The War against Fox Explained

Fox News is not only a real news network, it is the only news network that is singularly necessary in today's media environment. If you don't believe me, ask the New York Times.

I often rake the Gray Lady over the coals and for good reason. The Times has been guilty of a lot of embarrassingly partisan and irresponsible journalism. But it is not without redeeming qualities, one of which is that is it quite capable of being embarrassed.

Consider Public Editor Clark Hoyt's mea culpa for the Times' tardiness in picking up the ACORN story. The whole thing is worth reading, but this is the best paragraph, out of several describing letters to the Paper of Record:

Here's an example, from Leigh Allen of San Francisco, who said she relies on The Times to keep her informed: "I often don't hear about the latest conflict until I read a Facebook rant from an old high school friend or talk on the phone with my mother (both in conservative Orange County, Calif.). It's embarrassing not to be able to respond with facts when I hadn't even heard about the issue." Michele Cusack of Novato, Calif., said that when someone asked if she had heard the latest about Acorn, "I had to answer 'no' because I get all my news from The New York Times."

It seems to me that that last sentence is damning for the country's most famous paper: I didn't know what was going on because I read the New York Times. In fact, you wouldn't have known if you relied on the rest of the mainstream media. But you knew if you watched Fox or keep in contact with an old high school friend who watches Fox.  Anyway, at least the New York Times has concluded that it has a problem. 

It is this fact that motivated the Obama Administration's decision to go to war against Fox. Jim Rutenberg at the NYTs has this:

Late last month, the senior White House adviser David Axelrod and Roger Ailes, chairman and chief executive of Fox News, met in an empty Palm steakhouse before it opened for the day, neutral ground secured for a secret tête-à-tête.

An attempted rapprochement! However:

By the following weekend, officials at the White House had decided that if anything, it was time to take the relationship to an even more confrontational level. The spur: Executives at other news organizations, including The New York Times, had publicly said that their newsrooms had not been fast enough in following stories that Fox News, to the administration's chagrin, had been heavily covering through the summer and early.

The rest of the news networks were realizing that Fox was consistently scooping them. In other words, it wasn't Fox and its stories, exactly, that the Administration was worried about. It was that the other networks might be forced to drop the protection that they had so far provided to Obama and Company. They might start covering stories as soon as they appeared on Fox or, horrors, actually start doing such stories on their own. That is why the Administration went to war against Fox News.

Speaking privately at the White House on Monday with a group of mostly liberal columnists and commentators, including Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann of MSNBC and Maureen Dowd, Frank Rich and Bob Herbert of The New York Times, Mr. Obama himself gave vent to sentiments about the network, according to people briefed on the conversation.

That is the sort of room in which Barack Obama is comfortable: one in which everyone loves him and vows to protect him. Except, I'd keep an eye on Maureen Dowd. She's unpredictable.

It is also clear from the Rutenberg article that Fox's account of the Feinberg incident was fair and balanced.

In a sign of discomfort with the White House stance, Fox's television news competitors refused to go along with a Treasury Department effort on Tuesday to exclude Fox from a round of interviews with the executive-pay czar Kenneth R. Feinberg that was to be conducted with a "pool" camera crew shared by all the networks. That followed a pointed question at a White House briefing this week by Jake Tapper, an ABC News correspondent, about the administration's treatment of "one of our sister organizations."

The Administration tried to exclude Fox from the circle of "real" news networks, and the other networks, acting responsibly, defended their "sister organization."

Barack Obama set out to marginalize and neuter a network that did not report the news to his liking. Though we can now understand the strategy, it still looks stupid. The actual result was to confirm Fox's status as a legitimate news organization and, I suspect, to make it more visible and influential that ever before. Fox is not only real it is indispensible, at least if you care about a free press.

Comments

[George Mason]

KB; This morning the NYT is backing you up. They are reporting that CNN will be
the lowest rated news network in total viewership during primetime. As you have
posted above and previously, there is a reason FOX is number one in viewership in cable news. Their research and editing make them more reliable than the competition and they are willing to look under the rug in the White House regardless of the occupant.

[A.I.]

The initial Fox report you cite in this post was not fair and balanced KB, it was misleading and slanted. The later report I linked in a response to "Fox News Gets Real" showed Fox White House Corespondent Major Garrett explaining the whole incident as a mix up, not as a purposeful exclusion of Fox from the interview. He should know, he was in the middle of it.

It is disappointing that you would acknowledge as much in a response to my post and then revert back to your accusatory stance here. As for the Times, it appears Rutenberg also fell for the sinister portrayal advanced in the original Fox "story" without bothering to fact check. Maybe he went to the same school of stenography as Judith Miller.

[KB]

A.I.: I reviewed the clip of Major Garrett explaining the "White House Pool" issue. I am sorry, but I just don't see that in contradicts anything in the initial Fox story. Garrett says that the White House says that it was just an oversight. He is being very fair and reasonable, but then he wants to get access to White House officials in the future. He also acknowledged that this event was unprecedented.

Let me get this straight. Just at the moment that the White House is ratcheting up its campaign against Fox, after the President has been openly boycotting Fox, the White House just happens, by sheer accident, to leave Fox off a list of networks that will participate in the interview. Do you really believe that? Would you have bought it for a minute if it had been George W. and MSNBC?

Anyway, Fox's account was confirmed by the New York Times, as I pointed out above. Has the Times joined the vast right wing conspiracy? If Fox's account is the same as that of the New York Times, I think both news teams can claim that they were fair and balanced on this one.

[A.I.]

So now the NYT's has credibility. How convenient.

I'll go with Talking Points Memo's report. Fox didn't ask for the interview initially, the other members of the pool noticed they weren't on the list and asked why. They were then included.

Perhaps Garrett or some member of his staff (if he has one) missed the invite. Maybe TPM was wrong and the Treasury forgot to offer. But all the brouhaha about the networks defending poor Fox from the big bad White House is way over the top. Watch the interview again if necessary. Garrett does say the incident should be taken in the context of WH displeasure with Fox, but he stops far short of saying the exclusion was intentional--even when asked leading questions designed to elicit that conclusion.

The other media you cite seems to have taken Fox's initial report at face value--good stenographers that they so often are. It is a "good story" in the sense that sensationalism draws viewers/readers. But I will continue to doubt the truth is even close to being as "sinister" as Fox initially made it out to be. And that is the problem with the initial Fox report. It inflates what happened way beyond reality to reach a conclusion not supported by facts. It's much like saying offering free, end-of-life counseling is tantamount to establishing death panels.

[KB]

A.I.: you have just about worn me down on this one. No, the New York Times is not a reliable source, and neither is Fox. No single News Network is reliable; that's why we need lots of them, with at least one on both sides. But when the Times and Fox agree, what they agree upon is probably not a matter of mere violence.

I still see no evidence that the Fox/NYTs account is "beyond reality," but if it is, the Administration sure set itself up for it. The Times' article shows that the Administration's fears were justified: Fox has forced the Times to tell stories that it would have spiked in the past. That's pretty good work on Fox's part.