White House Administration escalates war on U.S. News Network

CrackerJax said:

When I was in high school I had a buddy who was Polish. His dad had this wickedly huge walrus mustache not unlike the OC chopper dude on TV. Kind of looked like him too...big family. So anyway one Xmas they put up their tree and the next day I go in the living room and it was a massive tree except it was too tall for the ceiling. What did they do? Why they chopped the top flush to the ceiling. It looked like it was going straight on up and through.

I just stared at it as my buddy explained its size being a problem.... I was like...dude, why didn't you trim some lower branches and trim the bottom.... All I got back was a stare.

Polish....

Click to expand...

I'm dating a Polish girl. I like to give her crap for having been born a Commy (Poland was communist until 1989)

Oh sure, I had another friend that was raised in Poland... some of his stories...lawdy... ppl going blind from bathtub vodka...

Democratic consultant says he got a warning from White House after appearing on Fox News

'We better not see you on again,' the strategist says he was told by a White House official. The White House communications director denies that officials urge such a boycott.



By Peter Nicholas November 8, 2009


Reporting from Washington - At least one Democratic political strategist has gotten a blunt warning from the White House to never appear on Fox News Channel, an outlet that presidential aides have depicted as not so much a news-gathering operation as a political opponent bent on damaging the Obama administration.

The Democratic strategist said that shortly after an appearance on Fox, he got a phone call from a White House official telling him not to be a guest on the show again. The call had an intimidating tone, he said.

The message was, "We better not see you on again," said the strategist, who spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to run afoul of the White House. An implicit suggestion, he said, was that "clients might stop using you if you continue."

White House Communications Director Anita Dunn said that she had checked with colleagues who "deal with TV issues" and that they had not told people to avoid Fox. On the contrary, they had urged people to appear on the network, Dunn wrote in an e-mail.

But Patrick Caddell, a Fox News contributor and former pollster for President Carter, said he had spoken to Democratic consultants who said they were told by the White House to avoid appearances on Fox. He declined to give their names.

Caddell said he had not gotten that message himself from the White House.

He added: "I have heard that they've done that to others in not too subtle ways. I find it appalling. When the White House gets in the business of suppressing dissent and comment, particularly from its own party, it hurts itself."

Some observers say White House officials might be urging consultants to spurn Fox to isolate the network and make it appear more partisan. A boycott by Democratic strategists could help drive the White House narrative that Fox is a fundamentally different creature than the other TV news networks.

White House officials appear on Fox News, but sporadically and with their "eyes wide open," as one aide put it.

David Axelrod, senior advisor to the president, appeared on Fox News Channel last week to talk about the results of Tuesday's off-year elections. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton also appeared on the network last week.

Still, the White House has on occasion avoided or taken an adversarial position toward Fox. When President Obama appeared on five talk shows one Sunday in September, he avoided Fox.

Last month, Dunn told CNN that Fox has acted, in effect, as an "arm" of the Republican Party. "Let's not pretend they're a news network the way CNN is," she said.

As the dust-up played out, Fox's senior vice president of news, Michael Clemente, countered: "Surprisingly, the White House continues to declare war on a news organization instead of focusing on the critical issues that Americans are concerned about like jobs, healthcare and two wars."

Fox's commentators have been sharply critical of the Obama administration.

After the president was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, Sean Hannity, who has a prime-time show on Fox, said he got the award for "trashing America."

Fox's audience is by far the largest of the cable networks, with an average of more than 2.1 million viewers in prime time this year, according to the Nielsen Co. CNN is second, with 932,000 prime-time viewers.

The White House's critical stance toward the network leaves some Democrats troubled.

Don Fowler, a former Democratic National Committee chairman, said in an interview: "This approach is out of sync with my conception of what the Obama administration stands for and what they're trying to do.

"I think they'll think better of it and this will be a passing phase."


THIS IS FROM THE L.A. TIMES. ONE OF THE SUBVERSIVE PAPERS...

does this look familiar??

