Flashback: The White House Criticizing News Networks Is Old Hat
For all the talk about President Obama’s 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” — that is, complain a bit about bias or unfairness in the hopes that next time, they’ll cut you a bit of slack. 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 failing to differentiate between “news” and “opinion.”
On May 20th, 2008, Bush’s Press Secretary Dana Perino fielded a question from Fox News about “the back-and-forth between you guys [the White House] and NBC News” about the semantic issue of calling battles in Iraq a “civil war.” Perino, in proto-Robert Gibbs fashion, responded by stating, “We have not heard back from them on that specific matter. We anxiously await any response that we would get on it. But I think it’s quite telling that they have been silent.” DailyKosTV has video of the entire exhange.
Perino also spoke about NBC News unfairly editing the president’s comments, referring to segments airing a few days prior about Iraq. The day before Perino’s answer, Counselor to the President Ed Gillespie sent a letter to NBC News President Steve Capus insisting the network air the president’s full remarks. He wrote:
This deceitful editing to further a media-manufactured storyline is utterly misleading and irresponsible and I hereby request in the interest of fairness and accuracy that the network air the President’s responses to both initial questions in full on the two programs that used the excerpts.
Gillespie continued with a more pointed attack: “Mr. Capus, I’m sure you don’t want people to conclude that there is really no distinction between the ‘news’ as reported on NBC and the ‘opinion’ as reported on MSNBC, despite the increasing blurring of those lines.”
Hm… “deceitful,” “fairness,” “accuracy,” “news” and “opinion” — it all sounds very familiar. This, of course, is only one example of eight years worth of jockeying. And then there’s the response — we’re seeing it now from Fox, but we saw it then from MSNBC!
MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann was livid at the idea of the White House attacking the media, which he saw as an attack on Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press and Freedom of Dissent. Check out a vintage Olbermann special comment on the issue, below:
16 comments
ImNotBlue says: Two points:
1) As I mentioned in another thread today, pointedly going after a news network for a SPECIFIC bit of bias (as your examples show) is part of the normal back-and-forth between the White House and the media. The difference between the current attacks, and the previous ones, is that this is a blanket attack, with no specific focus, no specific “outrage,” just an unfocused effort to silence ALL criticism. There is a big difference.
2) Yet again, video evidence and logic collide, proving Olbermann will do and say anything, despite the overt and blatant hypocrisy contained within.
Here’s another example from this week…
Olbermann recently met with Obama… yet, back in 2006 he said the following on his program after Hannity (and others) met with Bush:
“The born again and the born talkers: The President takes 90 minutes worth of your taxpayer dollars to entertain right-wing radio yack-ers in the Oval Office,”
and…
“In January, the President consulted with 13 former Secretaries of State and Defense about Iraq, spoke for 40 minutes, allowed discussion for 5 to 10 minutes. The figures for the 5 conservative radio show people is double that. Is there an explanation of that that does not include the President using the Oval Office for purely political purposes and even indirectly for political fund-raising?”
Why he feels it’s acceptable to be such a gigantic hypocrite, IMO says a lot about how he views his audience. Someone who respected their audience would feel self-conscious about this stuff… but KO knows that the audience is just going to eat it up because it’s so pro-Liberal, it doesn’t need to make sense. In other words, KO thinks his audience is too stupid to notice or care.
Zakk says: So when a news organization doctors footage of an interview with the President and the White House says, hey! You doctored that footage, you should show what really happened – that is somehow compared to the White House stating ‘you are not a real news organization’? What exactly is the reason for the WH stating FOX is not a news organization? What is the example they are using? Because according to your article above, the Bush WH had a reason to be upset with MSNBC. They doctored a video!
CaptainAmerica says: Does anyone even bother to check the articles submitted before they are published? Why is this even supposedly “news” or a “flashback”?
This is apples and oranges.
Specific examples given by the White House compared to the b.s. of what the White House is doing these days.
Why are you wasting the bandwidth with this nonsense?
Yea, what these three said!
