Postscript on Fox, Feinberg, and the WH

Friend and frequent interlocutor A.I. and I have been arguing about one particular battle in the White House war on Fox News. I am not sure whether it's worth fighting any more on the subject, but it does speak to the question of Fox's accuracy. I recounted the story in this post, with a video clip. Here is my paraphrase of the story as Fox News reported it.

Fox's status as a real network has been confirmed in an unambiguous way, and Fox has the Obama Administration to thank for this. This week the Administration convened the White House Pool, a rotation of five news agencies that report on daily events at the President's house. The pool was to meet with White House "Pay Czar"

Obama's people made it clear that Fox News alone was not welcome. The bureau chiefs of the other four networks met together, and made it clear that unless Fox was included, they weren't coming either. The Administration caved in the face of the unlooked for opposition.

A.I. responded with a link to Talking Points Memo DC:

TPMDC dug into it, and here's what happened.

Feinberg did a pen and pad with reporters to brief them on cutting executive compensation. TV correspondents, as they do with everything, asked to get the comments on camera. Treasury officials agreed and made a list of the networks who asked (Fox was not among them).

But logistically, all of the cameras could not get set up in time or with ease for the Feinberg interview, so they opted for a round robin where the networks use one pool camera. Treasury called the White House pool crew and gave them the list of the networks who'd asked for the interview.

The network pool crew noticed Fox wasn't on the list, was told that they hadn't asked and the crew said they needed to be included. Treasury called the White House and asked top Obama adviser Anita Dunn. Dunn said yes and Fox's Major Garrett was among the correspondents to interview Feinberg last night.

In this account, Fox's exclusion was a mere accident and the other networks weren't defending Fox, they were merely correcting an oversight. In A.I.'s interpretation, Fox was exaggerating and distorting the story to advance its own agenda.

I responded in turn with a New York Times story which, among other things, confirmed Fox's version of the story. A.I. stuck to his guns.

Well, I chanced upon another account of the story, this one by Howard Kurtz in the Washington Post. Kurtz is answering questions on a range of topics. Here is one exchange:

The great Fox News freeze-out: Howard, in your Sunday discussion on the White House vs. Fox News, you cited the recent incident where the White House "excluded" Fox News from an interview with the special assistant to the president dealing with executive pay at the companies getting a bailout. You presented it as a case where the administration tried to lock out Fox, yet there are other reports out there stating that the reason Fox wasn't getting an interview was because it didn't initially ask for an individual interview and the Treasury Department (not the White House) used the initial request list to determine who took part in the pool interview. The other networks "rose to Fox's defense" in large part because they knew this was standard procedure and because including Fox made sure the costs for the interview were split between five networks, not just four. The whole thing was supposedly settled in a very short period of time.

Is this true? Why didn't you mention this if it is true in your critique of the "incident?"

Howard Kurtz: I looked into it, checked with other networks, and the consensus was that the Treasury did try to exclude Fox from the round of Ken Feinberg interviews. Plus, Fox says the White House apologized for the incident. The five networks pay for a pool camera, so they have an interest - financial as well as journalistic solidarity - for not wanting any member excluded.

Kurtz account directly contradicts the TPMDC account, and confirms the version reported by Fox and the New York Times. It is possible, of course, that TPM has it right and the other three sources have it wrong. But the evidence surely leans the other way.

The truth of the matter is that, whatever biases Fox News may have, it is very careful and responsible when it comes to getting the facts right on its straight news programs. It has to be. For that reason it has been very difficult for Fox's enemies and critics to demonstrate exaggerations or distortions in its reporting. Being the only conservative leaning major network, and having lots of enemies, has its advantages.

Comments

[Anthony D. Renli]

Ken - I've been trying to avoid this issue (here and a half dozen other places), but I do think that it should be pointed out that a Senior News VP from Fox News(Michael Clemente), when asked to define when Fox News ran straight News as opposed to Opinion, defined their straight news as running from 8am-3pm CST and 5pm-7pm CST. Having watched Fox news during these hours a few times...I'll agree that yes, during these hours it is a news network. Outside of these hours, when every one of their big names work, well - it's not news, it's opinion. The problem is, they sell it as news. The advertise it as news. They market it as news. When pressed, one of their hosts will admit that it is opinion, but for the most part, they never admit that they are wrong or even could possibly in some strange way not be 100% absolutely right. This is irresponsible.

