The Administration's Treatment of Fox is disgusting

[Pearls]

What the heck is wrong with the White House? Are they really that insecure that they are blackballing media outlets they don't like now? Even the other networks are outraged over this. The White House said the networks could interview the Pay Czar except for Fox! The bureau chiefs of NBC, CNN, ABC, and CBS all agreed that unless Fox had the opportunity to interview Feinberg, they would decline from interviewing him also. The White House relented.

[Kirst7]

I saw this...it reminded me of Jr High drama. I think they are trying soo hard to discredit Fox, but are coming out looking like little kids throwing temper tantrums.. They claim they aren't telling the facts, but yet...they don't/can't correct anything. Hmmmm.......

[BC-GoMom]

I wondered what my local paper editorial cartoon was referencing- so this is it- great- very mature- not.

[Lesley]

I'm assuming you felt the same way when Bush ignored the liberal media? The staged questions, the required topic handouts. That the Liberal media were never invited to similar events at the WH. Goes both ways. Fox news is what it is and that is an entertainment talk show arm for the RW. Why are they crying in the beer?...they are making lots of money, isn't that what it's all about? At least I've been told here that the measuring stick for success...making lots of money. No one is being shut down, not one is being put off the air. As Bush attempted to do during his administration.
MSNBC?s Maddow and Olbermann Invited to Obama Chat, Not Fox News | Politicususa.com

Gretchen Carlson said, “Interestingly enough, apparently in this reporter gaggle was Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann who are opinion people over at MSNBC. I find that highly entertaining that they apparently, were amongst these reporters, and they’re officially fair and balanced, apparently according to the White House.”

According to TV Newser, Carlson got it wrong. Maddow and Olbermann weren’t at the reporter gaggle on Tuesday. They were at an off the record chat on Monday. The most hysterical thing about this is that Fox News is complaining about being frozen out by the Obama administration, when the Bush administration did the exact same thing to MSNBC.

Here is the video of Dana Perino admitting that the Bush administration froze out MSNBC:

(video available at link)


What the Obama administration is doing with Fox News is nothing unusual. Every administration courts the media, and plays to the outlets where they hope that they can get the best coverage. This is the way the game is played between the media and the White House. I didn’t hear Fox News rushing to defend the New York Times and MSNBC when the Bush administration was attacking them.
<snip>
The tilt media access is nothing more than a part of the political cycle. When a Republican is back in the White House, FNC will be the favored network and Maddow and Olbermann will be shut out again.

and I think the following piece pretty much covers it for me. I believe the term used is "goose/gander"?
What 'Controlling the Media' Really Means | CommonDreams.org

The same media whining over criticisms of Fox was happy to be bullied and controlled by the Bush administration.
by Glenn Greenwald

Hypocrisy is far too common a feature of our political culture to comprehensively chronicle, particularly when there is a change of party control and each side starts doing exactly that to which they spent the last several years vociferously objecting; see here for a vivid example of that dynamic, from a new Pew poll released today:

With hypocrisy that pervasive, who could ever hope to take note of all of it? Still, the complaints from America's Right -- and especially former Bush officials -- that the Obama administration is attempting to "control the media," all because the White House criticizes Fox News, is in a class of hypocrisy all by itself. That those petulant complaints are being amplified by a virtually unanimous press corps -- "it's Nixonian!" is their leading group-think cliché -- makes it all the more intolerable.

John Cole itemizes just some of the measures adopted by the Bush White House to manipulate, control, punish and bully the very few media outlets which were ever hostile to it -- each of those Bush measures, standing alone, is infinitely more invasive and threatening than the mild and perfectly appropriate criticisms of Fox coming from the Obama White House. Indeed, the Bush White House did exactly the same thing with NBC as the Obama White House is doing with Fox, and virtually all of the media stars who today are so righteously lamenting the "attacks on Fox" said nothing. Worse, the very same Bush official who this week said it was "like what dictators do" for the Obama White House to criticize Fox -- Dana Perino -- herself stood at the White House podium a mere two years ago and did exactly that to NBC News.

But the Bush administration did far worse to media outlets than merely criticize them. They explicitly threatened to prosecute New York Times journalists -- to criminally prosecute them -- for reporting on Bush's illegal spying program aimed at American citizens. They imprisoned numerous foreign journalists covering their various wars. The administration's obsessive and unprecedented secrecy -- Dick Cheney refused to disclose even the most basic information about his whereabouts, his meetings, or even the number of staff members he had -- was the ultimate form of media control. And what was the Pentagon's embedding process other than an attempt to control media coverage and ensure favorable reporting? One will search in vain for much media protests about any of that.

