Finally the Obama administration has done something that can at least partially unify his most enthusiastic liberal supporters (including myself) who have felt dejected over his failure to fight for the Public Option health care plan. He has begun to fight back against that scourge of American journalism known as Fox News. For months, not only the opinion commentators, but the so-called “straight news” anchors as well, have savagely pilloried him with distortions about how the stimulus plan is working to asking whether his health care plan is worse than cancer itself. Under all these circumstances, how could he allow these intellectual terrorists to continue to get away with all they have done?
While appearing on CNN, White House Communications Director Anita Dunn caused a fire storm when she said, “The reality of it is that Fox News often operates almost as the research arm of the Republican Party.” White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and advisor David Axelrod have also been criticizing Fox as not being real news. They were all later attacked for declaring an ineffective media war by the same nauseating mainstream television talking heads. The only criticism I have of people such as Dunn, Emanuel, and Axelrod is that they were not nearly tough enough in attacking Fox News. They should have called them exactly what they are: a fifth column of the most craven, vile, and repugnant journalistic arsonists that this country has ever seen.
What is almost as disgusting as Fox News (which has positioned itself as the intellectual terrorist version of al-Qaeda) is that it has many defenders in the media who are absolutely oblivious as to what it does. When Obama’s Special Master of Compensation, Kenneth Feinberg, was prepared to do interviews, the Washington Bureaus of CNN, ABC, NBC, and CBS were invited–not Fox. They then adorably decided to stick by their dear friends at Fox and demand that they be included or none of them would conduct the interviews.
My only question is this: why would they stand with Fox? It loves bragging about how superior its network ratings are to its competitors. In fact, whenever it is questioned about its obvious right-wing bias, it will inevitably retort, “but, we’ve got the highest ratings and we destroy the competition.” That is definitely true but I would suspect that “My Super Sweet 16” also has high ratings. Does that really mean anything?
Since Barack Obama has been inaugurated, he and others who have the faintest connection to him have been on the receiving end of a daily assault by Fox. Glenn Beck said that Obama, “has a deep-seated hatred for the white culture.” Sean Hannity has said countless times, “I believe Barack Obama is Jeremiah Wright.” Fox distorted now Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s statements while making her look like an anti-white far left Puerto Rican racist. Many of the commentators were successful in getting former Green Jobs advisor Van Jones to resign from his job because they told outright lies and made defamatory accusations of his character. Fox led the charge in showing the heavily doctored videos of ACORN workers committing crimes while making a not so subtle connection to President Obama. In 2000, Fox News had George W. Bush’s cousin John Ellis report that the governor won the Presidential election, which caused the other outlets to go into a frenzy and call the election for Bush. Fox News’ CEO Roger Ailes worked for Nixon, Reagan, Bush 41, and on Rush Limbaugh’s failed television show. Then again, their slogan is “fair and balanced,” so they must obviously be neutral.
Although this should be more than enough information, there are some who will change the conversation around to accusing MSNBC of being the liberal version of Fox. I will not hide my preference for MSNBC because I enjoy its evening liberal primetime hosts like Ed Schultz, Keith Olbermann, and Rachel Maddow (who do tell the truth) but it would be a mistake to compare them with Fox.
MSNBC does have three hours of liberalism in the evening, but it also has a three-hour block of conservatism with Joe Scarborough in the morning. This is much more than Fox provides. It has well known conservatives on its network who have no problem slandering progressives while having weak ineffectual so-called liberals present the opposing view.
Why is it that nobody seemed to care when the Bush Administration went after NBC or how President Bush refused to acknowledge Helen Thomas? What about when they had talk radio show hosts at the White House, but only conservatives were invited? I am glad the Obama administration has gone after Fox because this will start a more robust dialogue of whether Fox deserves to be treated like a legitimate news organization.
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