I don’t like the idea of a President trying to dictate what stories a media organization can run and not run. Just about every political pundit agrees that this is not Presidential and comes across as petty and amateurish. I feel that Obama is trying to avoid the fate of George W. Bush, as the media strongly turned on him when he was once uber popular. The polls show that Obama is currently on the same polls declination that Bush was on, so I imagine that he is making a risky move by drawing a line in the metaphorical sand and making people choose sides. But that’s just where the problem lies, nobody in the media should be taking sides, and, most importantly, the President should not be encouraging people to take sides! I find this one of the most disturbing events of the year. I read most of my news via google news, and I’ll post to a few quotes from various articles.
“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.”
He added: “The press always has the last barrel of ink.”
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). 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.
Although Dunn accused Fox News of being a “wing of the Republican Party,” she said the network does not champion conservatism.“It’s not ideological,” she acknowledged. “I mean, obviously, there are many commentators who are conservative, liberal, centrist — and everybody understands that.”
Referring to Ms. Dunn, the Fox News correspondent James Rosen reported, “One of her own aides formally notified Fox News that none of the news programs that had requested interviews with the president, including ‘America’s Newsroom with Bill Hemmer and Megyn Kelly,’ ‘Special Report with Bret Baier,’ or ‘Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace’ would receive one anytime this year.
Fox News senior vice president Michael Clemente said the president is not distinguishing between the network’s opinion programs and its actual news content.
“The average news consumer can certainly distinguish between the A-section of the newspaper and the editorial page, which is what our programming represents,” he said in a statement.
The New York Times report says David Axelrod, senior adviser to Obama, and Roger Ailes, chairman of Fox News, met last month to discuss the hostilities.
Sunday’s latest volley suggests that the cease-fire – if ever their was one – is over.
The fact that the White house would make false accusations with out having the data to back up their theory is depressing and disturbing. The President should never play censorship with the media, or even try and meddle in the media’s affairs. Obama seems to be doing the exact opposite of what he said he would be doing. Needless to say, I hope that media can continue to be diverse in opinion and not be attacked by the White House. The government is whom should be protecting not attacking the media.
According to this logic, Obama should be sending thank you notes to the rest of the media outlets whom over praised his previous efforts. Obama did not even finish one senate term before becoming president, only the media could not bring this one little fact to light.
At the White House Correspondents Dinner in May, Obama even mocked the media for supporting him.
“Most of you covered me; all of you voted for me,” Obama said, spurring laughter and applause from the assembled journalists. “Apologies to the Fox table.”
I hope that this does not set a new precedent for future presidents, where they think they can actively meddle in the media, trying to get them to only cover the stories they think will make them win a re-election. And only trying to correct ‘lies’ that are biased to their favor, very unfitting for a president.