White House Loses Bid to Exclude Fox News From Pay Czar Interview

I think one thing should be noted regarding the Bush White House and NBC dust-up and the current attacks on Fox by the White House.

In the video clips assembled by Daily KOS, you have the Bush press secretary discussing with the press corps a dissatisfaction with NBC's coverage of the war in Iraq and their having edited an interview to make it appear that Bush was saying things that he did not say.

The response of the White House was to send a letter to NBC for an explanation. At no time, did I hear Perino state that NBC was not a legitimate news agency, nor were there clips of Perino or other White House officials attacking NBC on network or cable news shows, nor was there any indication that NBC was excluded from access to the White House.

I personally don't see any equivalence in these two matters whatsoever, unless Daily KOS just forgot to include a substantive comparison and went with the most superficial evidence they could find.

So, on the one hand you have the Bush White House asking NBC for an explanation of their reporting and you have the Obama White House attacking Fox News, denying their legitimacy as a news agency, encouraging other news agencies to do likewise, and refusing to treat them as such by excluding them from an interview open to the other members of the White House pool.

Just becuase some obscure talking head in a tiny little studio calls this video montage "point, set, match" doesn't make it so.

Here's what Chris Wallace had to say regarding White House/media disagreements and why the current one is unique.

WALLACE: Well, look, there's a long history of presidents not liking individual news media. I was just thinking back, I can remember as a kid, John Kennedy canceled his subscription to the Herald Tribune, which sounds kind of quaint in this day and age.

And I think Dick Cheney threw the New York Times off his plane, although not in midair. So, you know, there is some history of that, but I can't think — and you know, and Nixon obviously went after the liberal media. But I can't think, at least in my lifetime, of a concerted effort like this to isolate and marginalize an individual news organization.

I tell you, that took a serious turn last Sunday when you had Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod go on the Sunday talk shows and in effect lecture ABC and CNN and say, we don't want you treating Fox News as a legitimate news organization, and you saw that again when they went to the White House pool yesterday and said we'll make Ken Feinberg, the pay czar, available to the pool, but not to Fox News, which is a member of the pool.

Thankfully and rightfully the rest of our colleagues in the news media, the three major networks and CNN, stood by us and said, if you don't give it to Fox News, none of us in the pool will do the interview.

What I think it's really about is, is I think after Van Jones and after ACORN, I think the White House got very upset and very nervous. There's a very interesting story in the New York Times today.

When the New York Times, of all people, said, you know what, we're not covering the conservative news media and their issues well enough, we're going to start covering it more, I think they worried that more legitimate stories that Fox News breaks were going to end up going out into the mainstream media, and I think they thought, enough, and let's try to cut Fox News down at the knees.

www.foxnews.com...

So, while there have been clashes between the media and White House before, there never has been one on the level of this one, at least in my memory or the memory of others in the media, some of whom are not exactly in bed with Fox News.

Fox News Refutes Reports That 'Pay Czar' Interview Never Was Requested

For those who think that Fox News fabricated all of this, here's some coverage from other media outlets.

What gives this dust-up special irony is that FOX News success comes in no small part from its ability to convince its viewers that the "mainstream" media are slanted to the left. Now, the White House is arguing that the network is not a real news organization at all, and that has brought some mainstream media voices to its defense.

There's no question that FOX's prime-time voices come from the right. Moreover, its owner, Rupert Murdoch is a staunch conservative, and its first and only CEO, Roger Ailes, is a veteran of Republican media wars.

But MSNBC in prime-time has its own lineup of commentators - all of whom are on the left side of the spectrum, some of whom met with the president the White House this week.

www.cbsnews.com...

Obama seems to think he can swim against that tide by persuading other news organizations to shun Fox News. "It's not really news," White House political chief David Axelrod said on ABC last Sunday.

"... And the bigger thing is that other news organizations like yours ought not to treat them that way." On CNN, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel insisted it's important "to not have the CNNs and the others in the world basically be led in following Fox."

