According to senior White House advisor David Axelrod, Fox News has been blurring the line between "news and anti-Obama advocacy." Now, the White House is giving Fox News the cold shoulder.
Fox News Sunday was left out of Obama's round of appearances to talk about health care. And things really got heated when the Treasury Department tried to exclude the network from a round of interviews with executive-pay czar Kenneth Feinberg.
Of course, all presidents have their favorite (and least favorite) news outlets. What's new this time is the White House's openness in attacking Fox's credibility as a legitimate news source. White House communications director Anita Dunn told CNN that Fox is "widely viewed as...part of the Republican Party," and urged the media and the public "not [to] pretend they're a news network the way CNN is."
Surprisingly, other news outlets have lept to Fox's defense. One criticism is that the White House complains about right-wing bias while ignoring (inviting?) liberal bias (Campbell Brown made this argument comparing Fox and MSNBC). News organizations have also criticized themselves for not being quick enough to follow up on stories that Fox had been covering aggressively, such as the Acorn scandal, so perhaps their vehemence towards the White White House now is a sort of mea culpa for that.
Come on.
The Acorn story? Yes. Legit. But the Obama birth certificate brouhaha? The Michelle and Barack fist bump as a "terrorist fist jab"? Glenn Beck's accusation that Obama is a racist with "a deep-seated hatred for white people"? The stink over the guy's middle name? I have to agree with Anita Dunn: Let's not pretend that Fox worries itself with presenting any sort of "Fair and Balanced" view of the president, his policy, or his personal life.
It seems to me that what the media are really reacting to is the audacity of any outside party trying to force a news outlet to behave in a certain way. But if that "certain way" of behavior is simply the expectation that you'll at least try to live up to your own motto, and dispense with the outrageous and unfounded rumors, is that such a bad thing? Since when are the media the only ones allowed to criticize bad behavior? I say, if Fox won't play fair, the White House is in the right to take its ball and go home. I guess Obama's the ball in that metaphor?
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Interesting perspective.
ReplyDeleteI appreciate the observation that it's the OPENNESS of the administration's position that might be unnerving to media outlets. Certainly other administrations have favored and excluded certainly outlets in the past.
The ACORN controversy has been fascinating. On the one hand, it look bad. On the other, you have an undercover camera (an action no other news organization would perform or use after the Food Lion scandal) uncovering inappropriate and/or illegal behavior by a branch of the organization that does not receive federal funding.
But the facts don't really matter: it LOOKS bad, so therefore it must BE bad. This has been an interesting shift in political coverage over the years: 9/10 of Bill Clinton's scandals? More smoke than fire. Swift-boats for Truth? Turned out not to be truthful. The Dan Rather Memogate scandal? Turned out not to be based upon facts.
But in each of these cases, the APPEARANCE of impropriety was enough to achieve a political end. Bill Clinton was censured. John Kerry lost an election. Dan Rather was fired.
I think an unspoken element of this debate concerns what passes for truth in reporting. The vast majority of Americans still think Bill Clinton committed fraud in White Water (though they can't tell you what all that was about), they believe John Kerry committed fraud in receiving his medals, and they believe that Dan Rather fabricated the memogate documents. Perception is reality.
But this opens an interesting door: if the administration is now fighting to regulate PERCEPTION, where does this slippery slope lead?
It sounds like Fox News is being treated as if it were the National Inquirer, another outlet that does not regularly get press credentials. So the slope already exists. The question is where this slip might lead us.
Good thoughts. Keep up the good work.