Correction appended
It's not hard to grasp why the White House hates Fox News. Since President Obama moved into the White House, the network has been attempting with surprising success to embarrass his administration's every move. What is hard to grasp, however, is why Obama, the seemingly unfazed, post-partisan politician, has made it a priority of his administration to delegitimize the news station. Wasn't he supposed to be above it all? Wasn't he going to leave the partisan bickering to the rest of us?
Events earlier this month hint at just the opposite. On Oct. 18, the Obama team unleashed a media blitz to denounce the right-leaning Fox News. Top adviser David Axelrod, speaking with George Stephanopoulos on ABC's "This Week," called the conservative news network "not really a news station."
"It's not just their commentators, but a lot of their news programming, it's really not news," Axelod said. "The bigger thing is that other news organizations like yours ought not to treat them that way."
Later that same day on CNN, Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, made it clear that it was vital "to not have the CNNs and the others in the world basically be led in following Fox."
If we are to take the talking points of Axelrod and Emanuel to be the official agenda of President Obama's White House, then it is clear that our president is attempting to lead a crusade against a news organizations that make his job tough. Better still, he is attempting to rally other news organizations to join him in denouncing Fox News.
This is alarming. Since when has the federal government had the power to decide what is and what is not a legitimate news organization? And since when has the White House had the authority to discredit its opponents and stifle opposition?
This is the bully pulpit gone awry. Moreover, it appears that the White House is attempting to ostracize Fox News from the journalism community simply because the network has embarrassed this administration that is not yet used to embarrassment. Two such embarrassments thus far have been Fox News' coverage of the ACORN scandal and the resignation of White House green jobs czar Van Jones. There will certainly be others. Yet in attacking Fox News, Obama has unveiled his desire to do everything in his power (and outside of it) to limit these sort of embarrassments.
It is clear that Obama wants to limit such embarrassments because his administration already faces declining poll numbers. To make this decline as surreptitious as possible, Obama has resorted to the dirtiest tricks in the book mudslinging and denunciation to save face and distract the nation from more pressing issues on the table. This sleight of hand is dirty politicking that Obama promised to steer away from when he assumed office. Once again, wasn't he supposed to be above it all?
But what is more alarming is that the Obama administration's innate response is to correct any and all critiques from the press. These attacks reveal that this administration is fearful of criticism. Perhaps accepting criticism is hard for our president who has thus far had it pretty easy from the press. Having gotten a free ride from much of the media during his campaign, Obama holds a deep fear that Fox News' tough questioning and conservative-leaning pundits will jeopardize the media's infatuation with him.
In these past weeks, it appears, Obama's deep fear has metastasized into a full-blown preventative war. Because a vast majority of the members of the media voted for Obama, however, many have so far let this breach of power slide. Some of them, in fact, have even aided his cause to destroy their rival, Fox News.
These attacks on Fox News nonetheless make it clear that our President is attempting to nudge his way in between the media and the people. He is attempting to impart his view on us, telling us whom we should and should not watch, which networks we should and should not see as legitimate, and to whom we should and should not ultimately listen. This authority is quite dangerous. Yet for some, it is still hard to grasp that our unfazed, post-partisan president would ever do something so egregious.
