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AP catches up with story about WH attempt to exclude Fox from the news cycle — and the nutroots respond accordingly

Bookworm on Oct 23 2009 at 5:54 pm | Filed under: Free speech, Government, Media matters

Twenty-four hours after the fact, the AP finally figured out that, maybe, just maybe, it’s worth reporting that the White House tried to freeze out a news organization that challenges it, and was stopped only because other news organizations realized that, if they let this one pass, they would forever be barred from voicing any hint of criticism of the White House. While they may not now be able to imagine criticizing their God, they’re not so stupid that they wish to foreclose the possibility. I’ve already praised them for their wise decision in my earlier post on the subject. What I wanted to run here were some of the comments I saw at the San Francisco Chronicle, which has published the AP story at its website.

Just as an aside, its interesting that the AP chose to assign this story, not to a political writer, but to their television reporter. Talk about reluctantly mentioning that your idol has feet of clay. But anyway, here are some of the comments:

I can’t stand Faux, errr, Fox News, and I do like our president, but the White House better get it together.

In this country, we have freedom of the press and their access to our elected officials is of paramount importance.

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Fox is a well funded mirror opposite of the Worker’s World. Half-truths, propaganda, and psy-ops. They should get the same “respect” and “certification” that the communist propaganda rags get: none.

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This is childish behavior… you don’t like me, Fox, so you can’t play with me and my friends! It’s stupid, and only draws needless attention to Fox News.

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The WH only needs to make itself available to reputable news outlets and not the Republican’s Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda :Fox.

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Dude, get with the freedom of speech thing! When it benefits you, you typical dweebs alway cry this and that. Then when people ask a question you don’t like, you want to silence them like passing a law. The city of SF actually presented a law regarding the silencing of opposition from the media, but so much outcry happened even the board of stupidvisors relented. Why are idiots like you so afraid of being asked a pertinent question????

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The biggest problem I have with Fox News (aside from the relentless stream of hateful invective and hysterical fearmongering) is that they continually present misleading and/or demonstrably false information (otherwise known as lies) as if it were true, wrapped up in the packaging of “news”.
This is highly unethical, it encourages confusion and misunderstanding amongst their audience, and I don’t even think it should be legal, much less profitable.

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Is Fox News a news organization? Or would it better be called Fox Propaganda?

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And we know how “fair and balanced” the MSM are:

Campaign donations, 2008
$297,187 was given by people who identified their occupation as “journalist”

$22,076 from 28 people to Republicans.
$275,111 from 312 people to Democrats.

http://fundrace.huffingtonpost.com/neighbors.php?newest=1&type=occ&occ=journalist&search=Search

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Why back down? Just exclude Faux News. They aren’t journalists, they are far right Republicans.

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Everybody knows that 99% of Fox News is not news. It’s radical right wing Republican religious nut opinion and propaganda. And, it’s 100% anti-Democrat and anti-Obama. The hacks at Fox are just squawking because somebody finally called them on it. Those nut jobs are the face of the Republican party, and the very reason that only about 20% of Americans identify themselves as Republicans.

What’s so fascinating about those of the above comments that support the White House freeze-out is their absolute disdain for the notion of a free press — meaning free from government interference, control and censorship (and barring a news station from a press event is a form of censorship). It occurs to none of them that it’s the marketplace of ideas, not the government (and certainly not the White House) that decides what’s news and what’s not. Like the White House, they fear Fox and they want to destroy it.

I have to admit that I never watch the news on TV (I never get the chance), but I’m inclined to do so now, if only to make a point. Or better, because watching TV at home is a very silent point, perhaps I’ll go over to the Fox website and click on every single ad, to show that Fox gets the business.

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Tags: Censorship, Fox, Free speech, media, White House

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9 Responses to “AP catches up with story about WH attempt to exclude Fox from the news cycle — and the nutroots respond accordingly”

on 23 Oct 2009 at 6:17 pm 1Bill Smith

If a Conservative doesn’t like guns, he doesn’t buy one.
If a Progressive doesn’t like guns he doesn’t buy one, and tries to confiscate yours.

