Fox News: White House Apologized For Pay Czar Interview Snub “Mistake”

developing

by Steve Krakauer | 4:18 pm, October 24th, 2009

» 31 comments

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.

Fox News SVP of news and editorial programming Michael Clemente tells Mediaite the plan was to replace the Fox News interview with a Bloomberg interview instead. This was verified by an executive at another network. After the D.C. bureau chiefs at ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC and Fox News discussed the decision, and pushed back at the unprecedented move, the Treasury Department relented and allowed FNC in. And according to Clemente, the decision was made by someone at the center of the White House vs. FNC feud. “They picked up the phone and called Anita Dunn, and Dunn said, ‘Fine let Fox in,’” he says of the Treasury Department.

“It was a very absolutely clear attempt to leave Fox out,” says Clemente.

The White House apologized to FNC yesterday for the move. “We were subsequently told it was a mistake by a low level person at the Treasury Department,” says Clemente. “Major [Garrett] was told that by Robert Gibbs and others.”

In the wake of the report Thursday on Fox News, the Treasury Department, a White House spokesperson and others have raised doubts about the original story, citing the fact that FNC did conduct the interview. “That’s what ultimately happened but that’s not what the initial planning was,” says Clemente. (Mediaite reporter Tommy Christopher has been in contact with Fox News before and after the publication of this article, and they cited the CBS Evening News report added to the article, rather than commenting directly.)

CBS News D.C. bureau chief Christopher Isham also serves as the pool chair. He tells Mediaite he convened a conference call and all the bureau chiefs agreed they were not comfortable with excluding one of the members of the pool in a pool interview.

The news has gotten a reaction from around the media world – with reports from CBS News and the AP, among others. And all show, once again, the White House losing the battle it has chosen to wage with Fox News.

We asked Clemente if he sees the fight as a ‘net gain’ or ‘net loss’ for his network. No surprise here:

Net gain. It just further defines for people that we do our journalism really well, have very strong opinion shows. It would have been better I would think for the White House’s sake if this never happened, but these are decisions that are made by Anita Dunn and the press office, and we have been dealing with for over 2 weeks now, if not longer. We have to deal with it as long as have to deal with it.

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CBS News, Christopher Isham, fnc, fox news, Fox News vs. White House, Ken Feinberg, Michael Clemente, Pay Czar, White House vs. Fox News

TfT

So, the WH apologized to FNC….maybe they will stop their stupid war now. Then again, probably not.
sarainitaly

Wow, so how does Tommy feel having been lied to by the administration (treasury dept)?

Mistake my tooshy. Had the other networks not pushed back, the WH and Treasury would have gone through with their plan to exclude FOX.
ChrisNH

So, Anita, how’s all this ‘hitting back twice as hard’ going, anyway? I wonder if Rahm will be on the Sunday shows AGAIN to explain this stuff. I think they had that chance last week.
Sunnyr

These Chicago Thugs in the WH are definitely not ready for prime time. They are giving their Dear Leader very bad advice and he is stupid enough to take it. 2012 cannot come soon enough! Barry’s ratings have dropped 20% and Fox’s have increased by 20%. Doesn’t that tell you ANYTHING, Mr. Obummer?
RazorsEdge

Wait a minute Mediate! Earlier today you hade an article ” FNC’s ‘White House Bans Fox News’ Story Is Starting To Unravel -” http://www.mediaite.com/vyoff which was also tweeted about at 07:48am ET.

Article claimed Mediate had more info and that Fox took advantage of the situation and WH participation not as involved as Fox denoted.

The above link to “unravel” now a blank page, which this morning also had comments posted as well.

Now this article.

For your credibility and Integrity, should you not explain this to your readers? Would you not expect the same standards from the media (ite) you cover?

Will await. Let me/us know if I’m incorrect in my description of the discrepancy.
Jim R

Good catch, RazorsEdge, I’ve been wondering about that myself. Sure would hate to start speculating why that post and comments were entirely deleted.
hkyplayer

Hold On , Hold on!

Earlier Today you told us that Fox News was the bad guy. You said Fox News was lying and the other network heads were telling you they were not standing up for Fox but didnt want to pay pool cost!

Whats going on Mediate? are you guys not checking the stories before you post or do you want to just put up whatever you think should be the story.

