, or NWI, a channel that currently packages international news from places like Japan and Canada and can reach about 20 million homes. You can watch it here in New York on the Time Warner Cable system, channel 103.

With it, Mr. Gore is reportedly working on a youth-geared "public affairs" channel that would present news and documentaries-something that would sound a bit like Son of C-Span if it wasn't being financed by the loyal opposition. One associate has suggested that Mr. Gore's network would employ MTV-style programming, using cheap digital cameras and user-created content to allow regular people to get stuff off their chests-but that is pure speculation, and the fact is that the whole Gore TV agenda is still to be announced.

In explaining the power of media on public tastes, Mr. Hundt didn't bring up News Corp. and Fox News Channel boss Rupert Murdoch. But as Mr. Gore said last year, he considers Fox part of a "fifth column" within the media, responsible for injecting "daily Republican talking points into the definition of what's objective."

"There's no question that Democrats are suffering in an environment where there are powerful outlets for anti-Democrat viewpoints," said Bob Somerby, editor of influential political Web site The Daily Howler . "It's clear that people don't watch PBS or C-Span, so commercially you've got to have some point of view. It doesn't have to be a liberal-line point of view, but it does have to have some edge or attitude while you're there. You turn on Fox first because you know something's going to happen."

On Tuesday, Oct. 7, as Fox News celebrated its seven-year anniversary, Brit Hume, the channel's managing editor and chief Washington, D.C., correspondent, wondered if Mr. Gore really knew what he was getting into.

"It's a little unclear what he's trying to do if he wants to start a kind of talk channel that he believes would counterprogram Fox," said Mr. Hume. "He clearly doesn't know what we're really doing. If he's trying to start a serious news organization with worldwide reach, then he immediately becomes a competitor, in my view, to CNN and MSNBC, so he does us good. It doesn't seem like it would affect us very much."

Mr. Hume wondered if Mr. Gore had really considered the basics-like cameras and mobile trucks. Watching a live feed of the California recall on Fox, Mr. Hume said, "If you were the Al Gore News Channel, you're going to want that signal, too. You're going to have to hire your own truck, get your own equipment-I wonder if they've even thought about those things."

If the channel is to succeed, said one cable-TV executive, the Gore group may itself have to do as Fox does by giving it the "Full Franken," larding its programming up with song-and-dance commentators like the author of Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them . Otherwise, it might not attract viewers. "Extremes are more interesting for neutrals to watch," said the executive, who didn't have much optimism for Mr. Gore's group, mainly because of Mr. Gore's upmarket sensibilities. "Given who's involved in it, they're all way too classy," he said.

For his part, Mr. Franken-a friend of Mr. Gore's, who defends him in his book-said he was busy developing a three-hour talk show for a proposed liberal radio network and probably wouldn't have time to anchor a show for Mr. Gore. But he took issue with the idea that the left played to the same extremes as the right.

"I think, right now, there's only one side that's doing that, and that's their side," Mr. Franken said. "When I've talked to [Mr. Gore], he's been talking about a whole different thing than what they do. He's been criticized for being Mr. Policy Wonk. He's not a tabloid guy."

Based on his book sales and the crowds he was seeing on his book tour, Mr. Franken said there would be a market for Mr. Gore's network, too. He said the left was alienated and was hungry for news, and its hunger, by its nature, was not for tarted-up opinion. "If they're driving around in their car," he said, "they're listening to NPR not because it's left-wing information, but because it's information . Conservatives want right-wing information; liberals want information. They need ammunition now, because they feel attacked. When I tell them about the liberal media network, they just cheer. Because they want to hear something."

And Mr. Hundt said, "We're not trying to fight fire with fire; we're trying to fight fire with cold water."

Whether or not Mr. Gore's reading of the media landscape as a political foothold is fundamentally flawed depends on your reading of Fox's success. Did Mr. Murdoch tap into a market of wildly underserved conservatives who yearned to see and hear their views expressed on TV? Or was it, as Mr. Gore has it, that Mr. Murdoch's imported brand of loudmouthed, politically skewed programming bludgeoned the viewing public into submission with entertaining, right-leaning ideas? Or was it, as Mr. Hume would have it, that they simply had better news coverage?

At a special Senate hearing on F.C.C. deregulation earlier this year, Democratic Senator Byron Dorgan from North Dakota asked Mr. Murdoch if he could explain why the radio properties he owned had more than 300 hours of nationally syndicated conservative talk each week, against five hours of liberal talk.

Mr. Murdoch replied: "Yes. Apparently, conservative talk is more popular."

He's just giving the people what they want.

The conventional wisdom has it that cable news could become like the tabloid press of the U.K., or Mr. Murdoch's home of Australia, where eight or nine papers each spin the news based on their own political agendas. It's a model that leaves it to the public to sort things out based on their own leanings-even if those leanings are, primarily, the desire to see an American flag waving on their TV screen or to be entertained by angry white guys yelling at you. That's a great market. The current ratings doldrums at CNN, which is struggling to doll itself up while protesting that it intends to keep its old blue-chip objectivity, may be the clearest harbinger yet of Mr. Ailes' acute instincts. If Ted Turner was still there, things might be different.

