WASHINGTON, Oct 29 — Wild conspiracy theories about the overthrow of the American way of life by the Europeanised liberal left are the staple of conservative talk shows. The Obama administration’s panicky response — a ‘blackout’ of Fox News — is a huge miscalculation, however.
Analysts say it will only give more legitimacy to the talk show ranters and raise awkward questions about the White House’s news management skills and President Barack Obama’s leadership style.
Fox News is the home of Obama critics Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and others.
The White House has watched with rising alarm the increasing shrillness of their commentary, especially since Fox News gets a larger prime time audience than CNN and MSNBC combined.
The White House media managers seemed to have thought a pre-emptive strike was a good idea, especially given Obama’s wilting job approval ratings.
Key Bills need to be pushed through a sharply split Congress; Obama’s party is weakly positioned for the Congressional elections next year; and the Obama White House fears the conservatives might whip up further rounds of frenzy, as they did three months ago over Obama’s health-care reforms.
The objective of the exercise, Obama’s aides have said upfront, was to try to contain the Fox-style coverage and prevent it from spilling over to other TV networks.
Among other things, Fox had gained ground with stories about scandals in a Democratic-leaning community organiser Acorn and about green jobs ‘czar’ Van Jones who was forced to resign after Fox and other media exposed his past associations.
The White House began the clampdown against the network last month when Obama pointedly excluded Fox from a round of interviews he gave to the Sunday talk shows of other networks. Other actions followed.
A blog post on the WhiteHouse.gov official website denounced what it called ‘Fox lies’. Earlier this month, Obama aides began describing Fox as part of the right-wing fighting machine and ‘not a legitimate’ news station.
Obama’s chief of staff Rahm Emanuel said: “It’s not a news organisation so much as it has a perspective.”
Obama also weighed in. “We are going to take media as it comes,” he said in a TV interview. “And if media is operating as a talk radio format, then that’s one thing. And if it’s operating as a news outlet, then that’s another.”
The Obama operatives also tried to canvass support from the mainstream media which tends to be liberal. But they had limited success. Liberals being liberal, they were outraged when Fox was excluded from a pooled interview with pay czar Kenneth Feinberg last week. The other networks refused the interview too unless Fox was included. The White House had to give in.
The White House offensive continues, however, and aides say Obama officials will not appear on Fox for at least the rest of this year.
Analysts say the blunt, heavy-handed approach is risky.
“There is always an element of unhappiness in the White House with the press. All the same, it is never a good idea to pick a fight with a TV network that is on the air 24 hours a day,” said Darrell West of the Brookings Institution, a liberal-leaning Washington-based think tank. “It will raise Fox ratings if anything.”
Indeed, its ratings have gone up since the Obama ‘campaign’ began, according to Fox’s owner Rupert Murdoch.
The White House had targeted conservative talk show hosts Rush Limbaugh and Beck earlier, noted Brian Darling of the conservative Heritage Foundation.
“Singling out a vastly popular network defies logic.”
The White House, on the other hand, seems to be betting that its portrayal of Fox News as being politically motivated will increase the skepticism with which other networks and the American public view its coverage.
“You’re never going to delegitimise Fox with the hardest of the hardcore base,” said liberal columnist David Sirota. “But if you can delegitimise it in the eyes of the rest of the media, that impacts the rest of the news-consuming audience.”
Whatever the eventual payoff, however, the White House comes off poorly for now. It looks thin-skinned and petty. And the whole exercise may be unnecessary, as West pointed out.
“The economy is recovering, there is progress on health-care reforms. I can’t see why they should panic. Obama is still getting pretty favourable coverage in the press as a whole.”
Excessive as it might seem, the White House reaction is not without precedent. American presidents have a habit of tangling with the press, the right to free speech notwithstanding. For example, John F. Kennedy made a public gesture of cancelling his subscription to the Herald Tribune because of its coverage of his administration.
Former vice-president Dick Cheney threw The New York Times off his plane. The Clintons objected to mainstream media’s coverage of the Whitewater investigations. Mrs Clinton spoke of a ‘vast right-wing conspiracy’, which included sections of the media.
The biggest problem for Obama now, as eloquent and persuasive as he may be, is that there are question marks about his leadership. The country is as divided today as it was during the Bush administration and a large segment of the electorate remains wary of his agenda.
A recent US News & World report ranking America’s best leaders this year was revealing. It listed 22 names, from Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke to the late Senator Ted Kennedy. President Obama’s name was conspicuous by its absence. — Straits Times
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