What The White House’s War On Fox News Tells Us
WASHINGTON — Apparently, the Obama White House believes in diplomacy with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad but not Glenn Beck.
Two days after the president won the Nobel Peace Prize, Barack Obama’s communications director was on national television essentially declaring a message war on a major cable network that employs the abrasive commentator Beck, who recently called the president a racist.
White House Communications Director Anita Dunn accused Fox News of operating “as either the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party.”
It’s hard to understand this as a calculated move for a White House that has far bigger things to worry about — Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s nuclear ambitions being just one — than drive-by rants on cable television. But it’s part of a new strategy of more aggressively confronting conservative media that Dunn had forecast this month to Time magazine. White House battles with the media didn’t begin today, or even with Spiro Agnew’s feuds with the “nattering nabobs of negativism” in the paranoia of the Nixon White House.
But Dunn’s attack ran contrary to her boss’s earlier actions of engaging Fox. And over the long haul, any hint of a bunker mentality from the White House is good for no one.
Fox commentators, of course, ate the attack up as if they had gotten inside the proverbial henhouse. Fox News portrays itself as the network that dares ask what CNN won’t because it wants access or MSNBC can’t because it is so aligned with the Democrats. What is better for that story line than to get into a food fight with the White House?
The episode tells us three things:
1. The Obama White House is still in campaign mode. It only has approximately 12 months and 15 days to be in governing mode before the next presidential election campaign starts. You can win elections by hardening your base of support by attacking the base of your opposition. But it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to govern that way. Attacks on Fox are, de facto, attacks on the people who watch it. Obama might need that base if he decides to accept the recommendation of his top general in Afghanistan and pour tens of thousands more American troops into that country — and his liberal anti-war wing turns on him. He may need Republican support to get a health care bill passed.
2. Attacking whole segments of the population belies Obama’s promise of bringing people together. Obama’s appearance on Fox commentator Bill O’Reilly’s show in September 2008 indicated a candidate’s willingness to be a different kind of president, to act on the stated desire of his predecessor, George W. Bush, to be a uniter not a divider. Obama got a fair shake in that interview.
3.There is still a thing called presidential decorum. Sending out a taxpayer-paid partisan to attack a network, and by extension, its viewers, is not presidential. If you want to get in the mud with Glenn Beck, do it on your own dime and time, not ours.
You might be interested in:
* Number, role of Obama’s policy ‘czars’ spark debate (USATODAY.com in News)
* Hometown honor for Glenn Beck causes stir (USATODAY.com in News)
* Glenn Beck: McCain would have been worse (USATODAY.com in On Deadline)
* John McCain apologizes to Jackson Browne (USATODAY.com in LifeLine Live)
Yahoo! Buzz Mixx
Posted 1d 8h ago
Updated 1d 8h ago
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Comments: (42)
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letswin (0 friends, send message) wrote: 5m ago
funny indeed! the wh let beck get them off-message……lol………..very weak admin.
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FMSlay (0 friends, send message) wrote: 6m ago
One thing is certain — Fox News will be around long after Obama is out of office. This is a major blunder on his part.
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in_awe (0 friends, send message) wrote: 23m ago
Glenn Beck is driving the White House and his enablers nuts because he is an effective communicator of facts that are exposing the web of nefarious relationships between Obama and his closest allies and some pretty disreputable people and ideas. And he is proving to be a pretty effective catalyst as a “community organizer” in the manner of Alinsky: inform the community, ask questions but allow the community to select its own leadership and draw their own conclusions and then form groups (Tea Party, 912 Moms, etc.) to act.
The Left hasn’t seen the Right do any community oraganizing before and it is scared!
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segesta (0 friends, send message) wrote: 43m ago
Let’s see, we now have Fox News, insurance companies, Wall Street, and doctors who perform tonsillectomies as the latest boogeymen in the Democrats’ class war. They can’t meaningfully argue their positions, so they just look to label some Bad Guys.
The level of paranoia in the Obama White House is amusing and scary at the same time. It really does remind me of the Nixon era.
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SomeoneWhoKnows (0 friends, send message) wrote: 49m ago
mtx749 (0 friends, send message) wrote: 2h 27m ago
Progressives won the last elections. To the victors go the spoils. Don’t like it? Start a new country and have Sarah and Joe run it for you. Let me know how that works out.
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So what does Progressives believe in? What spoils are the Progressives going to get? I like my country and I’m staying with rest of the 50,000,000 people that didn’t vote for President Obama.
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Progressives believe in nothing but themselves…If they want to live in a socialist country there is plenty to choose from all over the world….interestingly enough, I don’t see any of them moving there? Do you?
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SomeoneWhoKnows (0 friends, send message) wrote: 52m ago
Only get my news from Fox and the internet…..Today Anita Dunn was outed for the Communist she is. Surprisingly no one is disputing the fact that she considers Chairman Mao someone to be emulated and admired.
This whole Administration is a huge joke. 1-20-2013…the end of an error.
