On Sunday, October 18, the continuing cold war between President Barack Obama and Fox News grew a little warmer. Several White House officials, including Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and Communications Director Anita Dunn, went on the airwaves to blast the third highest-rated cable channel as being a mouthpiece for the Republican party. Senior Adviser David Axelrod told ABC's "This Week" that "a lot of Fox News' programming, isn't news. It's closer to commentary." Emanuel reinforced Axelrod's statements by asserting that Fox "is not a news organization so much as it has a perspective." Dunn followed by calling the network "a wing of the Republican Party." The president lent his own voice to the fray by calling Fox News a "talk radio format." These statements were made after Obama deliberately ignored the network when he made a series of back-to-back appearances on all Sunday morning talk shows, save for those on their network.
In the spirit of a post-political White House - the kind Obama promised during his campaign - it is important to look at his comments, as well as those of his representatives, as objectively as possible. David Axelrod is correct when he claims that Fox advocates conservative viewpoints. But Emanuel's argument has serious flaws. To call Fox News a "perspective" and "not a news organization" is to deny the fact that the current American media is not an idealistic institution that seeks to better the masses through the free flow of ideas.
It is an entertainment industry and business that seeks to make money with the highest ratings possible. It is only as idealistic as the ratings permit it to be. Dunn's comments, in turn, reflect the professionalism of an individual who said the following to the Global Foundation for Democracy and Development in the Dominican Republic: "Very rarely did we communicate through the press [during the campaign] anything we didn't absolutely control … so it was very much we controlled it as opposed to the press controlled it." To use Dunn's own logic, to call Fox News "a wing of the Republican party" is equivalent to calling any news organization other than Fox News a wing of the Democratic Party.
This whole debate over Fox News' status as a real news organization is ridiculous. Every White House since Nixon has suffered from ignoring, attacking or underestimating the power of the press. It is surprising that Obama, a brilliant communicator, would believe that attacking the top news organization in the country is a good idea.
Even the other news organizations, including Fox's rivals, sided with Fox. On Thurs. Oct. 22, the Treasury Department announced that "pay czar" Kenneth Feinberg would be available for interviews on every one of the five major news networks in D.C. except Fox. The four other networks (including CBS and NBC) refused to interview Feinberg unless Fox News was included.
A possible reason for the White House's misguided attack is that, while Obama's approval rating has dipped to 51 percent, according to Rasmussen Polls, Fox News's ratings have skyrocketed to 2.29 million viewers for every hour of prime time. In comparison, CNN's ratings are 1.1 million and MSNBC's are 950,000. Support for the White House's health care proposal has dwindled to 50-50. MSNBC and CNN are faring poorly in the ratings, and the president may have chosen to have his officials criticize Fox News on rival networks in an effort to draw viewers towards programming more favorable to him. But such actions are extremely political, and do not suit a leader who is supposedly above politics.
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