Fox News

[RanchHQ]

Tapper to Gibbs: Who are you to decide what constitutes a news organization?

posted at 12:55 pm on October 20, 2009 by Ed Morrissey

Sheer comedy gold from one of the most honest White House correspondents in the business. Jake Tapper used his time in the Briefing Room to challenge Robert Gibbs on the Obama administration’s attempts to brand Fox News as something other than a news organization. Gibbs sputters but never answers Tapper’s essential question:

Tapper: It’s escaped none of our notice that the White House has decided in the last few weeks to declare one of our sister organizations “not a news organization” and to tell the rest of us not to treat them like a news organization. Can you explain why it’s appropriate for the White House to decide that a news organization is not one –

(Crosstalk)

Gibbs: Jake, we render, we render an opinion based on some of their coverage and the fairness that, the fairness of that coverage.

Tapper: But that’s a pretty sweeping declaration that they are “not a news organization.” How are they any different from, say –

Gibbs: ABC -

Tapper: ABC. MSNBC. Univision. I mean how are they any different?

Click over to Tapper’s blog to hear the answer. Ultimately, though, Gibbs thoroughly misses Tapper’s point. The White House is not just some political 501(c)3 issuing opinion statements on policy. They’re the executive branch of government, who exist to enforce laws and are accountable to the people, at least in part (one hopes) through the media. It’s entirely inappropriate to make pronouncements on the credibility of those organizations holding them accountable, especially when they try to wheedle other news organizations into ignoring them.
What do they have to fear from Fox News, after all? It makes them look petty and craven, instead of simply responding on each story and letting other news organizations tell their side of the story. After all, they have no lack of volunteers for that task.

It’s the difference between campaigning and governing. Gibbs et al still haven’t learned it, and they look like Amateur Hour as a result, or worse, Nixonian. At the moment, no video of the exchange is available, but I’ll update this post with it as soon as its available.

FROM: Hot Air Blog Archive Tapper to Gibbs: Who are you to decide what constitutes a news organization?

[RanchHQ]

[dreamliner]

Originally Posted by RanchHQ

"The way to look at it, and the way we -- the President looks at it and we look at it, it's not a news organization so much as it has perspective. And that's a different take. And more importantly is not have the CNNs and the others in the world basically be led in following Fox, as if that, what they're trying to do is a legitimate news organization in the sense of both sides, a sense of a valued opinion." - Rahm Emanuel

Does Emanuel speak English, or is this Obamese?

[Luke]

Originally Posted by dreamliner

Does Emanuel speak English, or is this Obamese?

See post number 10 by Ranch. I think that explains what Emanuel is trying to say.

Translated: You can't trust stories originating from Fox, so the rest of the news organizations should ignore them.

[RanchHQ]

The Left-wing Loons at Moveon.org (remember Clinton-Lewinsky?) have an Electronic Petition to encourage President Obama to stay off of FOXNews.

Let's see, 10% Unemployment, Afghanistan (where American Troops are dying daily while President Obama meets for 2.5 hrs with Keith Oberman and Maurine Dowd), Health Care Overhaul, $1.5 TRILLION Deficit, Iran, Iraq, Israel, etc, etc, etc.

In the meantime President Obama is making War on FOXNews and The US Chamber of Commerce.

Mr. President, put on your Big Boy Panties, get something done and please quit the childishness.

You can no longer vote "Present".

Your actions are not becoming the Office of The President of The United States.


FROM: MoveOn.org Civic Action: Stay off FOX

Stay off FOX

President Obama is fighting back against FOX. The White House communications director said FOX is a "wing of the Republican Party...let's not pretend they're a news network."

To draw attention to its biased coverage, President Obama will not appear on FOX for the rest of this year. Can you sign this petition asking Democrats to support President Obama's stance by staying off FOX as long as he does?

A compiled petition with your individual comment will be presented to Democratic senators and representatives.


