At today’s White House press briefing, I wanted to give Press Secretary Robert Gibbs a chance to respond to criticism that the administration is attacking Fox News with plastic army men. Or something.

Gibbs resisted the bait at first, instead opting to rehearse his next career day lecture, but zeroed in a little on followup:

“They pretend to be a journalist, and at the same time they’re saying, ‘I’m not a journalist.’” That’s not a quote from Anita Dunn, who made similar claims railing against Fox News; no those are the words of Bernie Goldberg from two weeks ago. Last night he defended FNC against what Bill O’Reilly called the “jihad against Fox,” but also found time to blame “opinion journalism” on the diversification of the newsroom.

Fox News has found a good reason to keep talking about Fox news – they’ve got an escalating feud with the White House. And no amount of awkwardness is going to stop them from covering themselves.

It started with a news report by James Rosen this afternoon, continued with Neil Cavuto and was followed by Glenn Beck. Here’s a look at the self-coverage:

Mediaite called the showdown between Fox News and the Obama administration back in mid-August. Now that it’s officially here, heralded by an attack-dog performance by White House Communications Director Anita Dunn on Reliable Sources, what does it mean? And which side, if either, will ultimately come out on top? A roundup of pundit reactions from the blogosphere and beyond:

The White House has gone on the offensive against Fox News in the past week, speaking to Time magazine and CNN’s Reliable Sources.

But in a follow-up to all the White House chatter about FNC, Brian Stelter of the New York Times writes about the fight that’s shaping up. It’s important to note, Fox News loves to fight!

Anita Dunn went on CNN with Howard Kurtz this morning to talk about her specific gripes with mainstream media practices, spending most of her time criticizing Fox News. The deputy White House communications director really cut to the chase when it came time to talk about Fox News. “What I think is fair to say about Fox,” she told Kurtz, “is that it really is more of a wing of the Republican party.” Video inside …

The White House might be annoyed with the way that Roger Ailes‘ Fox News has been covering the current administration, and a little upset that other mainstream outlets have not been especially diligent when fact-checking Fox. But there’s one thing that Anita Dunn, field marshall of the White House’s Call ‘Em Out Patrol, doesn’t mind about Fox: Golden boy Major Garrett.

If you watch Glenn Beck with any regularity you know that he thinks the mainstream media is not doing their job (to be fair, the ACORN debacle and the NYT delayed response to it sort of suggests he’s right). Looks like the Obama administration agrees with him! But are they taking the right measures to fix the problem?