Breaking Ford Coverage Last Night Included Nixon, Chevy Chase, But No Mention Of His Refusal To Bail Out NYC...

Eat The Press Rachel Sklar December 27, 2006 08:28 AM

Fox owned the late-night coverage of the passing of Gerald Ford, 38th President of the United States, the only network to continue its live coverage straight through the night (and announcing that fact frequently). During that time there were frequent replays of classic clips ("Our long national nightmare is over"), the Nixon pardon, unusual status as the only person to be Vice-President and President but totally not elected to either office, way-back-when promotion of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, recurring SNL character as played by a pratfalling Chevy Chase, plus mentions of his football prowess (central to this morning's report on ESPN, at least according to a brief channel-surf). Yet there was nothing on one of history's most famous front pages, courtesy of the New York Daily News: "Ford To City: Drop Dead." The headline, penned by former NYDN managing editor William J. Brink, was the NYDN's sulky response to Ford's refusal to bail New York City out of potential bankruptcy during the city's fiscal crisis in the mid-Seventies. It's a strange omission not only because of its general Amercian pop culture significance but also because of its political significance: Ford lost New York state to Jimmy Carter in the 1976 election, and Ford is said to have acknowledged the headline's role in that loss, and by extension, the loss of the presidency. As Fox tells it, that loss is largely attributable to Ford's full pardon of Nixon a month after taking office (with a nod to Ford's odd assertion that there was no Soviet domination in Eastern Europe. Oops). Probably mostly true, but still, an omission.

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