Sign the Petition

Full petition text:

"Democrats should support President Obama's effort to call out FOX. Please stay off FOX for as long as he does."
*Your Name:
*E-mail:
Your Street Address:
City:
State: AK AL AR AZ CA CO CT DC DE FL GA HI IA ID IL IN KS KY LA MA MD ME MI MN MO MS MT NC ND NE NH NJ NM NV NY OH OK OR PA RI SC SD TN TX UT VA VT WA WI WV WY
*Zip:

Your message to Democratic senators and representatives: (optional)

After you click the button below, we'll send your name, address, and comment to Democratic senators and representatives.

[dreamliner]

Originally Posted by RanchHQ

The Left-wing Loons at Moveon.org (remember Clinton-Lewinsky?) have an Electronic Petition to encourage President Obama to stay off of FOXNews.

FROM: MoveOn.org Civic Action: Stay off FOX

Can you sign this petition asking Democrats to support President Obama's stance by staying off FOX as long as he does?

A compiled petition with your individual comment will be presented to Democratic senators and representatives.


Sign the Petition

Full petition text:

"Democrats should support President Obama's effort to call out FOX. Please stay off FOX for as long as he does."
*Your Name:
*E-mail:
Your Street Address:
City:
State: AK AL AR AZ CA CO CT DC DE FL GA HI IA ID IL IN KS KY LA MA MD ME MI MN MO MS MT NC ND NE NH NJ NM NV NY OH OK OR PA RI SC SD TN TX UT VA VT WA WI WV WY
*Zip:

Your message to Democratic senators and representatives: (optional)

After you click the button below, we'll send your name, address, and comment to Democratic senators and representatives.

After I clicked the button to send my message to Dem Congressmen, Moveon kicked me. Why? All my message to Dems said was "you are not entitled to talk to any media unless pre-approved by me, Your Majesty Obama".

[dreamliner]

Originally Posted by Luke

See post number 10 by Ranch. I think that explains what Emanuel is trying to say.

Translated: You can't trust stories originating from Fox, so the rest of the news organizations should ignore them.

Thanks for that Luke. You may be eligible for the Obamese Translater Czar job open at 1600 Pennsylvania, since Comm Director Dunne's gaffes.

[RanchHQ]

I'll set the Stage:

Today the Obama White House Press Pool was invited for one-on-one interviews with the new Heap Big Chief of Paychecks Czar.

The White House said FOXNews was not invited.

The other Members of The White House Press Pool said "screw this, no FOXNews no ABC, CBS, NBC or CNN".

The White House reneged and FOX News got their interview.

Childish, boring and unwinable is this war the White House has going with FOXNews.

Far beneath the Office of The President.

YouTube - White House tries to bar Fox News from intervewing pay czar

YouTube - White House tries to bar Fox News from intervewing pay czar

[RanchHQ]

NYT: Obama whined about Fox News at off-the-record briefing with lefty pundits

posted at 9:43 pm on October 22, 2009 by Allahpundit


Is this a joke?

Speaking privately at the White House on Monday with a group of columnists and commentators, including Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann of MSNBC and Maureen Dowd, Frank Rich and Bob Herbert of The New York Times, President Obama himself gave vent to sentiments about the network, according to people briefed on the conversation…
Mr. Clemente suggested that the fight with Fox was part of a larger White House strategy to marginalize critics. He cited a report in Politico about a strategy session in August at which officials discussed plans to move more aggressively against opponents.
White House officials acknowledged that Fox News did come up at that meeting, although not, they said, as a central topic. A number of issues had been added to the White House’s list of grievances by then, including the network’s heavy coverage of some of the more heavily anti-administration commentary at town-hall-style meetings on health care and Mr. Beck’s remark that Mr. Obama “has a deep-seated hatred for white people.”

Dude, Glenn Beck’s own fans don’t obsess about him this much. How do we put The One’s mind at ease here? Taxpayer-funded psychotherapy? A week off at Camp David? A security blanket, perhaps emblazoned with the “O” logo that he loves so much? I’m not being altruistic; we’ve reached the point where, purely out of self-interest, we may need to start worrying about this guy being on the red line with Medvedev, chatting about nukes, and letting his mind wander to what Sean Hannity might have been saying about him that night. What can we do to help this poor afflicted individual get the help he needs?

Update: Remember, though, he’s not losing sleep over it.

