The Silencing (18 page)

Despite some doubts in corners of the media, the Obama administration was unrepentant and continued their delegitimization campaign. On October 18, 2009, White House Senior Advisor David Axelrod said on ABC’s
This Week
that the Fox News Channel is “not really a news station” and that much of its programming is “not really news.”
¹⁶
Declared Axelrod, “The only argument [White House Communications Director] Anita [Dunn] was making is that they’re not really a news station if you watch even—it’s not just their commentators, but a lot of their news programming.” Axelrod went on to inform ABC that when it came to Fox News, “It’s really not news—it’s pushing
a point of view. And the bigger thing is that other news organizations like yours ought not to treat them that way, and we’re not going to treat them that way.” This echoed the message that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel delivered the same day to CNN. It wasn’t just that Fox News was “not a news organization,” Emanuel told John King on CNN’s
State of the Union
, but, “more [important], is [to] not have the CNNs and the others in the world basically be led in following Fox, as if what they’re trying to do is a legitimate news organization. . . .”
¹⁷
This is an astounding statement for a government official to make.

No less astounding was the president himself weighing in, telling NBC News that his senior staff’s attacks on Fox News were justified. “What our advisers have simply said is that we are going to take media as it comes. And if media is operating, basically, as a talk radio format, then that’s one thing. And if it’s operating as a news outlet, then that’s another.”
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Of course, in reality, Fox is less given to “a talk radio format” than some of its rivals. A 2013 Pew study found, for instance, that on MSNBC opinion programming accounted for “fully 85% of the channel’s airtime.”
¹⁹
Only 15 percent of MSNBC’s news coverage was “factual reporting.” In contrast, Pew found that 55 percent of Fox News coverage was opinion and 45 percent was factual reporting.
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But there was no administration war on MSNBC, because that network slants heavily to the left.

CBS Evening News
anchor Katie Couric noted the administration’s concentrated attack on Fox News, saying, “Politicians and the media have long had a contentious relationship. It’s part of the American system. But we’ve never seen anything quite as intense as the feud between President Obama and the Fox News Channel.”
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But describing the coordinated attack on Fox News as a “feud” was misleading. Fox News was doing its job—reporting on, analyzing, and at times criticizing the administration. The administration was not, unless we think it is the job of the federal government to treat dissenting media voices as illegitimate. Veteran political reporter Jeff Greenfield, then at CBS, asked, “Why is the White House out to delegitimize Fox?” He concluded that the reason wasn’t that Fox had
opinion-based shows—so, after all, did MSNBC—but that Fox had hosts who were critical of Obama, and “Fox News is. . . . the most watched of the cable news networks, including a fair chunk of Democrats and independents.”
²²

The administration’s campaign received a boost from David Brock, CEO of Media Matters for America (MMFA). Media Matters is a nonprofit funded
²³
by tax-deductible donations from major liberal donors.
²⁴
Its stated mission is to monitor the media “for conservative misinformation.”
²⁵
Monitoring the media is obviously a good thing; the media should be held accountable, including Fox News. When Media Matters first launched I was supportive of them, and found some of their research helpful. But over time it became apparent that Media Matters was itself a vicious left-wing propaganda machine masquerading as a media monitoring operation.
New York Times
columnist Maureen Dowd noted in a 2015 column that David Brock—who previously aligned himself with right-wing politics—“has tried to discredit anyone who disagreed with his ideological hits. . . . And that’s still the business he’s in, simply on the other side as a Hillary [Clinton] zealot.”
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On October 22, 2009, Brock sent a letter
²⁷
to progressive organizations. In it, he cheered the administration’s war on Fox. Brock wrote, “In recent days, a new level of scrutiny has been directed toward Fox News, in no small part due to statements from the White House, and from Media Matters, challenging its standing as a news organization.”
²⁸
Brock called Fox “lethal” and “too dangerous to ignore.” He echoed the administration party line, complaining that, “Too many reporters and commentators have continued to treat Fox as a news organization.”

