Crush Liberalism

Fox News fact checks Obama communications chief

Granted, it doesn’t carry the Murrowesque journalistic integrity such as fact checking an SNL skit, but it will have to do.  Details:

Fox News senior vice president Michael Clemente, who likens the channel to a newspaper with separate sections on straight news and commentary, suggested White House officials were intentionally conflating opinion show hosts like Glenn Beck with news reporters like Major Garrett. 

“It’s astounding the White House cannot distinguish between news and opinion programming,” Clemente said. “It seems self-serving on their part.“

Ya think?

Even Chairman Zero’s apologists question the wisdom of the tactic:

…David Gergen, who has worked for President Bill Clinton and three Republican presidents, questioned the propriety of the White House declaring war on a news organization. 

“It’s a very risky strategy. It’s not one that I would advocate,” Gergen said on CNN. “If you’re going to get very personal against the media, you’re going to find that the animosities are just going to deepen. And you’re going to find that you sort of almost draw viewers and readers to the people you’re attacking. You build them up in some ways, you give them stature.”

More:

Nia Malika Henderson, White House correspondent for the Politico newspaper, also questioned the White House offensive against Fox. 

“Obama’s only been a boon to their ratings and I don’t understand how this kind of escalation of rhetoric and kind of taking them on, one on one, would do anything other than escalate their ratings even more,” she said.

As for the fact check?

Dunn used an appearance on CNN’s “Reliable Sources” over the weekend to complain about Fox News’ coverage of the Obama presidential campaign a year ago.
…
As for Dunn’s complaint about Fox News’ coverage of the Obama campaign, a study by the Pew Research Center showed that 40 percent of Fox News stories on Obama in the last six weeks of the campaign were negative. Similarly, 40 percent of Fox News’ stories on Obama’s Republican opponent, Sen. John McCain, were negative. 

On CNN, by contrast, there was a 22-point disparity in the percentage of negative stories on Obama (39 percent) and McCain (61 percent). (In other words, Dunn’s example of  a “legitimate news organization” was engaging in some one-sided reporting.  But nope…no liberal media bias! – Ed.) The disparity was even greater at MSNBC, according to Pew, where just 14 percent of Obama stories were negative, compared to a whopping 73 percent of McCain stories — a spread of 59 points.

The NY Magazine thinks that B.O. declaring war on FNC is a horrible move, and even the liberal mag The Nation is asking B.O. if he’d like a little cheese with his keg of whine.

Oh, well.  Since he refuses to see the Taliban as the enemy, he’s got to declare war on someone, right?

October 13, 2009 - Posted by crushliberalism | Fox News, media bias, Obama