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Networks close ranks with Fox in battle with White House
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The Fox News Channel is getting support from its television brethren as it fights back against an ongoing assault from the Obama White House.
Thursday, CNN, NBC/MSNBC, ABC and CBS all refused to go along with an attempt to toss Fox from a media pool that was supposed to conduct interviews with White House pay czar Kenneth Feinberg, who was unveiling restrictions on pay for executives of companies that accepted bailout money from the government.
Under an arrangement designed to save the networks money, a crew from one network shoots some White House events for all five outlets. The pool camera was supposed to shoot each network’s separate interview with Feinberg, but the networks were notified that Fox, which has been part of the pool arrangement since 1997, would not be allowed to question him.
The Obama administration relented after the other networks, in a gesture of solidarity, said they would take a pass on interviewing Feinberg if Fox was kept out of the mix. (Ironically, the effort to block Fox from covering what was arguably Thursday’s biggest news event came just a day after White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said decisions on who would be included in pools would be left to the media organizations, not his office.)
Wednesday, President Obama himself was drawn into the fray in an interview with NBC, when he was peppered with questions about criticism of Fox from White House officials. But far from distancing himself from the verbal jihad his aides have unleashed on Fox, the president dismissed Fox as “talk radio” and said “we are going to take media as it comes.”
Tuesday, Gibbs was grilled at the White House briefing by ABC correspondent Jake Tapper, who took issue with what he said was “a pretty sweeping declaration” by White House officials that Fox was not a bona fide news organization.
When Gibbs responded with an allusion to conservative Fox commentators Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity, Tapper reported, “I'm not talking about their opinion programming or issues you have with certain reports. I'm talking about saying thousands of individuals who work for a media organization do not work for a news organization. Why is that appropriate for the White House to say?”
“That’s our opinion,” Gibbs replied.
However, the White House’s aversion to rubbing shoulders with those who mix opinion with news apparently depends on the nature of said opinion. Monday, Obama himself met with a group of left-leaning commentators that included MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow, who are at least as opinionated as the aforementioned Beck and Hannity.
White House aides have admitted that part of the reason for their campaign against Fox is to discourage other news organizations from taking their lead on stories from Fox. But far from driving a wider wedge between Fox and its competitors, the criticism appears to be prompting them to close ranks instead.
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