I agree with RazorsEdge, You (Meditate need to explain) .
lanquihue

I know that Obama’s only a few years removed from shaking down the man in south Chicago, but many of his minions have experience on the national level. This type of behavior only makes the administration look like whiny AH’s. In addition, much of Obama’s attitude toward Fox comes from the fact that they’re coming up with all sorts of vetting problems regarding the czars and others, which many people are just learning about because of this, and are tuning Fox to see what they’re missing from the other outlets. I know of at least two people in my company who have watched Fox several times since this war started who never did before.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Ted-Silliman/1203235293 Ted Silliman

Holy crap. You idiots are spending days talking about this supposed war while we’re finalizing heathcare reform. This strategy by Obama was brilliant, the right is too stupid to know they are being played. I love it. Republicans think that this matters, when all it does is highlights how crazy and worthless you are. While you are “winning” the ratings war, we’ll keep winning the elections and run the country.
CaptainAmerica

This is totally ridiculous! Tommy has shown his extreme left wing bias numerous times around here. Also, Mediaite is all to quick to “jump” on other people and point out where they screwed up, but yet they don’t have the b***s to man up and say, hey, in our zeal to attack FNC and our usual Obama butt kissing we screwed up big time.

Just deleting it makes Mediaite seem very small. After this, they should offer a formal apology on the site!
Y314K

PLEASE CACHE OR SAVE THIS PAGE OR ANY PAGE ON HERE… IT MIGHT BE DELETED WITHOUT EXPLANATION!!!

So I leave for a few hours and come back ready to resume my web surfing just to find out that the story I wanted to comment in does not exist… I am kicking myself for not chacheing or saving it…

Tommy Christopher… Where is your “FNC’s ‘White House Bans Fox News’ Story Is Starting To Unravel” story… I had even saved the link so I could resume what I wanted to do when I got back…

http://www.mediaite.com/online/foxs-white-house-bans-fox-news-story-completely-unravels/
(has anybody found or have a cache of this link)

Are there any editors or grownups in charge at Mediaite… Do all their readers need to watch their backs cause things go missing without a peep… I would understand if the page where the story was would have an explanation why it’s no longer there… But to just take it down as it never existed is just wrong and destroys any trust I can ever have at Mediate… Guess this will be my last post here… Tommy Christopher, I hope that indefensible made up story will get you the WH seal of approval and and invitation to the next WH strategy meeting…

As for his story.. This is what I got to say…

“We were subsequently told it was a mistake by a low level person at the Treasury Department,” says Clemente. – What… It was a mistake for WhiteHouse personel to pay attention & act on what they have been hearing for more then 2 weeks… Including by the big O… That FoxNews “is not a real news organization” That the WH will not give Foxnews interviews cause they are nothing more then talk radio… Yeah.. That sure was a mistake… Doing what you said you would do is just a mistake… My Bad… BS…

“(Mediaite reporter Tommy Christopher has been in contact with Fox News before and after the publication of this article, and they cited the CBS Evening News report added to the article, rather than commenting directly.)” – Yet Tommy Christopher had no problems posting a BS story trying to shift the blame on the victim of a possible mugging cause according to him, and the WH…. Nothing was stolen… Never mind that a knife or gun was brandish… And that it took everybody around FoxNews to agree to step in the stop the mugging from coming to pass… And then instead of just leaving the story live… And just putting an addendum explaining how that story come to be so wrong… Mediaite just gives us the finger & poof… Nothing happen, nothing to see here…

All news organizations make mistakes… And to be able to keep the trust of their customers they need to be able to fix those errors within a story… Specially when it’s not a gray area. I guess Mediaite is not a real news organization… It’s just a another site with BS that can just be brushed under the rug when it becomes expedient…

Gonna end my last post at Mediaite by explaining an error I made… Yesterday I signed up to be able comment at Mediaite via HotAir… That was a mistake… And I would like to apologize to myself & anybody that might of read my posts for making that mistake… It was all just a waste of time…
RazorsEdge

FYI Mediaite readers. You can find the deleted Mediate Tommy Christopher – Fox News’ ‘White House Bans Fox News’ Story Is Starting To Unravel” Here:

Google’s cached page backup:
http://74.125.155.132/search?hl=en&q=cache%3Awww.mediaite.com%2Fonline%2Ffoxs-white-house-bans-fox-news-story-completely-unravels%2F&btnG=Search

or http://tinyurl.com/ykzegh2

If you feel fundamentally correct thing to do that Mediaite correct the unravel story or to explain why the story is in conflict with the above story from Steve Krakauer or to just EXPLAIN why the unravel story was deleted (especially if you’re passionate about ethical journalism and at core what Mediaite’s service is), please comment or email mediaite at info@mediaite.com or tweet to @mediaite or @danielabrams – founder/publisher of mediaite.com
sarainitaly

I thought I had read a story like that here. I came back and only found the one linked above. You’re right…there was one about FOX’s story unraveling.

What’s up with that?
Ben Linus

I remember reading it too.
I found part of it:
Fox News’ ‘White House Bans Fox News’ Story Is Starting To Unravel
by Tommy Christopher | 7:29 am, October 24th, 2009

In the so-called “war” between Fox News and the White House, it looks like the Obama administration has scored a much-needed victory.
On Thursday night, Fox News ran a shocking report that the “Obama administration” had “contacted the White House pool” and made executive pay czar Kenneth Feinberg available for round-robin interviews, “but specified that all members of the pool were welcome except Fox News.” They billed it as the Obama administration’s “first concrete step” in the direction of treating Fox News Channel like it’s not a real news organization.

