Friday, October 23, 2009

White House, FOX News, and Pay Czar Interview: Press Pool Protest

The White House tried to prevent FOX News from having access to interview Obama's Pay Czar Kenneth Feinberg.

Fox News' Brett Baier: "There was an announcement by the Administration that they were putting out the pay Czar Kenneth Feinberg as we showed you earlier, for the White House pool, they sent out a message for the White House pool that Feinberg would be doing a round robin interviews with the 5 network pool that covers the White House[...]Fox News has been a member since 1997, when they put out that message they specified that all members of the pool were welcome except Fox News."

Although the Obama administration seems to want to see FOX News kicked out of the White House pool, the thugs failed to bar FOX this time. The administration relented and allowed FOX News reporter Major Garrett to interview Feinberg.

Why? Members of other news outlets stood up for FOX, protesting the White House's tactics.

Allahpundit comments:

The other networks deserve the praise they’re getting for standing up to the Baby-in-Chief, but if they had acquiesced in this freezeout, a precedent would have been set that would have been eagerly used by future Republican presidents to close them off too. And don’t think they weren’t all keenly aware of it.




CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: I think this is really destructive. What happened today I think was extremely important because in trying to ostracize and demonize FOX the administration needs complicity from other news organizations; otherwise, it won't work.

And what happened today was other news organizations admirably and on principle standing up and saying,'No, if you're not going to include FOX, we're not going to go.'

And that, the solidarity, I think is important. We are all in the business together. We have different perspectives. Nobody enjoys a kind of holy objectivity.

And what happened, I thought, was a confrontation between an overreaching executive and a free press, and the executive backed down.

Obama and the White House went too far.

Obama came off looking like a tyrant.

Thankfully, the thugs were vanquished.

What a terrible misstep for the Obama White House to be employing such tyrannical tactics!

Now in retreat, Obama looks weak. He was slapped down.

Obama's defeat in this case is a victory for the country and our founding principles.

1 comment:

Dee said...

What the WH did was outright dumb. Yes, I can't stand Fox news either and WH is right, it's not "news," but I can't stand other "news" channels either that fawn over Obama. But, I do not advacate silencing them. Obama needs to realize almost half the voters do not want him to be their president but they don't go around "silencing" him. He needs to think about this fact, think very hard. This country is special because we have opposing viewpoints and whether we agreed with them or not, the viewpoints are there for us to hear. No wonder the conservatives are afraid of him, his thinking is way too close to communism. I should know, my family escaped from communism to the US.