White House on Media Bias: Fox News v. MSNBC

Senior White House Adviser Valerie Jarrett, a longtime friend of President Obama, was interviewed by CNN's Campbell Brown and demonstrated clearly how the White House has run out of gas in their battle with Fox.  She casually states that Fox News is biased, but when asked whether MSNBC is also biased, she becomes somewhat flummoxed and actually says that she doesn't want to "generalize"  and say that all of Fox is biased.   Oh, and it's not specifically directed at Fox.  Apparently, arguing that the liberal-leaning MSNBC is unbiased in a bridge too far (although White House officials have repeatedly gone on CNN to tell CNN how unbiased they are).

This battle between Fox News and the White House has been going on for a while, which makes it even more mystifying how a Senior White House Adviser could be so unprepared for such a basic question.  She should have easily anticipated that any professional journalist (and Campbell Brown is on CNN!) would ask about a similarly situated news network when you criticize Fox News.  

Valerie Jarrett tries to make the point that it is mainly distortions with which the White House is concerned.  It sounds reasonable enough because anyone would want to correct factual inaccuracies made about them, but that explanation does not square with other criticisms launched by the White House.  On CNN, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said that Fox News "is not a news organization so much as it has a perspective."  If Valerie Jarrett can't say that MSNBC is an unbiased news organization (like CNN), then what is it?

Valerie Jarrett