Maybe Keith Can Get a Job on the Fox Business Channel

MSNBC’s president vowed to fire Keith Olbermann after he threatened to take his case to other networks.

Fox rewards individuality and allows free speech.

Justice: Fox News Gets Front Row Seat at White House Briefings

After the Obama administration's failed boycott of Fox News, coupled with MoveOn.org's pathetic attempt to prevent this, Fox News gets a front row seat to White House briefings.

According to Hot Air, it was a unanimous decision by the White House Correspondents' board.

"The board ultimately was persuaded by Fox's length of service and commitment to the White House television pool," said the association.

Always nice to see people do the right thing.

Leftwingers Make Big Deal Out of Fox News Not Pointing Out More Domestic Terrorism

You have to wonder sometimes what is it the Left actually wants. Now we have moonbats complaining that the guy flying a plane into an IRS building in Austin yesterday isn't being classified as terrorism by either the FBI or Fox News.

You'd think they'd be happy that Fox News isn't pointing out yet another act of terrorism on Obama's watch, but, somehow, they're cranky because Fox News accepted the FBI explanation that this guy isn't a terrorist.

I'm really surprised you have to sift through the comments to find the typical, "It's not terrorism cuz he's a white guy" crap because at least that sounds like something lefties say. Instead, we're treated to leftwingers smacking Fox News for not getting hysterical about this when, usually, the leftwingers smack Fox News around for getting hysterical. More of that damned if you do, damned if you don't thing, I suppose.

UPDATE(s): Thank God CAIR knows a terrorist when it sees one.

And while Scott Brown "yawns" (according to Think Progress) about the attack, if you read the guy's statements, he's clearly on the left. Nonetheless, leftwing media sycophants say they guy "sounds like a Tea Partier." Yeah, there have been so many violent acts come out of the tea party movement.

Of Course They're All Partisan

If Fox Is Partisan, It Is Not Alone

In audience surveys from August 2000 to March 2001, Fox News viewers tilted Republican by 44.6 percent to 36.1 percent. More narrowly — 41.4 percent to 39.4 percent — so did the audience for MSNBC. The audiences of CNN, Headline News, CNBC and Comedy Central leaned Democratic.

Four years later, amid the Iraq war and President George W. Bush’s re-election campaign, the audience data had shifted. Fox News viewers had become 51 percent Republican and just 30.8 percent Democratic, while MSNBC viewers leaned Democratic by 41.7 percent to 40.4 percent. Viewers of CNN, Headline News, CNBC and Comedy Central grew slightly more Democratic.

By 2008-9, the network audiences tilted decisively, like Fox’s. CNN viewers were more Democratic by 50.4 percent to 28.7 percent; MSNBC viewers were 53.6 percent to 27.3 percent Democratic; Headline News’ 47.3 percent to 31.4 percent Democratic; CNBC’s 46.9 percent to 32.5 percent Democratic; and Comedy Central’s 47.1 to 28.8 percent Democratic.

The idea of an objective press is a 20th Century anomaly. From the beginnings of the U.S., the press was highly partisan, and it was that partisanship that was enshrined in the First Amendment idea of freedom of the press. The idea that it wasn't "news" because there was a slant was unprecedented.

In an age where more people have more access to news and opinion outlets and are better educated than at any time in our history, the pearl-clutchers are oh-so worried about disinformation. We should give people more credit for being able to figure out what's true and what isn't, what matters and what doesn't, and whether the immediate effects of this policy or that outweighs the longterm consequences of a particular action. The only people desperate to silence dissent are those desperately clinging to power.

Valerie Jarrett Attacks Fox News Then Has to Backtrack

It's tough for the Obama White House to keep attacking Fox News, knowing that, as they do so, it makes the cable network more popular. So, instead, we're treated to Valerie Jarrett attacking Fox News, then weaseling out.

To the question of whether Fox News is biased, Jarrett replied: "Well, of course they're biased. Of course they are."

But when Brown followed up by asking Jarrett if she thinks MSNBC is biased, she quickly downplayed her original remark. "Actually, I don't want to generalize all of Fox is biased or that another station is biased. I think what we want to do is look at it on a case-by-case basis," she said. "When we see a pattern of distortion, we're going to be honest about that pattern of distortion....

"We're actually calling everybody out. So this isn't anything that's simply directed at Fox. We just want the American people to have a really clear understanding," said Jarrett.

Oh, yeah. BO and his minions have been sooooo tough on, say MSNBC. Riiight.

