White House draws criticism for trying to exclude Fox from press pool
Charles Krauthammer, op-ed columnist for the Washington Post, is among many who are criticizing the White House for trying to exclude Fox News from a press pool interview.
In a column today titled “Fox wars. The ‘post-partisan’ president makes an enemies list,” Krauthammer writes:
…At first, there was little reaction from other media. Then on Thursday, the administration tried to make them complicit in an actual boycott of Fox. The Treasury Department made available Ken Feinberg, the executive pay czar, for interviews with the White House “pool” news organizations — except Fox. The other networks admirably refused, saying they would not interview Feinberg unless Fox was permitted to as well. The administration backed down.
This was an important defeat because there’s a principle at stake here. While government can and should debate and criticize opposition voices, the current White House goes beyond that. It wants to delegitimize any significant dissent. The objective is no secret. White House aides openly told Politico that they’re engaged in a deliberate campaign to marginalize and ostracize recalcitrants, from Fox to health insurers to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
There’s nothing illegal about such search-and-destroy tactics. Nor unconstitutional. But our politics are defined not just by limits of legality or constitutionality. We have norms, Madisonian norms.
Madison argued that the safety of a great republic, its defense against tyranny, requires the contest between factions or interests. His insight was to understand “the greater security afforded by a greater variety of parties.” They would help guarantee liberty by checking and balancing and restraining each other — and an otherwise imperious government.
Factions should compete, but they should also recognize the legitimacy of other factions and, indeed, their necessity for a vigorous self-regulating democracy. Seeking to deliberately undermine, delegitimize and destroy is not Madisonian. It is Nixonian.
That Nixonian reference has been used often this week. CQPolitics even put together a video of historic feuds between presidents and the press — “When it Comes to Media Wars, Obama’s no Lincoln.” Among those featured: Nixon.
Steve Parker is the deputy managing editor for news, and oversees the Post-Dispatch's front page. STLtoday's online news editors are on his newsroom team. Parker has been at the paper since September 1980. 
Unbelievable, no? Fox being attacked by Anita Dunn:
“(Anita Dunn has) been attacked for extolling Mao’s political philosophy in a speech at a high school graduation. But the critics miss the surpassing stupidity of her larger point: She was invoking Mao as support and authority for her impassioned plea for individuality and trusting one’s own choices. Mao as champion of individuality? Mao, the greatest imposer of mass uniformity in modern history, creator of a slave society of a near-billion worker bees wearing Mao suits and waving the Little Red Book?” ~ Krauthammer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlMILRyDRdM&feature=
Other fascist organizations claim press cards and are denied entrance to official meetings. Fox is no different except it is owned by a foreign national. This foreign nationals’ country allows whites only parties to exist and take seats in the EU. Britian is not as civil as one might think they have a growing socialist party in power and a nationalist party that accepts whites only. The BNP does have a seat in the Eu. Fox news with its constant message that democrats are socialist does not belong on the public airwaves. The United States should not submit to fascism regardless of well meaning attempts to hear the rascals out. We should take a stand now against the resurgence of Fascism it has been growing steadly since Nixon. Cooperating with one brand of communism or socialism leads to accepting other brands of socialism and a comparision to American ideaologies. Liberals have long stood for the common man against tyranny and now liberals should continue to demand independence for everyday Americans regardless of imperial fascist attempts at rendering them dependent.
“liberals should continue to demand independence for everyday Americans regardless of imperial fascist attempts at rendering them dependent.”
— Michael Mullarkey
2:02 pm October 23rd, 2009
The primary tenet of the liberals’ Great Society is conformance and dependence of individuals for the sake of “the greater good.”
It is facinating to see Marxism turn a person’s brain inside out. Liberals as defenders of independence….. HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
GARRISON :
You two drive on the same sidewalk; what in the h3ll is Mullarkey trying to say ??
“Fox is no different except it is owned by a foreign national”
Fox is owned by an American citizen.
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Please check facts: other articles w/ quote DC Bureau Chiefs as claiming this never happened and they never stood up for Fox News. Nor that the White House refused to permit Fox News to participate in the interview. Instead, Fox News was not on the list of interviewers because it did not ask to be included in the interview.