Mainstream media goes to bat for Fox

Mike Madden at Salon.com raised an important question on his blog yesterday about the ongoing "War against Fox." Despite the fact that Fox has been nothing but combative toward other mainstream media outlets, relentlessly alleging liberal bias, etc., the media has largely flocked to Fox's side since the network was outed as a right-wing media operation. Mike Madden asks us, "Why?"

From Mike Madden at Salon.com:

Why is the media defending Fox and attacking Obama?

It could be a simple matter of who's in the club, and who isn't

By the time the White House got around to declaring that the administration had simply had enough of Fox News Channel, it wasn't exactly a surprise to anyone. Just three months into President Obama's term, Fox's broadcasting parent had stopped showing presidential news conferences, sticking with regularly scheduled fare like "Lie to Me" instead; returning the favor, Obama froze them out last month when he appeared on every other network's Sunday show to pitch healthcare reform. An armada of Fox News hosts spend their time getting the right-wing troops hot and bothered about creeping socialism and murky conspiracy theories, and the network's fodder often quickly becomes a GOP talking point.

So on the face of it, there wasn't much to argue with when White House aides started saying most of the Fox News crew wasn't giving them a fair shot. Still, listening to some Beltway pundits react to the administration's decision, you might think the White House had ordered Fox boss Roger Ailes to be shipped off to Guantánamo. Fox News isn't exactly universally admired by other political reporters -- after all, the network's "Fair and Balanced" slogan is pretty obviously meant to be a shot at the rest of the press corps, and its cable news competitors get almost as many barbs from Fox as the administration does. But some talking heads from other news organizations started scolding the White House as soon as the battle was joined.

"It makes the White House look childish and petty at best, and it has a distinct Nixonian -- Agnewesque? -- aroma at worst," Ruth Marcus wrote on a Washington Post blog. Her colleague Sally Quinn told Fox News the episode reminded her of Watergate. (Likewise, NPR's Ken Rudin initially compared the White House move to Nixon's enemies list, though he later apologized for the comparison.) ABC News' Jake Tapper pressed the White House on whether it was appropriate for officials to weigh in on what was or wasn't a legitimate news organization. On Time's Swampland blog, Joe Klein said the White House was better off ignoring Fox than trying to hit back

...continue reading at Salon.com