This is obviously in response to the skyrocketing ratings Fox News has enjoyed since the Obama administration declared war on it. The war hasn't worked for Obama, and that explains this change in communication strategy.

Fox News' Ratings Way Up Since White House Declared War on It

Oh, the irony. Or maybe not. I could have predicted that the flap would be a ratings booster for Fox News. People who never watched the channel would be wondering what all the fuss was about, and those who occasionally watched Bill O'Reilly or Sean Hannity are probably more regular. Anecdotally, I'd never watched Glenn Beck's show until Color of Change declared war on him.

From Hot Air:

It’s a nine-percent bump in the two weeks since Anita Dunn’s whine heard ’round the world — in terms of overall audience. Among the coveted 25-54 demographic? A 14-percent bump. Good work, Barry. People keep telling me that this PR offensive by the White House benefits both sides but I don’t see how that’s true. If the goal is to contain Fox by framing the stories it breaks — Van Jones, ACORN, etc — as somehow illegitimate, then every tenth of a point that Fox’s ratings go up undermines that goal. There will come a point where other news nets will follow Fox’s lead simply for business reasons, ideology or no ideology; follow the link, eyeball the list of top 20 news shows, and ask yourself how far we are from that point, really. To put it in perspective: “Red Eye,” at 3 a.m., is beating Campbell Brown at 8 p.m. on CNN in the demo. (Worse, perhaps: Anderson Cooper is getting beat by... re-runs of Nancy Grace.)

It's clear that people prefer the opinion shows on Fox News as well as MSNBC (whose ratings are nowhere close to Fox News') to the staid, straight news programs on CNN and HLN. And why not? The straight news shows are on all day long on all four cable networks, and there's also the nightly news programs on the broadcast networks. IOW, there are plenty of places to watch the straight news. But Glenn Beck or Sean Hannity or Keith Olbermann bring an entertainment value that is obviously attracting eyeballs on a nightly basis. That must be worrisome to the White House, if they didn't want people watching or listening to Fox News.

White House Tries to Exclude Fox News from Interview

Hard to see how even Media Matters can defend this.

The only way to read this is that the administration was lying when it said White House officials would be available for interview by Fox News. Fortunately, as Allahpundit points out, the WH press corps closed ranks to support Fox News, not just on principle, but to ensure their own access when a Republican sits in the executive mansion.

Again, the more Obama's administration attacks Fox News, the more Fox News's stature grows and Teh One's diminishes.



Cassandra at Villainous Company notes,

The press did the right thing ... behind closed doors. But as of the time of this posting I don't see ABC, MSNBC, or CNN have any plans to inform their readers of today's events.

This is an outrage that Americans should be concerned about. During the George W. Bush administration, we were constantly told that he wanted to "stifle dissent" and shut down the press. Now, we have a president who actually wants to do these things.

Cross-posted at Common Sense Political Thought.

UPDATE: Anderson Cooper compares Obama with Nixon.

UPDATE x2: Moderate Democrats are concerned about the backlash against them from the White House's all-out push against critics. The strategy is doomed to failure; criticism of the President, any President, is normal. Expending one's energy attacking the critics makes the White House look petty and small. Remember, this President promised to bring "a different tone" to Washington and to listen to critics. Stunts like this, as well as bashing the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, rightfully concerns voters who thought they were getting something different.

UPDATE x3: Interesting view of this at Balkinization.

In the long run, it will probably be better for the Administration and future Administrations not to say that Fox and its successors are not "legitimate" journalists, but that they are not actually objective journalists; instead they are members of a new party or partisan press. That model of the press may be legitimate in the twenty-first century, but politicians have obligation to treat it as they treated an earlier model of journalism.

This isn't wholly true. "Objective journalism" has been a source of debate for first-year journalism students since the Dark Ages. This idea that reporters check their biases at the White House door is bogus, as the fawning coverage of Teh One during last year's campaign illustrates. And more to the point, the President of All of Us has an obligation to answer critics, not shut them out. Remember, the purpose of newspapers--and journalism in general-- is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

Propaganda? No!

Here's a Media Matters video attacking Fox News:

A couple of things come to mind with this video. First, Media Matters would like you to believe that Sean Hannity's opinions drive the news at Fox News. The problem with this argument is that there's nothing nefarious about both news programs and opinion programs covering the same topic. Networks do it all the time. Does Media Matters consider NBC or CBS not to be news organizations because they covered the War on Terror, followed by late night comedians doing skits on the war? What about MSNBC? If Keith Olbermann goes nuts about Carrie Prejean and MSNBC covers the story the same way, will Media Matters start complaining that they aren't a real news organization?

