Did Fox News Back Down After White House Criticism?


Posted by John Romano in Bait and Switch on October 20, 2009

LOS ANGELES (YBH.ME) – Fox News has been embroiled in a battle of wills recently with Barack Obama’s White House. Last week White House Communications Director Anita Dunn lambasted Fox News for what she sees as agenda journalism.  On Sunday, President Obama’s top deputies urged Fox’s competing networks to basically ignore Fox as a real news outlet.  Over at Fox, commentator Chris Wallace called out the White House for refusing to send a representative to his show, claiming the White House is only interested in talking with friendly interviewers.

Fox News battles Anita Dunn and the White House.

Fox News battles Anita Dunn and the White House.

Is Fox getting the message?  Certainly, something is up.  On October 17th a group called Operation: Can You Hear Us Now? held tea parties in select cities across the United States.   The protests were held to “to show the MSM [mainstream media] that we as the American Public are absolutely fed up with their journalistic malpractice.”  Fox mentioned the tea parties on FoxNews.com, but devoted little or no time to the protests on Fox’s mainstay cable channel.  Fox covered the 9/12 and tax day tea parties extensively. What happened?

According to Media Matters for America, a well-funded left wing website, that frankly spends a great deal of its time attempting to discredit Fox News, “Fox News had previously promoted October 17th ‘tea parties’ protesting ‘journalistic malpractice’”.  In a press release dated yesterday Media Matters claimed that “Fox News bowed to pressure and aired no live coverage of the October 17 tea parties.”

Did Fox back off of covering the latest tea party rallies because of Ms. Dunn and the White House’s media campaign against the network?

Related posts:

  1. MoveOn.org Starts Anti-Fox News Campaign
  2. Perkins Coie Gets Their Man In The White House
  3. Lou Dobbs Resigns From CNN

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  1. #1 by Passerby on October 21, 2009 - 2:08 pm

    "Did Fox back off of covering the latest tea party rallies because of Ms. Dunn and the White House’s media campaign against the network?"

    Probably. But they should have backed off from their highly-polarizing editorial stance about nine years ago, so this latest turn of events isn't really news in and of itself.

  2. #2 by Charlie J. Ray on October 29, 2009 - 5:34 pm

    Fox is not backing down. Obama is showing himself to be the Stalinist true democracy should fear. The political left has more in common with communism than with a democratic republic. The last time I checked a free press is essential for democracy to work. But try telling that to a bunch of folks in favor of a socialist totalitarian state!

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