In a counterattack against the efforts by the White House and its minions in the mainstream media to eradicate Fox News, Kirtsten Powers, a liberal who works for Fox News, pulls no punches about how serious the situation is, saying, “There is no war on terror for the Obama White House, but there is one on Fox News …what the Obama administration is doing, and what liberals are funding at MMFA is beyond chilling – it’s a deep freeze.”
Powers starts by quoting Obama’s recent diatribe to Chris Hughes of The New Republic (TNR) that “if a Republican member of Congress is not punished on Fox News … for working with a Democrat on a bill of common interest, then you’ll see more of them doing it.” Then she segues to the methods Obama is using to silence dissent:
Leaving Fox News out of conference calls regarding the Benghazi 9/11 attack, even though Fox was the only news organization regularly following it;
Cutting Chris Wallace’s “Fox News Sunday” from a group including CNN, NBC, ABC and CBS that did White House interviews, denying that Fox was a “legitimate” network, which was a meme David Axelrod coined in 2009 when he said that Fox was “not really a news station.”
Anita Dunn, who was White House Communications Director in 2009, telling the New York Times, “[W]e don’t need to pretend that this is the way that legitimate news organizations behave.” She blasted Fox on CNN, too, calling Fox a “wing of the Republican Party … let’s not pretend they’re a news network the way CNN is.”
The mouth organ and attack dog of Obama’s White House, Media Matters, echoing Dunn in a 2010 memo: “Fox News is not a news organization. It is the de facto leader of the GOP, and it is long past time that it is treated as such by the media, elected officials and the public.” Media Matters’ CEO, David Brock saying in 2011 that his strategy using his 90 employees and $10 million per year was a “war on Fox.” He even boasted, “In recent days, a new level of scrutiny has been directed toward Fox News, in no small part due to statements from the White House, and from Media Matters, challenging its standing as a news organization.”
A Media Matters’ memo outlines their frustration at not decimating Fox entirely, muttering of the “pervasive unwillingness among members of the media to officially kick Fox News to the curb of the press club …” and “an expansive view of legal precedent protecting the freedom of the press, and the progressive movement’s own commitment to the First Amendment” as well as “consider[ing] pushing prominent progressives to stop appearing on Fox News.” Their plan is to recruit elite media figures to condemn Fox while targeting conservatives for “slanderous” remarks made about the Leftist media with a legal fund.
Powers writes that CBS, whose political director has stated that Obama should “pulverize” the GOP, is, of course, a favorite Obama watering hole, as exemplified by the recent 60 Minutes interview with Obama and Hillary Clinton. She concludes by quoting Rolling Stone editor Michael Hastings noting he had seen a reporter attempting to get Obama’s attention by using a sock puppet:
That’s the effect of Obama, even on the press corps, even on the people who follow him every day. When they are near him, they lose their minds sometimes. They start behaving in ways, you know, that are juvenile and amateurish, and they swoon.
Swooning for Obama. Brought to you by the nice folks at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.