More to the point, Media Matters' biggest complaint seems to be that Fox News is actually asking why Barack Obama has so many unvetted people in his administration, people with radical pasts (and presents), who have, at best, been unethical. If Media Matters was actually interested in journalism (which they aren't), they would be far more concerned with why the MSM and MSNBC and CNN refuse to scrutinize the Obama White House.

UPDATE: Another fine example of MSNBC's "news organization."

The Real Reason the White House Is Attacking Fox News

According to Allahpundit is containment.

The White House is working to prevent stories born on Fox from crossing over into more widely-viewed media. Most Americans still haven't heard of Van Jones, for instance; and the strategy is now all about containment

Both Fox News and commentators like Glenn Beck have been all over the number of communists and radicals in the Obama White House, and this is information Anita Dunn and Rahm Emmanuel are highly motivated to prevent average Americans from knowing. Given that Fox News's ratings, gigantic for cable, are tiny by network news standards. Once these stories are picked up by ABC, NBC and CBS, the exposure is far greater, which is exactly what the White House is concerned about.

As Allahpundit notes, Jake Tapper is the only non-Fox News reporter willing to ask WH spokesman Robert Gibbs the tough questions. It's plain that the other media outlets are already isolating Fox News under the false assumption that asking Teh One uncomfortable questions will get you banned or something.

Ideological solidarity only goes so far; as Axelrod himself acknowledged about FNC, ultimately the news nets are in business to make money. So here he and Emanuel are, leaning on them not only to ignore Fox but to ignore stories that Fox covers, as if the underlying facts are somehow tainted by association (“Let’s make sure that we keep perspective on what are the most important stories”). Creepy.

Much has been made about the media savvy of this administration, but there is a darker side to that savviness. It's called control.

Journalists Are Journalists No Matter What the Political Stripe

Thomas to White House: End Fox fight

Veteran White House reporter Helen Thomas on Monday advised the Obama administration to stand down and avoid fighting with Fox News and its correspondents...

"They can only take you down. You can't kill the messenger," said Thomas, who has covered every president from John F. Kennedy to Barack Obama.

Other than distracting from his disasterous fight over health care reform, picking a fight with a news organization is never a good idea. Journalists know they've struck paydirt when the target squeals.

White House Losing War with Fox News

That's according to The New York Times.

Even though almost all the critiques contained a kernel of truth, in each instance the folks who had the barrels of ink, and now pixels, seemed to come out ahead. So far, the only winner in this latest dispute seems to be Fox News. Ratings are up 20 percent this year, and the network basked for a week in the antagonism of a sitting president

It could all be written off as a sideshow, but it may present a genuine problem for Mr. Obama, who took great pains during the campaign to depict himself as being above the fray of over-heated partisan squabbling. In his victory speech he promised, “I will listen to you, especially when we disagree.”

We can put this in the list of the many Obama promises not kept (a.k.a. lies). We have the most thin-skinned (and that's not raaaaacism) president in history, who never ran anything and thinks the world should love him because he's the First Black President. Shame on anyone for not bowing down! Why, it's un-American! God, I miss the days when dissent and criticism were patriotic.

More criticism of leftwing whining here.

The Crybaby Administration and Fox News

Great piece on why the Obama White House anti-Fox strategy is completely wrong.

When (White House spokesman Anita) Dunn was asked whether the president refused to accept interview requests from Fox because the White House sees the network as "a wing of the Republican party," the communications director responded: "Is this why he did not appear? The answer is yes."

That is such a radically wrong response that it calls into question the whole communications strategy of an administration that has somehow managed to take a man who was elected with a mandate and lodge him in a corner where there are now serious questions about whether a Democratic president and an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress can enact basic elements of the Democratic agenda.

Obama should sit down with Fox reporters and anchors and do interviews. That does not mean that the president has to put up with the emotional wreckage that is Glenn Beck. But there is no reason why he shouldn't go another round with Bill O'Reilly (as Obama did during the 2008 campaign) or sit down with Chris Wallace (as Bill Clinton did).

If the Fox interviewers are absurdly unfair, the American people will respond with appropriate consternation. On the other hand, if they are aggressive and pointed in their challenges, Obama will rise or fall on the quality of his responses. His aides, if they have any faith in their man's abilities, should bend over backwards to accept some Fox interviews. They should also accept an invite from PBS's Bill Moyers, who would pose tougher – and, yes, more informed -- questions than the Foxbots.