How dare the President get upset when a network edits and falsely reports what he said!
And Olbermann is disgusting.
m says: >What exactly is the reason for the WH stating FOX is not a news organization?
Opinion. The same argument Fox News uses in its defense against that claim.
Jim R says: At least when Bush banned the New York Times from his plane and refused to grant them an interview, he allowed Cheney to keep the Judith Miller false intelligence pipeline open so they’d have something to lie about on the Sunday shows.
Of course, the Times kept it’s “Bush illegally spying on Americans” story under wraps until after the 04′ elections in hopes of currying favor with the Republicans, but alas to no avail.
I guess Obama will have to check on the Republican playbook of planting faux reporters in news conferences, paying “independent columnists” to write favorable stories of their policies, staging mock news conferences with FEMA employees, planting ex-military officers with vested interests as “independent” war advisors on news networks, etc.
Obama’s guys need to call in Ari Fleischer on how to warn people “to watch what they say”, they’re just new to this game and need a little help from the propaganda pros!
Zakk says: I think it’s a legitimate defense.
All three networks to opinion after 5, what’s the big deal? I don’t think FOX has tried to hide the fact that Beck, O’Relly, Hannity or Greta are opinion. Hell, it’s not like any of those three were ANCHORING the presidential elections.
So, I ask again, what was the catalyst for this attack on FOX? Was it one particular story where FOX edited some footage or was it when Beck showed VanJones to be a truther? Or, was it when the opinion people started to point out all of the problems with the healthcare bill?
I still believe that the entire fight is BS and the WH is just trying to distract from their own problems.
m says: >Hell, it’s not like any of those three were ANCHORING the presidential elections.
Brit Hume anchored. He is a conservative, not non-partisan. He writes for the conservative Weekly Standard.
>So, I ask again, what was the catalyst for this attack on FOX?
About every single thing Fox News has done since 1996.
TfT says: I’m glad the other networks finally stood up to the One and told him to stuff it regarding excluding (or trying to) FNC from the pool report interview with the Pay Czar.
I though for sure that would be a big headline here.
Obama lost this battle, I hope he moves on now. The game today was a play too foul.
StewartIII says: NewsBusters: Olbermann Slammed Bush Administration For Criticizing NBC
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2009/10/22/olbermann-criticized-bush-adminstrations-rebuke-nbc
matt111 says: Yeah, Olbermann is foul and boring. So are Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck and the people who take them seriously. Idiots come from both the left and the right.
LOL, the people here claiming it’s apples and oranges are looking at one example of the Bush admin’s criticism of the media (a tree) and ignoring the forest. Silly…
rmbltmbl says: Beck and Hannity plainly say they are conservative, as opposed to Olbermann denying any bias (hack). I love the lack of examples in all this nonsense from top admin. officials and now Obama.. All they can come up is words like perspective and talk radio, how about some facts? And what kind of priority is this???
m says: >Beck and Hannity plainly say they are conservative, as opposed to Olbermann denying any bias (hack).
Last time I checked Beck claimed to be independent and a “libertarian” – every time he says “Democrats” he has to add “and Republicans too” in order to further his faux non-partisan independence. He’s a conservative down to the bone.
O’Reilly claims somehow he’s independent too by calling himself “a traditionalist” (which basically is conservatism with another name) – not mentioning that he’s a registered Republican: http://www.oreilly-sucks.com/images/registration1.jpg O’Reilly is a conservative down to the bone.
Olbermann? He has called himself a liberal on air multiple times.
timzank says: The difference is, NBC and MSNBC label themselves as journalists reporting the news. Beck & Hannity make no such claims. They are admittedly “opinion” shows by pundits.
ImNotBlue says: m says:
October 23, 2009 at 9:17 am
It’s a good thing we have you around to tell other people what they really believe.
Oh, and by the way… Olbermann, just this week, said on his show that he “sometimes does opinion,” but mostly presents the facts. And has said numerous times that he’s not biased, he’s “just right.” Your selective outrage is hardly suprising… but thankfully, it’s hardly convincing either.
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