YouTube - Obama on his War With Fox News: I'm Not Losing Any Sleep Over It

YouTube - Obama on his War With Fox News: I'm Not Losing Any Sleep Over It

[RanchHQ]

"Rahm Emanuel once sent a dead fish to a live pollster. Now he's put a horse's head in Roger Ailes' bed." - Charles Krauthammer

Fox Wars
by Charles Krauthammer

WASHINGTON -- Rahm Emanuel once sent a dead fish to a live pollster. Now he's put a horse's head in Roger Ailes' bed.

Not very subtle. And not very smart. Ailes doesn't scare easily.

The White House has declared war on Fox News. White House communications director Anita Dunn said that Fox is "opinion journalism masquerading as news." Patting rival networks on the head for their authenticity (read: docility), senior adviser David Axelrod declared Fox "not really a news station." And Chief of Staff Emanuel told (warned?) the other networks not to "be led (by) and following Fox."

Meaning? If Fox runs a story critical of the administration -- from exposing White House czar Van Jones as a loony 9/11 "truther" to exhaustively examining the mathematical chicanery and hidden loopholes in proposed health care legislation -- the other news organizations should think twice before following the lead.

The signal to corporations is equally clear: You might have dealings with a federal behemoth that not only disburses more than $3 trillion every year but is extending its reach ever deeper into private industry -- finance, autos, soon health care and energy. Think twice before you run an ad on Fox.

At first, there was little reaction from other media. Then on Thursday, the administration tried to make them complicit in an actual boycott of Fox. The Treasury Department made available Ken Feinberg, the executive pay czar, for interviews with the White House "pool" news organizations -- except Fox. The other networks admirably refused, saying they would not interview Feinberg unless Fox was permitted to as well. The administration backed down.

This was an important defeat because there's a principle at stake here. While government can and should debate and criticize opposition voices, the current White House goes beyond that. It wants to delegitimize any significant dissent. The objective is no secret. White House aides openly told Politico that they're engaged in a deliberate campaign to marginalize and ostracize recalcitrants, from Fox to health insurers to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

There's nothing illegal about such search-and-destroy tactics. Nor unconstitutional. But our politics are defined not just by limits of legality or constitutionality. We have norms, Madisonian norms.

Madison argued that the safety of a great republic, its defense against tyranny, requires the contest between factions or interests. His insight was to understand "the greater security afforded by a greater variety of parties." They would help guarantee liberty by checking and balancing and restraining each other -- and an otherwise imperious government.

Factions should compete, but also recognize the legitimacy of other factions and, indeed, their necessity for a vigorous self-regulating democracy. Seeking to deliberately undermine, delegitimize and destroy is not Madisonian.

It is Nixonian.

But didn't Teddy Roosevelt try to destroy the trusts? Of course, but what he took down was monopoly power that was extinguishing smaller independent competing interests. Fox News is no monopoly. It is a singular minority in a sea of liberal media. ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, NPR, CNN, MSNBC vs. Fox. The lineup is so unbalanced as to be comical -- and that doesn't even include the other commanding heights of the culture that are firmly, flagrantly liberal: Hollywood, the foundations, the universities, the elite newspapers.

Fox and its viewers (numbering more than CNN's and MSNBC's combined) need no defense. Defend Fox compared to whom? To CNN -- which recently unleashed its fact-checkers on a "Saturday Night Live" skit mildly critical of President Obama, but did no checking of a grotesquely racist remark CNN falsely attributed to Rush Limbaugh?

Defend Fox from whom? Fox's flagship 6 o'clock evening news out of Washington (hosted by Bret Baier, formerly by Brit Hume) is, to my mind, the best hour of news on television. (Definitive evidence: My mother watches it even on the odd night when I'm not on.) Defend Fox from the likes of Anita Dunn? She's been attacked for extolling Mao's political philosophy in a speech at a high school graduation. But the critics miss the surpassing stupidity of her larger point: She was invoking Mao as support and authority for her impassioned plea for individuality and trusting one's own choices. Mao as champion of individuality? Mao, the greatest imposer of mass uniformity in modern history, creator of a slave society of a near-billion worker bees wearing Mao suits and waving the Little Red Book?

The White House communications director cannot be trusted to address high schoolers without uttering inanities. She and her cohorts are now to instruct the country on truth and objectivity?