Obama's War On Fox News

Real Clear Politics carries dueling articles about the the White House war on Fox News.  According to Jim Rutenberg of the New York Times, this is just another news event and he reports it that way.  Just the facts.  His story is revealing as I suppose news stories ought to be.  Obama apparently held a strategy meeting for his War on Fox with a number of his allies. 

Speaking privately at the White House on Monday with a group of mostly liberal columnists and commentators, including Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann of MSNBC and Maureen Dowd, Frank Rich and Bob Herbert of The New York Times, Mr. Obama himself gave vent to sentiments about the network, according to people briefed on the conversation.

Then, in an interview with NBC News on Wednesday, the president went public. “What our advisers have simply said is that we are going to take media as it comes,” he said. “And if media is operating, basically, as a talk radio format, then that’s one thing. And if it’s operating as a news outlet, then that’s another.”

The collection of sycophants Obama invited to his strategy session includes the most heated and vitriolic Bush administration critics, who now apparently reap the reward of their partisan commentary.  Rutenberg said that the White House was happy to start this debate about Fox News, because, in the words of David Axelrod, “Our concern is other media not follow their lead.”  Not to worry, David.  The style of coverage they gave the Bush administration won't extend to this one.

I have to wonder about the wisdom of Obama's White House meeting with his lapdogs in the press.  He was, after all, was preaching to the choir.  Maybe he just wanted to ask them to hold still while he launched his attack on Fox, but even the mainstream media, cheerleaders for Obama that they are, are having a hard time with it.

In a sign of discomfort with the White House stance, Fox’s television news competitors refused to go along with a Treasury Department effort on Tuesday to exclude Fox from a round of interviews with the executive-pay czar Kenneth R. Feinberg that was to be conducted with a “pool” camera crew shared by all the networks. That followed a pointed question at a White House briefing this week by Jake Tapper, an ABC News correspondent, about the administration’s treatment of “one of our sister organizations.”

Give them time.  Obama hasn't shown them yet what he can do.  Not to worry.  Charles Krathammer is here to tell us.

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.

You have to wonder, just how smart is it to pick a fight with the most popular cable news network in America?  In Krauthammer's view, and mine too, not very.  In fact Krauthammer believes it's surpassingly stupid.

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?

Yet for some odd reason, the Obama White House is quite confident that this war on Fox is smart policy.  Confident enough that the kick off event for his attack on the independence of the press was a meeting with other members of the press.  Admittedly, these are the those same friendly journalists who pronounced him to be the smartest president ever.  Is it any wonder the mainstream media are losing money hand over fist?  Any wonder that Obama's approval rating is sinking like a stone?