Obama should lay off Fox News, critics say

Sheldon Alberts, Washington Correspondent, Canwest News Service
Published: Thursday, October 15, 2009

WASHINGTON - In the nearly nine months since U.S. President Barack Obama took office, no American news organization has annoyed, frustrated or outraged the White House more than Rupert Murdoch's Fox News Channel.

But a decision by the Obama administration this week to dramatically escalate its hostilities with the cable network has drawn criticism from conservatives and liberals alike, and raised questions about whether the White House needs to develop a thicker skin as media criticism of the president grows.

In a series of public interviews with Fox's media rivals, the White House accused the conservative-leaning network of being so biased against Mr. Obama, it no longer had credibility as a news agency.

Taking the lead in the administration's attacks was White House communications director Anita Dunn, a veteran Democratic strategist who, until now, has kept a mostly low profile within the West Wing. No longer.

"The reality of it is that Fox News often operates almost as either the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party," Ms. Dunn told CNN.

In future, the White House planned "to treat them the way we would treat an opponent," Ms. Dunn told the New York Times. "We don't need to pretend that this is the way that legitimate news organizations behave."

The White House offensive on Fox hardly came out of the blue. Its beef with the network dates to the 2008 election campaign, when Fox reporters and hosts devoted considerably more airtime than other outlets to coverage of controversies involving Mr. Obama's former pastor Jeremiah Wright and acquaintance William Ayers, a 1960s leftist radical.

But relations have only worsened since then.

In July, Fox host Glenn Beck said on the air he believed Mr. Obama was a racist who "has a deep-seated hatred for white people."

More recently, the White House was upset that some Fox hosts cheered when Mr. Obama failed in his quest to bring the 2016 Olympic Games to Chicago, then booed when he won the Nobel Peace Prize.

"It's opinion journalism masquerading as news," Ms. Dunn says.

Fox is already feeling the consequences of the White House anger. Last month, Fox was the only network excluded when Mr. Obama did a series of interviews on the Sunday-morning talk shows.

"They are the biggest bunch of crybabies I have dealt with in my 30 years in Washington," Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace said after the snub.

Fox executives also say the White House informed them this month the network will not receive an interview with the president this year.

Alan Lichtman, a history professor at American University in Washington, says the White House goal is to "discredit Fox in the eyes of the American people." In doing so, however, the president also risks diminishing his own stature, Mr. Lichtman says.

"It is unwise for Obama to single out Fox, and generally unwise for Obama to go after the media," he said. "Clashes between presidents and the media are not usually happy for the president. It kind of brings the president down, and makes the president look a bit petty, a bit of a whiner, and it usually just helps the media outlet."

John Nichols, a columnist with The Nation, a left-leaning magazine, called the White House attack on Fox a "radically wrong response" and argued Mr. Obama should engage rather than ostracize the network.

"If the Fox interviewers are absurdly unfair, the American people will respond with appropriate consternation," Mr. Nichols wrote.

Fox, for its part, responded to the White House salvos with equal parts defiance and glee.

Mr. Beck has spent the past four days excoriating Ms. Dunn on the air. His antics have included installing a "red phone" on his set and daring the White House aide to call in directly with her complaints.

"If we got it wrong, we want to correct it," he said. "But if we haven't got it wrong, it looks like you might be engaging in -- what do you call it? -- a smear campaign."

Michael Clemente, the network's senior vice-president of news, said he was astonished the administration could not tell the difference between the network's news programming -- which he maintains has been critical but fair -- and its high-rated opinion shows.

"With all due respect to anyone who might still be confused about the difference between news reporting and vibrant opinion, my suggestion would be to talk about the stories and the facts, rather than attack the messenger," Mr. Clemente said in a statement.

Mr. Obama's war with Fox is hardly unique in the history of White House relations with the news media. The Clinton administration spent eight years sparring with right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh. During the Bush administration, President Bush was once overheard on a live microphone describing one newspaper reporter as a "major-league a**hole."

"Clashes between the President and the media are as old as the republic," says Mr. Lichtman. "You can go back to the end of the 1700s and the administration of John Adams who passed the famous sedition laws designed to quiet editors who were critical of his policies."

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