But he's not.

While Fox News may be the most popular cable news channel, however, is it also therefore politically influential?

"If the ambition is political influence, it could not be more misplaced," said Lawrence O'Donnell Jr., the senior political analyst for MSNBC and former adviser to the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. "If you add up everybody watching MSNBC, CNN and Fox on any given night, you're dealing with a number that would get any number canceled in prime-time television. As soon as you understand it, you realize the utter meaninglessness on the political level of Al Gore's network. Whether it gets started, it doesn't matter. What matters is, does it make enough money or sustain a low-enough loss margin to employ the people and pay for the cameras?"

Mr. O'Donnell said that cable news barked at the converted and changed almost no one's mind. And he pointed to The News Hour with Jim Lehrer as liberal TV news that already exists-with more viewers than Fox News, he noted. "I don't think there's a liberal in America who wouldn't say The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer is an exemplary piece of television journalism," he said. "It's there, but we steadfastly avoid it in a way that I think tells you the story about how much is available for some theoretically counterprogrammed Fox rival."

Even Mr. Gore's friend Mr. Hundt said that the very nature of what makes cable TV popular was at odds with a thoughtful liberal message. Right-wing ideologues, he said, appeal to quick, emotional bullet points, which "creates in those individuals a frightening relationship to the public trust."

Mr. Hundt also said the public has shown surprising resistance to the media's influence. "In the face of almost no media endorsement and precious little elected-official communications, somehow, according to today's poll, 53 percent think the Iraq war was not worth it," he said. "How did that happen? It's certainly not because editorial pages changed their opinion. Certainly not because the White House backed off. In fact, it's the opposite: It has intensified its advocacy.

"Having said that," he added, "it's still true that if you have a political agenda, you should buy a TV station."

Sir Howard Stringer, chairman and chief executive of Sony Corporation of America and the former president of CBS, said that audience size didn't tell the story about TV's influence. If, he said, what Mr. Gore called the right-wing media's "echo chamber" affects the mainstream media via noisy accusations of liberal bias, then the ability to create its own echo is some form of influence.

"When it's fragmented, as the media landscape is now, it's possible to have a voice that is greater in effect than the size of the audience you generate," he said. "If you're a reporter these days, or a Washington pundit or politician, you can get on all these cable news channels with fractional audiences and generate influence that seems to be beyond the scale of your audience to a laughable degree."

The prime example, he said, was Fox News' Bill O'Reilly, who has achieved a fame that would seem to belie TV numbers that are dwarfed by network news. Mr. O'Reilly reaches two million a night on average, compared to seven and a half million for CBS's Dan Rather. His latest book, Who's Looking Out for You? , is the New York Times No. 1 best-seller. Even if book sales don't match network-TV numbers, cable, books and print synergize into a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts, said Mr. Stringer. It wouldn't matter if Mr. Gore's network matched only the viewership of C-Span, he said, because it could still have an impact.

"Influence is influence," Mr. Stringer said. "It may be a small voice, but it's more likely to be heard in this environment than ever. C-Span has an audience, too, you know. I was on C-Span, and I couldn't believe the number of people who stopped me and said, 'Hey, I saw you on C-Span.' In a media society, any exposure is better than none."

But Mr. Gore has some huge hurdles before he can transmit a minute of television. The first one is a lot of money.

"It is estimated that there were losses amounting to a billion dollars before Fox News turned a profit," said Mr. Hume. "We're talking about a grand-scale investment. If you start thinking what it could cost to start from complete scratch-with nothing to support you-we're talking about a truly staggering sum of money, and the losses would have to be eaten along the way."

And, Mr. Hume added, it's not clear that any amount of money will help Mr. Gore if his view of Fox News is so fundamentally flawed.

"If what he's trying to provide is left-wing editorial, I'll guarantee you this: It wouldn't compete with us," he said. "It wouldn't compete with anybody. It may be relevant to what they think we're doing, but I doubt it's relevant to what we're truly doing."

For Mr. Stringer, all the cable-news noise is further evidence that the news center has not held. As the former head of CBS from 1988 to 1995, and a former head of CBS News, he said the shift from "objective" news to "balanced" news had been a slippery slope that pointed to the future of media, from which there was probably no return.

"I once argued with a former news president that 'balance' is a dangerous word, because you could run a story called Hitler: Right or Wrong? " he said. "The job is to go after the objective truth and come to a conclusion. The fragmented media has changed that-the nature of music, the nature of movies. We don't sit around the hearth and share the same thoughts any more, so it's a perfect world for this kind of environment. Is something lost? Yes, I think taking your facts as presented and coming to your own conclusions felt like a healthier environment, but it's a thing of the past."

To Mr. Gore and his dream of starting his own TV news channel, Mr. Stringer had this to say: "You have nothing to lose but your loneliness."