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PhatDoung (24 friends, send message) wrote: 3h 37m ago
tedepstein (0 friends, send message) wrote: 13m ago
I disagree with this article, and the similar premise in “How Fox News Outsmarted the White House” by John Batchelor on dailybeast.com . I think you’re both missing the big picture, and missing the potential long-term benefits of this. The Obama Administration is making a shrewd and savvy move.
First, the battle is always for the persuadable voters in the middle, not the die-hards who will be loyal Fox News watchers, loyal Republicans or loyal anti-establishment libertarians no matter what the White House does. Let Fox News play this up and make all the noise they want, but if the president is saying something worth hearing and it’s not on Fox News, some of those viewers will tune in elsewhere. Polarization works both ways — you energize the base, but you lose some in the middle. At this point, Obama has more to gain, and Fox has more to lose, by drawing lines in the sand.
Second, true to form, the Obama Administration is trying to address a long-term problem with a long-term strategy, which may incur some short-term costs. The long-term problem is the deterioration of political discourse into a fact-free, anything-goes mosh pit of blatant lies and unchecked demagoguery.
When a media outlet like Fox News encourages and legitimizes this, acting as a bullhorn for the most unscrupulous political operatives, the most poisonous notions, and the worst impulses of the right wing, it makes the problem much more insidious and much harder to address, because it’s wrapped up and presented as “news” from what a great many uninformed Americans assume to be a reliable source.
I think, and I hope, that other progressive and even centrist politicians will follow in Obama’s footsteps and boycott Fox News. Then Fox will be revealed for what it is, and over time will be marginalized and discredited as a real news source. People may still watch it, but I don’t think Fox News will ever regain the choke hold they had during the Bush years. Either they’ll adopt some reasonable semblance of decent restraint and objectivity, or they’ll lose their standing as a mainstream news outlet.
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I’m sure you’d say the same about MSNBC, right?
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tedepstein (0 friends, send message) wrote: 3h 53m ago
I disagree with this article, and the similar premise in “How Fox News Outsmarted the White House” by John Batchelor on dailybeast.com . I think you’re both missing the big picture, and missing the potential long-term benefits of this. The Obama Administration is making a shrewd and savvy move.
First, the battle is always for the persuadable voters in the middle, not the die-hards who will be loyal Fox News watchers, loyal Republicans or loyal anti-establishment libertarians no matter what the White House does. Let Fox News play this up and make all the noise they want, but if the president is saying something worth hearing and it’s not on Fox News, some of those viewers will tune in elsewhere. Polarization works both ways — you energize the base, but you lose some in the middle. At this point, Obama has more to gain, and Fox has more to lose, by drawing lines in the sand.
Second, true to form, the Obama Administration is trying to address a long-term problem with a long-term strategy, which may incur some short-term costs. The long-term problem is the deterioration of political discourse into a fact-free, anything-goes mosh pit of blatant lies and unchecked demagoguery.
When a media outlet like Fox News encourages and legitimizes this, acting as a bullhorn for the most unscrupulous political operatives, the most poisonous notions, and the worst impulses of the right wing, it makes the problem much more insidious and much harder to address, because it’s wrapped up and presented as “news” from what a great many uninformed Americans assume to be a reliable source.
I think, and I hope, that other progressive and even centrist politicians will follow in Obama’s footsteps and boycott Fox News. Then Fox will be revealed for what it is, and over time will be marginalized and discredited as a real news source. People may still watch it, but I don’t think Fox News will ever regain the choke hold they had during the Bush years. Either they’ll adopt some reasonable semblance of decent restraint and objectivity, or they’ll lose their standing as a mainstream news outlet.
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ClevelandROCKS21 (0 friends, send message) wrote: 5h 3m ago
Honestly, I applaud Obama for getting real and using his power against Fox News. They have completely biased coverage, and everyone knows it! Hes stating the obvious. For more on the reaction by news media: http://www.newsy.com/videos/white_house_takes_on _fox_news
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Casey in Chicago (0 friends, send message) wrote: 7h 13m ago
First, we would all serve ourselves well to read more and view less. I recommend RealClearPolitics. When you can tell the difference between the various pundits, left, right, and independent, writing from throughout the world, including this piece today in USA Today, then you are becoming fully informed. There are also shades of differences within the FOX, just as there are on CNN, and to a lesser extent on MSNBC, striving to make a name for itself as the anti-FOX. And unless Glenn Beck has gone off the deep end recently (I stopped watching him when he started getting so much attention) even he includes SOME thoughtful analysis and guests. The key is to avoid watching or reading anyone for too long. Having said that, I have my favorites, but I’ll always look for a challenging point of view, and RCP is a place to find it all.
Making the media the debate misses the point. The right started this and appears to have done so successfully, so now the left is copying it. Someone should run a nexus tab on how many times FOX mentions MSNBC, compared to how many times MSNBC mentions FOX, so that we can see how ridiculous all of this has become.
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