June 29, 2006
From The Times

Bush camp attacks newspaper 'treason'




GEORGE BUSH and Dick Cheney are calling The New York Times a disgrace, Republican congressmen say it is guilty of treason and demand the prosecution of the Editor, while a right-wing radio presenter suggests most of its readers must be “jihadists”. They never need much encouragement to attack America’s most venerable title which is, at least in critics’ eyes, a beacon for antiwar sentiment.
But this time the anger is palpably stronger. The newspaper’s offence was to publish an article revealing that the US Administration had kept tabs on suspected terrorists by tapping into bank records which track global transactions.
“What we did was fully authorised under the law,” said President Bush. “And the disclosure of this is disgraceful. We’re at war with a bunch of people who want to hurt the United States of America, and for people to leak that programme, and for a newspaper to publish it, does great harm.”
Tony Snow, the White House press secretary, said that the measures had proved their worth by helping to catch the mastermind of the Bali bombing as well as possibly “tracking down some of those who have been responsible in planning the subway bombings and the bus bombings in London”.
Republicans in the House of Representatives prepared to table a motion yesterday condemning the newspaper.
Peter King, a Republican congressman from New York, demanded that the newspaper, which he said had an “arrogant, elitist, left-wing agenda”, be prosecuted for violating the 1917 Espionage Act. Rush Limbaugh, the right-wing shock-jock, said: “I think 80 per cent of their subscribers have to be jihadists. If you look at The New York Times . . . it’s clear that they’re trying to help the terrorists.”
Newt Gingrich, the former House Speaker, said: “You would think that The New York Times, located on the same island where the World Trade Centre once existed, would have some residual memory of 9/11. My sense is that they hate George W. Bush so much that they would be prepared to cripple America in order to go after the President.”
The relish with which American conservatives pour vitriol on liberal papers is matched only by the pleasure that the often self-regarding media derive from talking about themselves. The New York Times ran an editorial yesterday entitled “Patriotism and the Press” which declared: “The free press has a central place in the Constitution because it can provide information the public needs to make things right again.”
The editorial likened today’s atmosphere to the McCarthy era when “a half-century ago the country endured a long, amorphous global vigilance against an enemy who was suspected of boring from within”. It argued that the report had exposed “an alarming pattern” in which Mr Bush cited security imperatives to bypass checks and balances, adding that the fight against terrorism had to be coupled with a commitment to defend individual liberties.
The newspaper was criticised last year for endangering national security after disclosing how Mr Bush had, possibly illegally, authorised eavesdropping on thousands of telephone calls made by Americans.
PRESS FREEDOM
John Adams (1797-1801): During French Revolutionary War he signed Alien and Sedition Acts, making it illegal to criticise the President or Congress. Several editors arrested and indicted
Abraham Lincoln (1861-65): During civil war he enforced mail and press censorship. Military arrested editors who opposed the war and suspended publication of some newspapers
Theodore Roosevelt (1901-09): The New York World alleged corruption in acquisition of the Panama Canal. Publisher was charged with criminal libel
Richard Nixon (1969-74): The New York Times published excerpts of secret study on expanding military actions in Vietnam. Injunction prohibiting paper from printing any more was lifted by Supreme Court...




the white house will always have something against the media...

It's a matter of degrees. Every White House administration has tried to deal with opposing media.... though no one has ever been actually threatened...... UNTIL NOW!

The Bush article you mention had to do with terminology. Obama is about having ANY Democrat go on a particular news program... BIG DIFFERENCE!

Another first from the Presidency of Hope, change, and TRANSPARENCY.

the president isn't threatened... the president is annoyed...

fox news doesn't invite any democrat... they invite some democrats....

It's about attitude. it's about silencing dissent....Chavez style. It's about patterns of incompetence followed calling it success by silencing the reality of the situation.

Phuck Fox and his azz better not appear on that cartoon again...period...next..

Spoken like a person who understands liberty for all.

Obama is quickly becoming a international disgrace.