The report went on to say that the bureau chiefs of the 5 networks in the TV pool decided that none of them would interview Feinberg unless Fox was included, and that “the administration relented,” making Feinberg available to all 5 networks and Bloomberg TV. A Fox News panel then went on to debate the White House’s attempt to “ban” Fox from the interviews.

Through our own reporting, and the reporting of others, 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.

That’s all I could find.
ChrisNH

Ted Silliman: “We’re finalizing health care reform.’ Who is this ‘we’ you speak of, and how close to ‘finalizing’ do you think ‘you’ really are? That was pretty funny. Certain people would like to suggest that health care reform is close to being ‘finalized,’ but you surely know that isn’t the case.
Ben Linus

I found a few more pieces:
Last night, Mediaite was first to learn that the Treasury Department denied the story, telling us “There was no plot to exclude Fox News, and they had the same interview that their competitors did. Much ado about absolutely nothing.” Now, TPM is reporting that the Treasury Department did omit Fox News from a list of networks requesting an interview with Feinberg because Fox didn’t request one.

The press bulletin for the event stated, “This is a pen and pad briefing only; no cameras or recording devices for broadcast purposes will be allowed.” The requests for on-camera interviews were a special request.

The White House, for its part, isn’t looking to make nice with Fox News, telling TPM “This White House has demonstrated our willingness to exclude Fox News from newsmaking interviews, but yesterday we did not.” While the Obama administration’s handling of Fox News has veered into heavy-handedness recently, this episode should help to quell the notion that the White House is just picking on Fox’s opinion hosts.
Colby Hall

There were two stories about the Ken Feinberg interview that we initially published by Tommy Christopher – both were solid in their reporting.

The first was a straight news item that first reported that the Treasury department denied any plot in keeping Fox News out of the press pool interviews with Ken Feinberg. This was based on a direct quote from the Treasury Department that Tommy reported himself.

The second was on opinion piece that claimed that Fox News “story was starting to unravel” and focused on how FNC’s initial reports of the slight were incomplete and self-serving. That post was originally published before key information came to light – information that changes some significant points of that post. Specifically, it does not appear now that the story is “starting to unravel” as the headline claims, rather, the story has changed since its first reporting by Fox.

To be clear, Mediaite gave Fox News every opportunity to share their side of the story all day Friday. Fox News, never made clear that they had requested the interview with Ken Feinberg – a question that we had sent to FNC almost as soon as we learned of the story. In fact, their initial reports curiously omitted that point, which we felt to be a significant part of the story. They did not share that Robert Gibbs call to Major Garret until Saturday afternoon. Once we got that part of the story, we immediately published “Fox News: White House Apologized For Pay Czar Interview Snub “Mistake”.

There is nothing in either of these two stories that is factually incorrect. The second piece was published w/o a key point from Fox News. Once they provided that information, we published this post as the story developed.

As for the second post – it is not deleted, its been updated and corrected with better information. I personally spoke with a Fox News spokesperson and promised to take down the second piece until we could update it and correct the record. Which we’ve done and its now up.

Thanks for paying so close attention to what we do here at Mediaite. We are happy to provide opinions on news stories as they break – and as they evolve very quickly, our opinions are bound to evolve as well.

Colby Hall
Managing Editor
lanquihue

So a pro-Obama reporter pulled a Rather. Big deal. They seem to have retracted it, so why play gotcha games?
Jim R

I appreciate the clarification, Mr. Hall, especially since the “unraveling” story appeared to confirm my initial suspicions that some were too readily adopting the martyred victim posture.

Leaving aside whether post deletion and subsequent re-posting is a commonly accepted practice, I would have found it more useful for the post to remain up with revised titles, and/or updates within the post.

I would have updated my comments with the observation that Fox was excluded and subsequent denials by the White House lacked credibility and I was wrong to jump to any conclusions.

Particularly in light of the just announced new posture by the WH against what they consider to be a partisan foe; not that there’s anything wrong that.

I, for one, disagree with the conventional wisdom that the WH shouldn’t have picked this fight,but that’s for another day
.
Colby Hall

Hi Jim – I appreciate your thoughts and in a perfect world, we’d probably served our selves better by revising the post in real time. That said, this went down on a weekend, and availabilities are not what they typically are during a weekday. In the interest of correcting the record, it seemed most expedient (and fair to all involved) to take down the post and re-post with clarifications, rather than let it remain published uncorrected.

