Fox Not a News Station?
By Larry Johnson on October 20, 2009 at 6:00 PM in Current Affairs
Talk about back to the future. Here I thought we were looking at a repeat of the lousy Presidency of James Earl Carter and Barack Obama goes ahead and starts emulating Tricky Dick Nixon. Let’s give Obama his due–he’s a better talker (as long as TOTUS is working) than Nixon and he certainly looks better on TV (no sweaty upper lip). On the positive side he shares a good trait with Tricky Dick, he loves his two daughters. But that’s the end of the good news.
Nixon’s paranoia and failure of leadership created an atmosphere of anger and vitriol that resulted in a genuine “Enemies” list. Nixon demonized the Washington Post and the New York Times. Apparently Barack “Barry Soetoro” Obama is as thin skinned and craven as Richard Nixon. Obama is going after Fox News. But this is not a new development. It started in August.
Bill O’Reilly flagged it early on:
The Obama team of clowns and bullies upped the ante over the past week. Here’s Rahm:
I am no friend of Fox. I was fired as a Fox News analyst at the direction of Rupert Murdoch (at least that’s what I was told by a friend who spoke directly with a senior Fox lawyer). I am on the record criticizing Fox for its cheerleading of the Bush Administration. And I was on Keith Olberman’s show bashing the Bush Administration for its own war against the CIA (such as the outing of Valerie Plame Wilson). I don’t like bullies. Period. I despised the Bush White House for its bullying of those who challenged its’ wrongheaded policy in Iraq and its failure to commit adequate troops to the fight early on.
Well, Obama has now crossed a line. Attacking Fox News is stupid and immature. That’s not leadership, that is petulance. Did the Bush White House ever go after MSNBC and Keith Olberman? No. And Olberman has been every bit as incendiary on the left as Sean Hannity and Glen Beck on the right. Olberman’s rantings does not mean that MSNBC is not a news organization. It may be a biased news organization but it does news.
Attack Fox is wrong but, make no mistake, Rupert Murdoch is grateful. Why? Obama’s attacks are buying Fox credibility and support.
Allahpundit over at Hot Air has a great piece along these lines:
This seems so obviously correct that I feel embarrassed for not having figured it out sooner.
The rationale of the White House offensive against Fox News has been a topic of much puzzlement lately. Is this just the White House lashing out? Are they trying to rally the base?
But I think Mike Allen and Josh Gerstein nail the real explanation in their story today: The White House is working to prevent stories born on Fox from crossing over into more widely-viewed media. Most Americans still haven’t heard of Van Jones, for instance; and the strategy is now all about containment…
Allen and Gerstein:
“We’re doing what we think is important to make sure news is covered as fairly as possible,” a White House official told POLITICO, noting how the recent ACORN scandal story started because Fox covered it “breathlessly for weeks on end.”
“And then you had a couple days of breast-beating from The Washington Post and The New York Times about whether or not they were fast enough on the ACORN story,” the official said. “And it’s like: Wait a second, guys. Let’s make sure that we keep perspective on what are the most important stories, and what’s being driven by a network that has a perspective. Being able to make that point has been important.”…
“They’re not really a news station,” Axelrod told ABC’s “This Week.” “It’s not just their commentators, but a lot of their news programming if you watch, it’s really not news….The bigger thing is that other news organizations like yours ought not to treat them that way, and we’re not going to treat them that way. We’re going to appear on their shows. We’re going to participate, but understanding that they represent a point of view.”
“It’s not a news organization so much as it has a perspective,” Emanuel said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “More importantly, is to not have the CNNs and the others in the world basically be led in following Fox, as if what they’re trying to do is a legitimate news organization.”
I encourage you to read the rest here.
Good on Fox. They are covering some key stories the rest of the media prefer to ignore. NoQuarter was one of the very first blogs to go after ACORN. The late (but great) Nancy was a dogged researcher and writer on this topic. It was only when Glen Beck finally started paying attention to the issue that it got some traction. Just one example of Fox doing news (though Beck failed to acknowledge the work we did, but such is life).
I do not begrudge Fox having a bias. It does have one. But the notion that CNN and MSNBC (not to mention ABC, CBS and NBC) are somehow devoid of bias and simply pursuing truth is delusional. What is truly alarming is that the White House is possessed of a delusional we last saw when Tricky Dick wandered the halls of the White House. Someone needs to slap some sense into Obama, Axlerod and Emmanuel. Acting like Dick Nixon is not “Presidential.”
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