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Battle between White House and Fox News should be winding down soon
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It looks like the White House's scuffle with Fox News might have reached its breaking point. Obama's press secretary, Robert Gibbs, gave a very weak response to ABC's Jake Tapper when pushed about Fox News at an off-camera briefing this week. Gibbs would only single out Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity as examples of it not being a news organization, which did not answer Tapper's question.
If we follow Gibbs' "logic" to its conclusion, that means that an institution cannot claim to be a news organization if it has opinion shows. CNN, regardless of whether you think it is biased or not, does not have any nightly opinion shows, but the same does not apply to MSNBC. Fox never claimed that Hannity and Beck are objective journalists, just as MSNBC probably wouldn't claim that Ed Schultz, Keith Olbermann or Rachel Maddow are neutral. As mentioned in the video below, Maddow and Olbermann attended a private briefing at the White House with President Obama last week, along with several other people in the media such as Eugene Robinson, Gloria Borger and Maureen Dowd.
In this exchange, Gibbs only had a few possible responses, none of which probably seemed very attractive: a) begin attacking the reporters and anchors in Fox's news division, such as Bill Hemmer and Bret Baier; b) renounce the White House's position altogether; c) bring up Beck and Hannity and leave it at that. The White House had to know they would be challenged over specifics, but this weak response shows how far they were willing to take it.
If they want examples of alleged bias on Fox's news broadcasts, they could look at Media Matters, a website with which they are probably well acquainted. Fox News has actually been singled out on the official White House Blog, but Gibbs would not, or could not, do it when he had the chance. If this is all about firing up the liberal base, as Paul Begala believes, Gibbs' answer surely left a lot to be desired. It's hard to see how the White House v. Fox News "war" can continue much longer without more specific criticisms.
The other networks even rallied to Fox's defense after Fox was excluded from an interview on Thursday with "pay czar" Ken Feinberg, which Gibbs then blamed on a staffer's decision. It appears that there are some built-in advantages for Fox News in their fight against the White House, and the White House should have known that going in. They will be undoubtedly be adversaries for the next 3 or 7 years, but the methods used in the past couple of weeks probably will not be repeated any time soon.
Relevant portion starts at 1:45