If a Conservative doesn’t like NBC, CBS etc., he doesn’t watch them.
If a Progressive doesn’t like Fox, he tries to silence it, or destroy it.

Ah, Diversity, Ah Freedom, Ah the Market Place of Ideas….
on 23 Oct 2009 at 9:08 pm 2SJBill

Book, early this AM I was shocked to see the Lefties having problems with none other than NPR. Have aread here, don’t forget to wash stains from the monitor afterwards, etc.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2009_10/020566.php

Head right to the comments! Please!! Here are a few. I’e discovered I/we may have a new name: “Villager.”

Steve LaBonne’s right. NPR’s been a right-trending mess for years. It’s frightening how infrequently it gets noticed.

I’m shocked — shocked! — to learn that NPR is uncritically regurgitating Republican talking points.
This year I finally decided to withhold my contributions to my local NPR stations. I know I can always tune to Morning Edition or All Things Considered to find out what the Republicans think about anything, but I’m danmned if I’m going to pay for that dubious privilege.

NPR was taken over by Republican apparatchiks during the last administration, at least that is what I remember being reported at the time. Well apparatchiks matter. Ken Ruden is just saying what he is told to say. Remember Juan Williams other job is doing the bidding of Fox News.

Steve – You shouldn’t be shocked by NPR. During the Bush years, they were so under pressure by Republicans that they have become foxified in many respects. Maura Liason, Juan Williams, Cokey Roberts, etc. It is news organization infiltrated by villagers. Villagers are distinctly neocon creatures these days. NPR used to be opinion free, or at least provide good perspective, e.g. David Brooks/EJ Dione. Now, not so much. You shouldn’t have expected so much, but I understand your disappointment.

Even NPR?! Ever heard the lead-in to Rudin’s show? A handful of inspiring Republican voices with their most notable quotes, followed up by the Dean Scream. Ruden is a Villager, first and foremost. And I think the reason the Village is so up in arms over this, is that they see it as a Niemoeller Moment; “First they came for Fox, and I said nothing, for I was not a helmet-haired GOP talking head….”

Rudin is terrible. He evidences every problem the Villagers have.

My membership to my local NPR station was up 9/30 and on Tuesday, right in the middle of the on-air campaign they are running, I mailed the renewal form they sent me with a note that they would not see one more penny from me and specifically cited the whole issue with being unable to call torture torture. I am so glad I did it.

A mutual friend says I’ve discovered a parallel universe. Only prob, I listened to NPR last week and I was still off-put by its attitude and smugness. Yes, I found offense from it’s leftward leanings.
on 23 Oct 2009 at 9:11 pm 3JKB

I don’t understand, if Fox news is so full of misleading stories, why can’t CNN fact check them like they did SNL? It would seem to me such an activity would drive a lot of traffic to CNN and increase their viewership. From just those Fox acolytes wanting to be outraged if not others who would find CNN to be more informative.

Instead of embracing this low hanging fruit which could feed them for years, they want to chop down the tree and burn the stump. Of course, if Fox isn’t producing any fruit for them to pick, then I guess the only option is to raze the tree.
on 24 Oct 2009 at 4:41 am 4Quisp

I don’t watch Fox, with the exception of the occasional Cavuto and Special Report (and that’s lost a lot of its luster since the retirement of Britt Hume). I’m not much on watching people scream at each other on the evening shows. But I’ve made sure to set the DVR to grab multiple Fox shows since that plays into ratings.

This situation is crazy. Yes, yes, the Bush administration went after NBC – with a list of stories they considered misquotes and misinformation. People keep telling me it’s so, but I can’t find the quote where Dana Perino said NBC’s not a news network. (Karl Rove did say high schoolers were better journalists.) So far, the only specifics I see in this skirmish is that the ACORN and Van Jones stories were “bloated far beyond their actual importance,” a sentiment that’s scary in its own right.

