First NPR said Obama WH was Nixonian, now Anderson Cooper.
But hey its only us RW extremists who think that, right?
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ROBERTS: So what do you make of this dynamic between the White House and Fox News? How has it affected either side?
Mr. CARR: I find it really surprising, given the way that Obama campaigned. I - my impression, and I'll leave the political analytics to Ken, but on a media level, I always thought of the president as sort of the king of cool. You can't get under his skin, that he is able to get rid of - you know, get things out of the way with a flick of the wrist. This seems really heavy-handed, and given the amount of assets the administration has sort of turned on Fox, it's turning it into something of a war and suggests that they are very much under his skin, I guess, which I find surprising.
ROBERTS: And has it backfired? Has Fox seen a bump in ratings?
Mr. CARR: Well, Fox would be ahead in the ratings no matter what. As people well observe, being the party of opposition in terms of media dynamics is always a great thing. Liberal magazines do it very well when there's a Republican in the White House, conservative magazines and talk shows and radio do very well when there's a liberal in the White House.
Those dynamics occur whether the White House punches back or not. In this instance, they've decided that they're not going to let a lot of these things, some of which you ticked off, Rebecca, go unanswered. And they've gone right at Fox with the kind of rhetoric, including telling other news organizations they shouldn't appear on Fox, which seems, I don't know, very aggressive to me.
ROBERTS: Ken, what do you think the political upside is for the administration to take this on?
RUDIN: Well, it's not only aggressive, it's almost Nixonesque. I mean, you think of what Nixon and Agnew did with their enemies list and their attacks on the media and certainly Vice President Agnew's constant denunciation of the media. Of course, then it was a conservative president denouncing a liberal media, and of course, a lot of good liberals said, oh, that's ridiculous. That's an infringement on the freedom of press, and now you see a lot of liberals almost kind of applauding what the White House is doing to Fox News, which I think is distressing.
Whatever you think of Fox News, whatever you think of Glenn Beck and some of the things he says, which clearly are outrageous, but at the same time, there are some things on MSNBC that I think are equally outrageous - well, I don't know about equally, but certainly outrageous. And, you know, if we had a Republican president saying we're banning MSNBC or it's not a real organization, it just gives you a weird feeling in the stomach. I think it's a mistake.
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Mr. CARR: I think that the Obama the caller describes was on broad display during the campaign. Again and again, the president said let's stay out the gutter, let's seek middle ground, and when it came time for him to turn toward his opponents, he did so deftly and surgically. He didn't just sit still, and I'm talking only of media dynamics, not political dynamics, but right now, the White House is hosting a Web site called Reality Check, and it's got this big fatwa against so-called Fox lies. Well, that to me sounds like somebody who's living in his mom's basement in Ohio and could use a job. It doesn't sound like somebody who lives on Pennsylvania Avenue. There's something not very seemly about it, especially, as the caller points out, in the context of the way this president ran.
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But there's also two different Fox Newses, and I think that's what the White House is also missing. There is the Glenn Becks. There is - there is the Sean Hannity of Fox News and that gets the most headlines. But there's also Chris…
ROBERTS: Major Garrett. Right.
RUDIN: …Major Garrett and Chris Wallace and Shep Smith, who seem to be if not straight down the middle, at least some sense of fairness and balance, to quote somebody. And I think you make a big mistake if you just - if Glenn Beck becomes Fox News. But of course a lot of people do see it that way.
ROBERTS: Well, there's also this interesting dynamic. And David Carr, you bring this up in your Media Equation column, that the biggest weapon the White House has is access, right? If they don't want your brand of coverage, they say you don't get to talk to the president, and they have said that to Fox News, you're not going to get an interview with him. But Fox News doesn't need access. That's not the kind of journalism they necessarily do on their talk shows. They can, as you say, David Carr, sort of say whatever they want and start a movement and generate some kind of buzz without having the president there to defend themselves. The lack of access doesn't necessarily hurt what they are doing.
Mr. CARR: Yeah. And the president, by his very presence, if you remember during the campaign, Bill O'Reilly spent a lot of time getting red in the face talking about the president. Then the president actually walked in to Fox News studio, sat down with Bill O'Reilly. They saw he didn't have horns and tails - Mr. O'Reilly did a really, really good job. You know, his chief weapon is his ability to engage. Instead, he has these proxies, some of them who have extensive, I think very prosaic political histories of going out and doing this old style. As Ken pointed out, Nixon-esque, isolate your adversaries, take them on at every turn. It doesn't really fit with his style.
I thought it was a particular mistake to put David Axelrod out there because Mr. Axelrod has a history of sort of being arm in arm with Mr. Obama and not getting that down into this nitty-gritties. He wouldn't met with Roger Ailes to talk - the head of the Fox News - to talk about whether there wasn't some middle ground. I think you've sort of damaged him as asset once you put him out there campaigning against a specific cable outlet.
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npr.org
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On last night's "360," Cooper stated that "this White House is starting to look like another White House and the comparison is not flattering." He showed a clip of Sen. Lamar Alexander, documented yesterday by NewsBuster Noel Sheppard, offering a "friendly suggestion" to President Obama.
I have an uneasy feeling only 10 months into the new administration that we're beginning to see the symptoms of this same kind of animus developing in the Obama administration. And as those of use who served in the Nixon administration know, that can get you in a lot of trouble... Don't create an enemies list.
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newsbusters.org |
