Should The White House be Taking on Fox News?
Today’s Arena question over at Politico asks:
Is Fox News a “legitimate news organization?” Is the White House smart, or not so smart, to take on Fox?
Is Fox News a “legitimate news organization?” As compared to what? The New York Times? NPR? MSNBC? Please.
The Obama team, Democrats like my good friend Walter Dellinger, and the so-called Mainstream Media (MSM) howl about Fox News for two main reasons. First, Fox is covering news the MSM ignores because it doesn’t “fit.” And second, in part because of that, the Fox audience continues to grow while the MSM audience is shrinking, raising a serious question about whether the MSM is any longer “mainstream.”
Let’s not pretend that the MSM doesn’t “manage” the news. It does it mainly by deciding daily what is and is not “news” and then by deciding how to report that news. Do we need any better example than the current ACORN story? As Fox was bringing the facts to light, nowhere were those facts to be found in the MSM — until they could be ignored no longer. Or take the huge 9/12 anti-big-government rally here in Washington. Fox covered it for the event that it was. Where was it covered in The New York Times? On page A37. And more revealing still, in the NYT electronic edition, the second of three stories posted under “Politics” was headlined “Thousands Rally in Minnesota Behind Obama’s Call for Health Care Overhaul,” the third was headlined “Thousands Rally in Capital to Protest Big Government” — the implication being that the two rallies were equivalent in size when in fact the protest rally dwarfed the Obama rally by many multiples.
But why pretend it’s otherwise? The president himself admits the MSM bias. Speaking at the May 9 White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, “I am Barack Obama. Most of you covered me. All of you voted for me. (Laughter and applause.) Apologies to the Fox table.” A good laugh line in that setting, to be sure, but only because he’s said at last what we all know to be true.
Walter Dellinger may write, citing no evidence, that the Tax Day Tea Party protests were “conceived and executed by Fox News,” but he surely knows that’s not true. He hails from North Carolina, albeit now from Duke. He knows that outside that cloister there’s protest in the land. Fox News isn’t generating that opposition to the Obama juggernaut. It’s real, but it’s so much easier for the MSM to blame the bearer of that news than to face the reasons for their own falling numbers: Their “news” doesn’t fit with what so many people see with their own eyes. I’m reminded of the great Groucho Marx line: “Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?”
C/P Politico’s Arena
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IMO, Faux News is one of the worst, although in a climate where all are bad, picking the worst of the worst is question begging.
Some years back, after the invasion of Iraq, and after no WMDs were found, numbers were published as to what people watching various news channels believed. As I recall, something close to 80% of Faux News viewers believed Iraq had WMDs, vs. something around 30% for ABC viewers.
If you can control what people think and believe, you can control what people do. At least in China, everyone knows the media is owned by the state. Here in the US, most people suffer from the delusion the media is independent.
Here's a good article on how things were with the media some four decades ago. Do you think things have gotten better or worse since then?
http://www.namebase.org/news17.html
Today's news is neither liberal nor conservative, it's corporate. Five mega corporations control on the order of 80% of everything you see, read or hear. Once a person figures out that much, everything else is just hype.
Does Fox have a largely conservative slant? Of course.
Are some of the attacks and accusations unfair? Of course.
But so what? That's how the media works. It's the same with a place like MSNBC (except switch liberal for conservative obviously). Going on a warpath about it sounds like you are whining that a news outlet is attacking you, which makes you seem childish. If a criticism from Fox News is unfair, try to refute it and move on. If a criticism isn't unfair, but rather just a difference of opinion; engage it and fight for your point. You don't need to attack the messenger, attack the message. It makes you appear weak otherwise.
I can tell you the #1 reason stations like MSNBC and nightly news ratings are failing so badly. They are unbelievably boring, and a progressive / liberal isn't going to watch Fox. I'd much rather get any opinions through an op-ed or a column since it's actually engaging whereas watching someone like Katie Couric or Keith Olbermann could induce a coma. Whatever criticisms that exist about Fox News (and many news stations could be applied similar criticisms), you have to give them points for knowing how to make a broadcast entertaining.
And plus, who would you rather watch:
Rachel Maddow
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e7/Rachel_Maddow_in_Seattle_cropped.png
or
Megyn Kelly
http://coolrulespronto.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/fox-news-anchor.jpg
Just saying, just saying ...
caelum.
Well played.
The plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data'.
is the plea by Obama. Fox is a legitimate news source;the only credible one on TV.
There will be no consequences for Obama's so called attack on Fox;it makes fodder for internet pundits which is all wasted air!
There will be no big win or big loss, that is an uneducated prediction.
It is a fact that Obama stands to lose big. Fox News stands to win big. Obama has no one to blame except himself... And Mr. Gibbs, perhaps.
Obama, in taking on a News Org., elevates the adversary to his level... That is the level of the President of the United States.
Score goes to Fox.
Obama and his PR machine (No, not the MSM, his in house PR people) level attack after attack and drive up ratings for Fox.
Score goes to Fox.
All other news Org.s refuse to be probative, damaging their credibility. Score goes to Fox.
The idea that the president, or anyone depending on popularity, shouldn't attack a news Org. is not a new idea.
"Never pick a fight with someone who buys his ink by the barrel."
~Mark Twain (1835 – 1910)
The plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data'.