White House advisers pledged on Sunday to book administration officials on Fox News despite claims by the president’s inner circle that the cable television network is a Republican mouthpiece whose programming “is geared toward making money.”
Last week, White House communications director Anita Dunn said Fox News operates “almost as either the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party.”
On Sunday, US President Barack Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, said: “It is not a news organization so much as it has a perspective.”
In response to the criticism, Fox News executive Michael Clemente on Sunday accused the White House of continuing to “declare war on a news organization” rather than focusing on issues such as jobs and healthcare.
“The door remains open and we welcome a discussion about the facts behind the issues,” Clemente, senior vice president of news, said in a written statement.
Fox News commentators Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly are strong Obama critics.
Obama avoided Fox News Sunday when he visited five Sunday morning news shows last month; three aides carried the administration’s message on Afghanistan, healthcare and the economy this Sunday to ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC, but not Fox; and a recent White House blog post accused Beck of lying. Beck has called Obama a racist.
Karl Rove, a Fox News contributor and former White House adviser to president George W. Bush, said the Obama administration is trying to demonize Fox News for asking questions officials do not like.
He compared Obama’s approach to that of late president Richard Nixon, who included journalists on an “enemies list.”
“This is a White House engaging in its own version of the media enemies list,” Rove said. “And it’s unhelpful for the country and undignified for the president of the United States to so do.”
Appearing on ABC television’s This Week, senior Obama adviser David Axelrod said Fox News shouldn’t be treated as a news organization.
“And the bigger thing is that other news organizations, like yours, ought not to treat them that way, and we’re not going to treat them that way,” he said.
Still, Axelrod said administration officials would appear on the channel.
He shrugged off News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch’s remark to shareholders last Friday that since the White House began criticizing Fox News commentators, their ratings had risen.
“You know, I’m not concerned. Mr Murdoch has a talent for making money and I understand that their programming is geared toward making money,” Axelrod said. “The only argument Anita was making is that they’re not really a news station.”
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