The White House Media Wars

Have you been listening to the whining from the right about The White House’s treatment of Faux News?

It’s great.

To be fair, there are a lot of people in the center and the left criticizing too, but as always, the center and the left are more in line with criticism, while the right and extreme right are going into conspiracy theories and whining.

Media Wars

There is something in the air in our nation that makes us amnesiacs. We quickly forget our past. I mean really quickly.

Less than a year ago there was a different President, “A President-in-Thief.”. You see his ideologies were slightly different from the current President. He was a bit more to the right.

No, no, a bit more to the right. A bit more…a bit more. A bit—ah right there.

And his treatments of particular media outlets were also a bit different from the current President.

You know why Faux News is so shocked by Obama’s Administration of equating them to talk radio?

Because Faux News was The White House “baby” for the past 8 years. They had gotten used to the special privilege they enjoyed under Bush’s regime.

In an article by Washington Post staff writer Howard KurtzHoward Kurtz, on March 8, 2005:

“By and large, the Bush administration has taken not just an adversarial but often hostile approach toward the media (which I've reported on again and again for four years). Not since the Nixon administration, with its wiretapping and enemies lists, has a president tried to marginalize the press in such aggressive fashion. And I ticked off some of the techniques: few news conferences, secret meetings, unresponsive briefings, propaganda videos, paying off pundits and, in Dick CheneyDick Cheney's case, barring the New York Times from his campaign plane.”

He goes on to write:

“I did try to remind critics, most of them on the left, that Bush didn't invent these techniques, that the Clinton White House was often accused of stonewalling, and that every administration tries to manipulate the media to further its political self-interest.

“My larger point was that whatever damage the Bush administration has done to the press doesn't come close to matching the damage that the news business has inflicted on itself. Let's say that in four years, a liberal Democrat is elected who holds weekly news conferences, grants dozens of interviews and generally treats the press with warm-and-fuzzy respect. Does anyone seriously think the media's battered reputation will improve?

“Besides, why do we need the administration to be nice to us, or to somehow validate our existence? Journalists need to do their jobs regardless of the roadblocks and land mines placed by the White House. And the real reporting doesn't take place in the briefing room, regardless of who's accredited, or in the televised news conferences, which have become theater. It takes place behind the scenes, where journalists cultivate sources not just in the administration but on the Hill and among interest groups, to break news the White House doesn't want broken. (Watergate, you may recall, was not broken by White House beat reporters.) And it takes place when reporters have the courage to say that what the president said yesterday is at odds with reality or with his own record.”

That being said…here are a few things the Right has done to control the media and single out news organizations and reporters:

The Bush White House “towards the end”, said a former White House Press Secretary Dana PerinoDana Perino on Fox and Friends, “we didn’t do a lot with MSNBC.”

President BushPresident Bush has never done an interview with the New York Times. Not one. During the whole 8 years of his Presidency. Never. Not with The New York Times. Not a single one.

They paid conservative columnists to write favorable articles about them.

Bush’s propaganda machine paid people to ask Bush pre-approved questions at White House Briefings.

The McCain campaign’s manager had written a letter to NBC about Andrea Mitchell’s coverage of their campaign. Just theirs, they thought her criticism of Obama’s campaign was okay, but they didn’t like it when she criticizes them.

33 internal memos have been leaked out of the news department of Fox News. Every morning there are memos given to the News Department of Fox News to give it Bush White House spin and conservative lies and bias.

Here’s Bush and a Fox News reporter talking about the reporters wife, who is also campaigning for Bush.

I could go on...

There are press meeting with just the members of the right-wing media, including Glenn BeckGlenn Beck and Laura Ingram, while excluding any and all left and centrists media members.

This sort of behavior was normal between the Bush White House and Media, and Fox News and Bush.

But when Obama came into Office the ideologies changed.

And now Roger Ailes, head “wacko” and media genius at Fox News, finds himself no longer in favor of the White House.

And the outlandish tactics, the lies, the scare tactics and conspiracy theories have only gotten worse, as Fox’s tantrum over not being respected and paid attention to has continued.

People of the right are crying “Communism”, “Socialism”, “Unconstitutional”, “Facism”, “Not Fair-ism” and anything else that comes into their imaginative minds.

Bush had threatened to prosecute the NYT reporters that exposed his practice of un-warranted wiretapping of American citizens.

The Obama White House has called Fox News out on just a few of the many lies it broadcasts and compared it to a talk radio format, instead of a real news-channel.

Y'all need a pacifier...?