I would LOVE to go back to a world where Glenn Beck is a crackpot. It’s truly frightening that he can’t be ignored because he’s been right so often lately.
on 24 Oct 2009 at 4:52 am 5Quisp

SJBill – did you see that Rudin apologized?

Where do I begin. I will tell you, that the Nixon “enemies list” is the first thing I thought of when the topic came up. And obviously, that’s what was going through my mind during yesterday’s conversation.

But comparing the tactics of the Nixon administration — which bugged and intimidated and harrassed journalists — to that of the Obama administration was foolish, facile, ridiculous and, ultimately, embarrassing to me. I should have known better and, in fact, I do know better. I was around during the Nixon years. I am fully cognizant of what they did and attempted to do.

I still think the Obama administration showed a childish, thin skin in its dealings with and reaction to Fox.

But childishness is a far cry from illegal and unconstitutional activities. And for that I apologize for a dumb comparison.
on 24 Oct 2009 at 5:06 am 6SJBill

Too bad! I was almost contemplating tuning in.

Just wondering if any WH preesure was applied, or if the impetus came from the nutroots.
on 24 Oct 2009 at 9:19 am 7BrianE

This is would be hilarious if it weren’t so serious.
I rarely watch Fox, for the same reason I don’t watch any TV for news, since by the nature of its format, lends itself only to headlines and rarely any depth of reporting. And anyone in the news business knows that headline writers often distort the story when writing the headline in an attempt to (a) fit the head in a small space or (b) be clever. It’s a pretty ~~thankless~~ deary job writing headlines.
Of course the headline’s job is to entice the reader into the story, and the writer’s job is to summerize the story in the first three paragraphs and then add detail. When I was a reporter, I would somtimes cringe at the headline attached to one of my articles.
I doubt any of those people have ever watched any show on Fox. The hyperbole certainly doesn’t fit the facts.
I agree that Cavuto is worth watching. O’Reilly is a windbag IMHO, Hannity is too interested in scoring points, and yes Special Report has fallen since the retirement of Hume.
Beck is actually one of the bright spots on Fox, IMO. While he’s a little too much showman for my taste, (code word Populist?), he at least is doing something. (I was raised on Firing Line with Kinsley acting as the foil.)
The other fallacy of the left is the result of years of MSM blurring the lines between editorial and news. As more and more “journalists” joined the talking heads shows, spouting their opinions as informed “background”, we’ve lost any semblance of the distinction. Most of the shows on Fox are opinion pieces, as are the shows on CNN, MSNBC and the rest.

But it’s having its affect. And the effect they want is to keep people from watching Fox. Once someone actually watches the programming, it’s hard to match the rhetoric to reality.

I will agree with the left on one point. Murdoch is a ~~capitalist~~ opportunist. Some of his other cable channels have some pretty ~~raunchy~~ vile stuff.
on 24 Oct 2009 at 4:19 pm 8Ymarsakar

This is highly unethical, it encourages confusion and misunderstanding amongst their audience, and I don’t even think it should be legal, much less profitable.

All you need to do to shatter this guy’s pretensions of moderation and reason is to get him to answer, truthfully, what he considers ethical. It’s easy to criticize something for being unethical, as the MSM criticized the military for Abu Ghraib, but once you piece the heart of the Left, you realize that they actually want to make things worse. That their world view is far worse than what they criticize. In point fact, the support the exact same things they criticize.
on 25 Oct 2009 at 2:46 pm 9Tonestaple

What amazes me about these leftoids is they are always at the ready to condemn Fox, but if you ask them, and sometimes they volunteer this, they never ever ever watch Fox News. All I can figure is, they know it’s bad because Olberman told them it is.

And suggest to them that rejoicing in the way Obama is treating Fox is very short-sighted because someday the shoe will be on the other foot, and they can’t think past the end of next week. Their guy is in power now, and it will always be so.