In late October 2009, the Obama administration upped its war on Fox, by trying to bar Fox News reporters from interviewing the administration’s “pay czar” Kenneth Feinberg. This was too much even for the pro-Obama media. The Washington bureau chiefs of ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN refused to do their interviews with Feinberg unless Fox News was included.
The administration then relented and granted an interview to Fox News White House Correspondent Major Garrett.

When Fox News reported on the incident,
²⁹
the Obama administration told reporters from other outlets that Fox News was making up the story.
³⁰
The Associated Press reported that the administration denied excluding Fox News, saying instead that Fox News was excluded because they hadn’t asked for an interview. Some journalists went along with the Obama party line. Christina Bellantoni—now the editor-in-chief of
Roll Call
—reported for Talking Points Memo DC that she had dug into “the version Fox has pushed all day”
³¹
and discovered that what really happened was the “Treasury [Department] called the White House pool crew and gave them the list of the networks who’d asked for the interview. The network pool crew noticed Fox wasn’t on the list, was told that they hadn’t asked and the crew said they needed to be included.” She quoted a Treasury spokesperson saying, “There was no plot to exclude Fox News, and they had the same interview that their competitors did. Much ado about absolutely nothing.”

The administration was lying to Bellantoni and the Associated Press. Internal e-mails obtained by Judicial Watch in 2011 revealed that on October 22, 2009, the White House director of broadcast media had e-mailed the Treasury department approving the inclusion of cable networks to interview Feinberg, but added, “We’d prefer if you skip Fox please.”
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Contrary to the Obama administration’s spin, many mainstream reporters knew exactly what had happened. Jeff Greenfield reported on
CBS Evening News
, “the Treasury Department tried to exclude Fox News from pool coverage of interviews with one of its key officials. It backed down after strong protests from the press.” Then-CBS White House Correspondent Chip Reid noted that, “All the networks said, ‘That’s it, you’ve crossed the line.’”
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CBS News D.C. Bureau Chief Christopher Isham, who served as the pool chair, told
Mediaite
that “he convened a conference call and all the bureau chiefs agreed they were not comfortable with excluding one of the members of the pool in a pool interview.”
³⁴

Perhaps the White House didn’t know that Fox News’ then–Senior Vice President Michael Clemente had spent two years at CNN and twenty-seven at ABC News. It wasn’t that hard to find out what had really happened.

In a January 2015 interview, Clemente told me, “I saw [White House Press Secretary Robert] Gibbs right after it happened and he said, ‘It was a mistake, what can we do to put this behind us?’ I said, ‘We didn’t start this, so just act normal and consider it over.’ We shook hands and that was it.”

Unfortunately, this wouldn’t be the last time the White House cut Fox News out of briefings. Fox News host Greta Van Susteren noted that, “In the early days after Benghazi [when four Americans, including American ambassador to Libya, J. Christopher Stevens, were killed by terrorists] the State Department omitted only Fox News Channel from its conference call to all the media when it claimed to be answering questions about Benghazi for the media. Our friends in other media outlets were scandalized that Fox was not included and told us all about it. They were suspicious of the State Department forgetting us/Fox and courageous to tip us off. The State Department claimed it was [an] accident and not intentional. And then shortly thereafter, there was the CIA briefing about Benghazi at the CIA for all the networks—except one: Fox News Channel. The CIA would not let Fox News Channel attend.”
³⁵

ABC’s Jake Tapper queried White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs about the administration’s overt hostility to Fox News.
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TAPPER: It’s escaped none of our notice that the White House has decided in the last few weeks to declare one of our sister organizations “not a news organization” and to tell the rest of us not to treat them like a news organization. Can you explain why it’s appropriate for the White House to decide that a news organization is not one—

             
(Crosstalk)

         
GIBBS: Jake, we render, we render an opinion based on some of their coverage and the fairness that, the fairness of that coverage.

         
TAPPER: But that’s a pretty sweeping declaration that they are “not a news organization.” How are they any different from, say—

         
GIBBS: ABC—

         
TAPPER: ABC. MSNBC. Univision. I mean how are they any different?

         
GIBBS: You and I should watch sometime around 9 o’clock tonight. Or 5 o’clock this afternoon.

         
TAPPER: I’m not talking about their opinion programming or issues you have with certain reports. I’m talking about saying thousands of individuals who work for a media organization, do not work for a “news organization”—why is that appropriate for the White House to say?