As a side note, I do think that there is room for legitimate criticism for the manner that Fox News initially reported this story. But that criticism is also probably best left for another day
Eshvish

Mr. Hall,

I’m still confused by the story being presented here. The plot line indicates that the White House did indeed exclude the Fox News from the access pool interview when they asked to replace them with Bloomberg TV. Then the supposed excuse by Gibbs is that a lower Treasury staff made a mistake! How is that even pertain to the initial statement? If they asked for exclusion of Fox News, then why is the staff is being exhibited as the culprit? Are you suggesting that when the staff made a mistake, they came out and asked the pool members to voluntarily replace Fox with some other network? That does not make much sense to me.

The Treasury officials come and say ‘x,’ ‘y,’ and ‘z’ are to be granted an interview; the pool members contend that what about ‘w’? The officials claim ‘w’ is not on the list, in return, the pool laments that we don’t do interview without ‘w’. Now the Treasury asks to replace ‘w’ with ‘a’ which again is refused by the pool members. The inquisition for replacement clearly shows that the White House had intended to exclude ‘w’ from the beginning. Can you elaborate on why the staffer is being blamed here?

P.S. The Admin has every right to exclude whoever they deem unfit for an interview — I have no problem with that. In this case, due to legal arrangement, they either had to provide accommodation for everyone or none at all.
TfT

No admin folks on any Sunday talk show today to continue their war on FNC. Either they are going to continue it silently, pass the baton to the DNC, or stop the idiocy. Only time will tell.
Sunnyr

Pffftt! Anyone who believes this tripe is either brain dead or a true Obamabot. When the WH Press Corp refused to go along with the “ban” of Fox News, they knew they had overstepped their bounds. Obama’s poll numbers are in the tank and Fox News’s numbers have increased by 20% or more. The White House has seen the hand-writing on the wall and I expect they will drop their silly jihad and start acting like adults for a change.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Alexander-Ryking/100000046046951 Alexander Ryking

“White House Insists Gibbs Didn’t Apologize To Fox:” http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/10/white-house-insists-gibbs-didnt-apologize-to-fox.php?ref=mp.

Read it and weep, right-wing simpletons.
Dandee

I wonder who, IF anyone did REALLY apologize? IF so, you can bet your life it wasn’t the president. As many things that he has done wrong, by NEVER keeping a single promise, he will NEVER apologize for anything. The reason for this is that he thinks he NEVER has or WILL do anything wrong!
RazorsEdge

OK, MEDIAITE!

I Think You have contributed to confuse readers to What’s is truth or fact surrounding this story! Which is it, WH apoligized/admitted mistake, WH did not, the Fox WH ban story “completely unravels” (URL title)?

“I think” it’s fair to state readers just want to know the facts and truth on what’s going on with this story.

Now shouldn’t Mediaite issue a correction to this story: http://www.mediaite.com/tv/white-house-admits-to-fox-news-pay-czar-interview-exclusion-a-mistake/ by Steve Kraukauer and Updates made by Colby Hall?

This story now has updates that conflict with SKraukauer story – http://www.mediaite.com/columnists/foxs-white-house-bans-fox-news-story-completely-unravels/#comment-7792

Right now, Mediaite is currently running two stories with multiple updates on this very subject that CONFLICTS each other.

MediaiteEditor, can you clear up?
http://www.facebook.com/people/Stacy-Phillips/1451221761 Stacy Phillips

White House Insists Gibbs Didn’t Apologize To Fox

After TPMDC posted Friday about the latest in the Fox News v. White House saga related to an interview with Ken Feinberg, a Fox executive stood firm to say the White House had excluded the network.

Several readers brought a Huffington Post story to our attention this weekend. They have an interview with Fox VP Michael Clemente where he claims White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs apologized for the situation.

I spoke to a Fox media relations aide this morning with another interview request for Clemente or the D.C. bureau chief. The aide referred us to this story in Mediaite, which also features Clemente saying Gibbs apologized. The aide would not make him available for an interview.

I circled back again, and a White House official was adamant that Gibbs did not apologize. The official insists that doesn’t make any sense, since Fox got the interview and there would be no need for an apology.

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/10/white-house-insists-gibbs-didnt-apologize-to-fox.php

Tsk…tsk…Media-ite you really should do some back checking before you quote Fox, they lie all the time…is it any wonder the majority of their viewers think Saddam attacked the U.S. on 9/11 and Bush/Cheney found those mythical WMD’s in Iraq…fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me ;)
http://www.facebook.com/people/Stacy-Phillips/1451221761 Stacy Phillips

Dandee, Bush is not president anymore ;)
ImNotBlue

Facts and evidence never get in the way of a bashing FOX… even when it’s blatantly untrue. Quote a site that is found to be wrong… one might be embarrassed. The haters, on the other hand, just return because they WANT to believe. The truth is meaningless, when you WANT to believe.

Ugh. How sad.
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