But it was the Bush Pentagon's "military analyst"/domestic propaganda program that was, far and away, the most egregious case in a long, long time of a White House attempting to control media content and political coverage in the United States. And with very rare exception, not a single television network or cable news program ever even mentioned any of that -- despite David Barstow's having won the Pulitzer Prize for uncovering it -- because all their networks were implicated by it. To see how extreme a form of "media control" that was, just look at what the Bush Pentagon itself said it was doing.

As part of that propaganda program, the Bush DOD -- as they put it -- "develop[ed] a core group from within our media analyst list of those that we can count on to carry our water." They then fed those water-carriers with exclusive, secret tips about what the Government was doing, to ensure that TV programs would be forced to rely only on pro-Bush sources -- armed with "exclusives" -- while ignoring their critics. Here's how the Director of DoD Press Operations explained that tactic it in a memo to key Rumsfeld aides, including Larry DiRita, the top Pentagon spokesman:

By providing them with key and valuable information, they become the key go to guys for the networks and it begins to weed out the less reliably friendly analysts by the networks themselves . . . .

The Bush Pentagon had a program "to weed out the less reliably friendly analysts" from appearing on television networks. That would ensure not only that on-air pundits were "carrying water" for the Bush White House, but also that the networks' story choices and coverage of military matters would be shaped by those same water-carriers, since the networks' military analysts "have a huge amount of influence on what stories the network decides to cover proactively with regard to the military. . . . " It's hardly possible to imagine a more blatant effort to "control the media" than that. There is nothing the Obama White House has done regarding the media that even comes close.

Whatever else is true, Fox has taken on a political role that is very rare, at least in modern times, for a large American news organization. Its news coverage is not merely biased or opinionated; there'd be nothing unusual about that. Instead, it is a major participant -- the leading participant -- in organizing, promoting and fueling protests, including street protests, against the government. Fox has undertaken a role typically played by media outlets in, say, Venezuela or various unstable, under-developed countries -- sponsoring rather than reporting on protests against the government -- and it is difficult to recall any recent example that is similar.

Fox has every right to do that, but the pretense that it is a news orgainzation is ludicrous -- transparently so -- and there isn't anything remotely wrong with the Obama White House saying so. Even those with high tolerance levels for blatant double standards should have a very hard time watching Bush officials of all people -- along with their media-star allies -- whine about criticisms of Fox coming from the White House, when the prior eight years were marked by an administration that attempted to dominate and control media coverage more than any in modern history, along with a media that seemed perfectly content, even happy, to be controlled.

[Julester]

I will give a rare Kudos to the WH Press Corps for standing on principle.

[Pearls]

Did Bush shut out a network for an interview? Bush singled out one network? And pissed all the other networks off so much that they demanded fairness for that screwed over network?

These other networks are no dummies. If the thugs of this administration try and silence Fox's voice, then who's next?

I don't even really like Glenn Beck (who is one of many people who are on Fox), but I might have to start watching him now. If people are unsatisfied with this administration as many are, and this administration is trying to silence this network because of their insecurity, then what do you think is going to happen to Fox News ratings?

I remember Bush making Helen Thomas sit in the 2nd row or some such thing. And Dan Rather crashed and burned his own plane of shame.

[LandJ]

Originally Posted by Lesley

Fox news is what it is and that is an entertainment talk show arm for the RW

Tit for tat

CNN is what it is and that is an entertainment talk show arm for the LW.

[sheryl]

Originally Posted by Kirst7

I think they are trying soo hard to discredit Fox, but are coming out looking like little kids throwing temper tantrums.. ...

Oh, I believe that FoxNews has discredit itself. I don't believe they are the victim here.

[LBWP]

From what I understand this is WH warning to all the other news media that if they should follow FOX in any effort to get better ratings/more viewers - they will also be shut out. It's been said that close to half of FOX viewers are Dems/Independants & the WH doesn't like the education they're getting. I personally think the WH is biting off their nose to spite their face by taking on FOX whose ratings will more than likely increase even more. Isn't this WH basically saying that either you support them & their policies or else? We all knew censorship would be coming out of this thugocracy administration. Chicago politics at it's finest IMO. FOX news is saying BRING IT ON MAN! I really don't think FOX is crying in their milk or even gonna back down from a WH fight.

L (46)
K&E=7.3

[Lesley]

From what I understand this is WH warning to all the other news media that if they should follow FOX in any effort to get better ratings/more viewers - they will also be shut out.

Really? Where did you hear that?