         
GIBBS: That’s our opinion.
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The administration continued to couch its assault on Fox News as a mere matter of “opinion” as if comments and actions by the White House press secretary, the White House chief of staff, and the president of the United States were akin to a college dorm room bull session. When I asked former Clinton White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry if it was appropriate for a White House to operate in this fashion, he said, “Fox [is] a member of the network pool. Trying to decide what represents legitimacy . . . is a very dangerous business because you run the risk of only speaking to the audiences that agree with you. If you are only narrowcasting to your own supporters you are never going to persuade people in the middle. That damages the country.”

“We had plenty of people who were conservative [covering us]. I don’t remember ever saying I’m not going to deal with you because you are illegitimate,” McCurry noted. “Brit [Hume] was the ABC News White
House Reporter and was openly conservative. Brit would be doing a crossword puzzle and I tried to spin something and he’d look up and say, ‘Could you repeat that?’ and I’d say, ‘Damn, Brit caught me.’”
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He recalled how he had once dismissed a question from a reporter because she cited the Drudge Report. The reporter backed off, McCurry recalled, and following the briefing he was approached by other reporters who told him, “You can’t decide what we get to ask” and “You don’t get to decide what is a legitimate question.” McCurry realized they were right. At another point he said, “Brit told me privately, ‘You are the most political press secretary in history.’ I actually took that to heart and I toned it down.”
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McCurry realized that when a press secretary becomes too political it is degrading to the office. “Elected officials have to be accountable to people who are challenging them,” McCurry told me in our interview. “I think the distinction has to be between dealing with those who are opinionated and those who are reporting. Even if [a reporter is the] only one pursuing this line of inquiry, as long as it’s a reporter. . . . you have some obligation to deal with them.”

GOOD NEWS, BAD NEWS

It might be instructive to consider what the White House considers “legitimate media.” Obama granted a coveted post 2012 election interview to then twenty-nine-year-old zillionaire Chris Hughes, who had recently bought the
New Republic
. Hughes had also been a major Obama campaign donor and organizer who was featured on the cover of
Fast Company
with the headline, “The Kid Who Made Obama President.” When Hughes and TNR editor-in-chief Franklin Foer sat down with Obama, the president took the opportunity to complain that more Republican members of Congress would work with Democrats if they were not “punished on Fox News.” Fox News, in other words, is to be blamed for government gridlock. On the other hand, the mainstream media, as represented perhaps by the
New Republic
, owned by his interviewer and supporter, was portrayed as a public good. “The more left-leaning media outlets recognize that compromise is not a dirty word,” he said, and Democratic leaders are “willing to buck the more absolutist-wing elements in our party to try to get stuff done.”
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Of course, the
New Republic
did not challenge this baseless assertion, which a single night’s viewing of MSNBC would disprove.

The administration, of course, has had no problem with MSNBC’s former and current highly opinionated hosts Rachel Maddow, Keith Olbermann, or Ed Schultz. But the illiberal left condemns Fox News, which has plenty of straight news programming, purely because it has hosts who are conservative,
even if those hosts give air time to liberals
. I’m often challenged by liberals about working for the channel. Sometimes the challenge is a little less than friendly. In 2011 I was seated near Gloria Steinem at a luncheon. At one point, she turned to me and asked, “Why do you go on Fox?” She said my appearances came at “such a great cost.” I was shocked, but said what I assumed every real liberal would say: it’s important to debate ideas. She was unconvinced. When I told her she should go on the network, she disdainfully replied, “I would never go on Fox.” But the fact is Fox is demonstrably fairer than its cable competition. A March 2014
Columbia Journalism Review
article noted that, “Though MSNBC has a handful of moderate conservatives—namely
Morning Joe
’s Joe Scarborough—Fox stands out for the prominence it awards its on-air naysayers, many of whom occupy regular roles on the network’s most popular shows.”
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They noted, “While the liberal hosts of MSNBC often skewer conservatives, the debates happen with villains who are not in the studio: lambasted, by proxy, in news clips. At Fox, they happen in person, with a real-live liberal who is often on staff.”