If there was some way to separate Fox News from Fox Opinion, this would be better. I sadly don't have a good answer as to how to do this.

I don't claim that MSNBC is any better - they've followed the Fox News banner of 9 Hours of News/15 hours of opinion. CNN is actually quite a bit better - but they are in fourth place in the ratings, so watch for them to start shifting even more to Opinion vs. News programing.

[KB]

Anthony: I am glad you gave up trying to avoid the issue. It is unavoidable. Yes, Fox devotes a lot of hours to opinion shows. In itself, this division between news and opinion is nothing new in the industry. Newspapers have their editorial and comments pages. What is new is the balance on programs such as MSNBC and Fox.

Each segment of the networks has to be judged on its own merits. Fox's straight news is as good as any of the other networks, and probably better. It's opinion segments are uneven. Bill O'Reilly is a bit of a blowhard, but he is in fact quite good overall. He constantly challenges his guests, but he lets them make their case. Sean Hannity is embarrassing. Glen Beck makes me itch, but there is no denying that he has been a gadfly to the party in power. Isn't that a good thing in a democracy?

As you observe, CNN has less sideshow journalism, but it is sinking like a stone. I don't know if there would be a place for a scrupulously even-handed network, but CNN isn't that either. At any rate, the market is what it is. More Americans have more access to opinions and information than ever before. Many Americans have been brought into the political process by these shows who would have been left behind by earlier journalism. As a political scientist, I have been hearing complaints about political apathy and non-voting for decades. Well, the sideshow journalists are doing something about that. So I refer to the old Chinese wisdom: be careful what you wish for, you might get it.

Thanks for the comment.

[A.I.]

Fox is a very special sort of "news" outlet KB. You say they are very careful to get the facts right in their straight news programs. Well, I guess it is a fact that "someone" may be raising this or that question so reporting such is accurate and factual in a narrow sense. But when the someone is one of the "folks" on the opinion side of the network and you are reporting the slanted view they opine...? Jon Stewart did a great job of explaining that aspect of the Fox "News" modus operandi: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/30/jon-stewart-takes-on-war_n_339788.html

As for the belabored argument over the Treasury/White House exclusion of Fox, the point is that not even Major Garrett would confirm it was intentional. As someone looking to report accurate information, I think I would want confirmation from my own colleague who was intimately involved in the story before making any accusations. Instead, Fox ran with the "the White House shut us out" story first which it appears other media outlets swallowed whole. Then they ran a piece with Garrett who said it very well may have been the mix up, oversight, of what ever was claimed by White House spokes people who, by the by, say no apology was offered or necessary.

So, Fox's care in getting straight news right comes into question once again. At best, the exclusion story is a "he said, she said" situation, but Fox reported it as absolutely confirmed before even consulting their own reporter. They reported and I decided this was sloppy at best and if intentional on Fox's part, just one more example of the anti Obama/Democrats propaganda that is the networks stock and trade.

[KB]

A.I.: the judgment regarding Fox News regular as opposed to opinion programing is whether the former gets the story right or not. Here I can only point out, once again, that Fox News has been much less prone to embarrassing itself than, say, the New York Times or CBS. Moreover, those that criticize the Glen Beck side of Fox constantly complain about distortion (see John Stewart's line about Fox f***ing the truth). But lets be honest for a moment. It wasn't Beck's distortion, let alone any lies he may have told, that alarmed the White House. It was the stories that Beck got right.

Last note on Feinberg Gate: as I said before, Major Garrett is a White House correspondent and it behooves him to be as nice as possible to the WH in the situation he was in. No, he never said the WH intentionally left Fox out, but he never said they didn't. He just reported what the WH told him. You have no evidence whatsoever that Fox's version of the story was wrong. It has been confirmed by two independent, Democratic leaning news organizations. Fox reported the story exactly as did the latter, so it is nonsense to complain that was sloppy on Fox's part, or evidence of propaganda. As for a story being "absolutely confirmed," unless God speaks, that never happens.