A post by Pat

The White House declared war on Fox News. Last night Fox responded.

Journalists who were attack dogs against the Bush administration are at least raising an eyebrow over the White House statements. I think the concern is off the mark to criticize the administration for poor political strategy. The demographics of the Fox News audience are irrelevant. It isn’t an issue of differentiating news programming from opinion programming. This is a heavy-handed attempt by the government to suppress free speech. It is not a matter to be taken lightly when government attempts to intimidate news or opinion.

Of all people, it is a T.V. critic who sees this for what it is. Of course a comparison has to be made to Nixon to make the point.

White House war on Fox: Echoes of Nixon-Agnew

I have been writing for several months about how thin skinned the White House has been about press criticism — especially when it comes to the Fox News Channel. I have compared the current administration to the White House of Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew, and believe me, I did not do that lightly. Nixon-Agnew was a very dark time for the First Amendment.

I have argued that whether or not you like Fox News, all of us in the press need to be concerned about the administration of President Barack Obama trying to “punish” the cable news channel for its point of view.

This campaign by the Obama administration is dangerous to press freedom, and it should concern everyone in the press, not just Fox. If you want to get a sense of little regard Team Obama has for the press in general, check out this “Time” magazine article.

The greater concern about the White House and the press is the overwhelming obsequious nature of the coverage coming from most news organizations.

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5 Comments | Leave a comment
  1. RuBegonia says:

    Anita Dunn – fire escape under construction: Linked Times article states: “.. a mother — who plans to transition to a new job later this year in order to spend more time with her 13-year-old son”.

  2. Maynard says:

    Here’s the FOXNews article. Anita Dunn, White House communications director, trashed Fox for its spin and bias on CNN, while praising CNN as a true news network.

    Flashback: In 2004, CNN web pages posted pictures of George Bush labeled “asshole.jpg” and “moron.jpg”. Yep, no bias there, just objective news reporting.

    The Fox report (which is of course going to be self-serving, so you can take it with a grain of salt) notes:

    As for Dunn’s complaint about Fox News’ coverage of the Obama campaign, a study by the Pew Research Center showed that 40 percent of Fox News stories on Obama in the last six weeks of the campaign were negative. Similarly, 40 percent of Fox News’ stories on Obama’s Republican opponent, Sen. John McCain, were negative.

    On CNN, by contrast, there was a 22-point disparity in the percentage of negative stories on Obama (39 percent) and McCain (61 percent). The disparity was even greater at MSNBC, according to Pew, where just 14 percent of Obama stories were negative, compared to a whopping 73 percent of McCain stories — a spread of 59 points.

    Bottom line: We live in the real world and we see what we see and then someone comes along and tells us what we saw, and we decide whether to believe our eyes or the speaker. What I see is a clearer, broader picture from Fox than the others.

  3. mrcannon says:

    “FOX News: Fair and balanced–we report, you decide.”

    “CNN: The most trusted name in slander–we yammer, you concur.”

  4. radargeek says:

    Hugo Chavez may have your answer bho. Yeh… avoid answering direct questions from those pesky news reporters at FOX, just close down the station and run your own Marxist 24hr station. Oh wait, you already have that covered with the state run media: cnn, abc, mslsd, cbs, etc…That’s right, those “partial news organizations” that, like you said, “voted for you!!”

  5. ronald says:

    fox news is like any other news/opinion show out there. Some commentators are more right leaning than others. Glenn Beck is more concerned about America than the ratings. MSNBC of course is more left and pro Obama than maybe CNN and again it depends on witch person you are listening to. As far as the White House goes, they have no complaints to voice about witch news organizations favor or do not favor the Administration. If they can not take criticism than shut up or leave, resign, anything but quit complaining. You were hired to do a job, not rearrange this whole society for your agenda. If people are complaining about you its because they have already figured you out. All your grandstanding points out is that you have lost control of the debate.

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