That's way over the line. The White House is perfectly free to refuse to have its people go on Fox News shows, but it shouldn't tell other news organizations that they ought not to follow up on Fox News' reporting or that they ought to keep their journalists from appearing on Murdoch's networks. The White House, moreover, does its case no favors when it invites pro-Democratic commentators like MSNBC's Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow to private briefings with the president, even though their work is every bit as histrionic as Bill O'Reilly's.

www.latimes.com...

Democrats Dismayed By White House's Idiotic War On Fox News

At this discussion over in Political Issues, you will find an analysis of the Obama attack on Fox News comparing it to Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals." It's an eye-opener for those who are unfamiliar with left-wing tactics.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Other stuff:

White House Met Privately With Many Left-Wing Opinionistas



[edit on 2009/10/25 by GradyPhilpott]

Just found two articles, one is a link to the huffpo article from Politico.

Here is the huffpo link:

www.huffingtonpost.com...

And if you are loathe to click on huffpo to give them a hit count, here is the politico link:

www.politico.com...

I was going to make this a new thread, but decided against it, choosing rather to post it here. The consensus as I understand it is, Gibbs admits a mistake in attempting to exclude Fox, and throws a young staffer under the bus. Seems Gibbs is learning well from his boss.

[edit on 25-10-2009 by Libertygal]

reply to post by GradyPhilpott


"The facts of the case are not outined in your citation" - k, LOOK. I'm not your student. If you can't Google news the articles or you didn't read the New York Times pieces on this, then that's not really my problem. I get really annoyed reading so often on these forums, people posting simple "can you find this for me, or can someone research this for me." If you have questions, look it up. If you can't find it, then ask, but so much of this is readily available. I wouldn't be upset if it wasn't so readily available.

My points were not preposterous. The reporters were working on an investigation into Monsanto.

Monsanto is responsible for dozens of contaminated sites. Their genetically engineered corn has been shown to cause obesity. As well as liver and kidney toxins to build in your body. They created terminator seeds, that basically requires food producers to buy from them every year a new stock. Ironically, the first seeds they patented were stolen. They took seeds from the Indian farms and altered them so the seed would not reproduce. They patented it. Then told all the farmers to grow anything with their original seed was against the law. Thankfully, there was enough push back that they agreed not to do this for now. It only took thousands of farmers committing suicide to draw enough attention to the matter. The bovine growth hormone they were using, which the Fox reporters uncovered, was found to cause cancers, which was the major thing that Monsanto wanted cut from the story. So that's a short little description of the most recent events with that company.

You know, questions like "was Ruprt Murdoch involved" or the exact subsidiary that was involved is ridiculous. Fox has put a lot of money, and fought this case under direction of the parent company. I understand that in a legal sense, all these different companies have barriers existing between them but in every practical way they are connected and controlled.

We don't obsolve Enron for their own collapse, for purposely cutting power to Californians to mess with the energy market and reap profits, or for their array of dummy companies to hide debt because there's a complex legal structure in place. In fact, in Enron's case, the bulk of the bad debt was held outside the parent company. So to claim, because they slap a different company label on it, it's somehow outside the organization is how business attempts to shrug liability while continuing to maintain control.

I have one question that I would like you to answer. Do you believe it is a good sign that a news organization actively makes the claim that they have no obligation under any FCC policy, or any law, to report the truth, and the courts agree with them?

-TinyCircus

en.wikipedia.org...

The case between the reporters and Fox is also an entry but it's very sparse and in depth news articles had more information than Wikipedia. The case is ongoing so that may be a reason. There are websites devoted to following it.

You're not my student and I'm not yours either.

If you choose to present incomplete posts, then don't expect to be taken seriously, especially when you make accusations that are not supported by your citations.

Coming out in 2011
Emails Show White House Anti-FOXNEWS Bias...