Barack Obama had a virtual coronation last November, and his administration seems to think the fawning coverage should continue, even as the POTUS flip-flops and lies and tramples on every promise he made to those who elected him. This is a White House which prides itself on its "new media" communications strategy, but it has forgotten that the new media isn't all that different from the old media. They will still ask tough questions and dig where presidents don't want them to. The only difference is the speed at which such results are posted.

If Barack Obama were smart--and not so egotistical--he'd do a few interviews with people like Bill O'Reilly and Chris Wallace, taking his lumps and working the audience. Fox News viewers, despite the stereotypes liberals want to foist on them, are not knuckle-dragging mouth-breathers. They are intelligent people interested in politics and current events. If President Obama wants to be the President of All of Us, he needs to accept the loyal opposition as legitimate and quite whining about it.

Fox to Fire Beck?

That's a HuffPo fantasy to be sure, but it's instructive of what the Left doesn't get about either Glenn Beck or Fox News.

When news show host Glenn Beck explicitly called Barack Obama a racist, it caused a media hailstorm and an advertising exodus from his show that reached as far as the U.K (Beck's show is broadcast on Murdoch's 'Sky News' channel). On a recent political talk show tour, President Obama sat down with five networks, none of which were Fox. The Murdoch-owned network was humiliatingly replaced with the Spanish language channel Univison. In another spat, the White House press secretary publicly criticized the network for not airing Obama's health care speech, a move it would never have considered with any other network.

While Glenn Beck is not the lone voice of dissent within Fox News (O'Reilly, Hannity and Malkin are similarly offensive), he does epitomize what is wrong with the network, and just how out of sync it is with the mainstream. His continued assault on the President which consists of a remarkable slew of accusations and innuendo (Obama is a socialist/communist/Nazi/racist), does not reflect well on the network, regardless of how right wing it is.

Teh One's snubbing of Fox News says far more about him than it does about either Rupert Murdoch or Fox News itself. Liberals hated Fox News long before Beck moved to that network and will hate it long after Beck has fizzled out. Why? Because Fox News has dared to offer news and perspective that is not "the mainstream," which is to say, isn't liberal.

Most Americans have argued for 40 years that news organizations are too liberal, but it's only been in the last 15 or so that those same viewers have had an alternative to the liberal bullshit of the MSM. That alternative is Fox News, and despite the hopes and prayers of HuffPo writers, it's not about to tank any time soon.

Both Beck and Fox News have managed to scoop "the mainstream" multiple times, the only sort of "snubbing" that actually matters. And as HopeNChange continues to fumble, flub, and flip-flop, Fox News will continue to chronicle it. Will Murdoch fire Beck? I have no idea but there's no reason to think so at this point. His ratings are fine and he's no more unreasonable than Keith Olbermann or Rachel Maddow. When you see MSNBC dropping those clowns, maybe Beck should moderate.

John Stossel Moves to Fox

I have somewhat mixed emotions about John Stossel's announcement that he's leaving ABC for Fox.

On the one hand, it sounds like Fox is giving him the sort of creative control that journalists crave (and ABC can't or won't give him).

I plan to do a one hour prime time show every week on FBN, the Fox Business Channel, and contribute to various existing programs on Fox News Channel...

I’m still considering what I will do with my own show, one hour each week. Economics certainly. Exercises in understanding libertarianism. My “take” on the issues of the day.

But there's the other part of me that says when conservatives cede the airwaves to liberals--such as leaving a liberal network for a conservative one--it decreases the knowledge and diversity available to all. Conservatives watch Fox. Liberals watch MSNBC and the networks. And now, Stossel's work will be seen by fewer liberals, presenting fewer opportunities to confront those on the fence with the facts.

That's not how Stossel's departure is being spun by liberal nutters.

Every homeless pigeon has a home somewhere. Thus, John Stossel joins his clones at Fox. How nice. Too bad that the other side of the political aisle never takes care of its mouthpieces. Nooo, we are supposed to sink or swim in the cold waves of the free market, while the free market acolytes are tucked into safe beds at conservative think tanks and Fox News and Washington Times. I have never quite understood that.

Notice the assumption that Fox News, conservative think tanks and the Washington Times only hire like-minded journalists, but that other organizations do not. Of course, the truth is that most journalists are liberals, not conservatives, and most news organizations lean to the left. But that's an inconvenient truth for the liberal nutters.

The other statement Echidne makes, that Fox News, conservative think tanks and the Washington Times are uniquely unaffected by the free market. I suppose it's too painful to realize that the free market loves conservatives, not liberals, and that the problem liberals have in the free market is that people reject their ideas. It's not Fox News' fault liberals can't take competition.