While President Obama‘s response to a Rolling Stone reporter’s question about Fox News is generating a lot of heat in this news cycle, an arguably more remarkable media angle has gone underreported. The President’s views on Fox are really nothing new, but the White House’s positive name-checking of liberal fire-breather Keith Olbermann represents a significant shift from just a few months ago, when Mediaite asked Robert Gibbs if the administration was worried about losing his support. The question here isn’t “Why the shift?” but rather, “What took so long?”

Outgoing White House Communications Director Anita Dunn made a parting strafing run at Fox News on Friday, calling the network out for airing misleading crowd footage, jumping the gun on an announcement of a Presidential interview and letting its opinion tail wag the news dog. In doing so, she heavily name-checked her should-be successor, The Daily Show‘s Jon Stewart. Fox News’ spokespeople responded swiftly, passively and aggressively.

As we reported yesterday, the eagle eyes of The Daily Show noticed that Sean Hannity substituted news footage from the 9/12 rally for last week’s much-lower-attended Super Bowl of Freedom. The effect was to make the latter event seem like a much bigger deal than it was.

At yesterday’s White House Briefing, Jake Tapper asked Press Secretary Robert Gibbs about the Tea Party protest that was occurring on Capitol Hill yesterday. Gibbs responded by saying that he was tempted to make a joke about Tea Party speaker Jon Voight. Despite cajoling, he resisted. Despite that, we couldn’t resist an attempt to get him to clarify.

Just as the White House vs. Fox News feud is winding down (actually, not at all), Jon Stewart and The Daily Show are weighing in.

In what was his final show of October, he addressed the ongoing feud that began heating up as the month started – and he hit both sides for different reasons.

Did you hear the news? Fox News and the White House worked out a truce and now everything is cool between the two sides.

Or not. It’s time for another round of Mediaite Oddsmakers to determine where this high profile battle goes next.

Just as this White House vs. Fox News feud sounds like it may be winding down, CNN’s Campbell Brown is just weighing in on the issue.

Building on her line of questioning with Valerie Jarrett earlier this week, Brown further reiterated her position that CNN does “news” – a day after Larry King devoted nearly an entire hour to the Michael Jackson “This Is It” premiere.

On the heels of what might be the beginning of a truce between Fox News and the Obama administration, the White House is now calling out another major news organization. Late last night, the White House’s Recovery Implementation Office released a detailed rebuttal of what it called a “misleading” report by the Associated Press. While the AP hasn’t been stripped of its legitimacy, the reaction does seem a little bit harsh.

Mediaite has confirmed a meeting between Fox News and the White House took place today, and a spokesperson emphasized it was private.

Details of the meeting and terms of any agreement are still emerging, but we hear the meeting was to come to a “truce” between both sides – a point first reported by FishbowlDC.

Maybe it takes another cable news network to press the Obama administration on a point of contention in this feud with Fox News that hasn’t been asked very often.

Last night CNN’s Campbell Brown pressed White House adviser Valerie Jarrett on whether she thinks Fox News is biased (of course), but also whether she thinks MSNBC is as well.

Is everyone ready for this pay czar interview drama to be over?

Major Garrett was on Fox News Radio show Brian and the Judge this morning, and told his side of the story. Which actually ends up shedding some light on a few areas of the issue.

Fox News’ new big star Glenn Beck appeared on the cover of Time magazine last month, in a story about his and Fox News’ influence, and now FNC is getting a focus from Time‘s competitor.

Newsweek‘s editor Jon Meacham takes on the White House feud with Fox News, and provides a historical context to the battle.

Mediaite has learned more about what happened with the decision by the Treasury Department to exclude Fox News in a round-robin of pool interviews Thursday.

But more importantly – there are more details emerging about the uproar over the initial decision, causing the Treasury Department to reverse their decision.

On Thursday night, Fox News reported that the “Obama administration” had taken its “first concrete step” in treating Fox News Channel like it’s not a real news organization, excluding them from a press event. Through our own reporting, Mediaite has learned that Fox News’ report of this incident was, at best, incomplete and self-serving, and serves as a neat encapsulation of what Robert Gibbs told us the first time we asked him if the White House was “bullying” Fox News.

It’s not just on Fox News where the self-referential reporting and punditry is taking place when it comes to the feud with the White House – it’s on Fox Business Network as well.

Earlier this week we took a look at where the network stands two years in. Here’s a look at where it stands today.

For all the talk about the White House squaring off against Fox News, it’s easy to forget that it is essentially the job of any White House Press Secretary to mitigate the media’s handling of the administration and “work the refs.” We’re seeing it now, but let’s remember that we’ve been here before, in the not so distant past, but on the other side of the aisle: President George W. Bush routinely called out NBC and MSNBC for blurring the line between “news” and “opinion.”

Guess who: “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.”

That would be ABC’s Jake Tapper pressing White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs today on their war on Fox News – in what may be the first a very public challenge from another news organization over the White House’s tactics.

A fresh round of attacks by White House officials aimed at Fox News took place last weekend, and with it came another batch of people writing how this is not a winning strategy – and over the line.

The Fox News official response to all this has evolved over the past couple weeks, and now serves in an interesting dual role.

There was another discussion of Glenn Beck and the Fox News vs. White House battle today on MSNBC’s Morning Joe and disagreement on the set brought some new angles to the debate.

Donny Deutsch talked about message – and the White House’s mishandling of it. And Joe Scarborough brought up some unnamed liberals who went after the Bush administration.