Anderson Cooper: Media vs. Obama

You know "the White House's anti-Fox News campaign has gone seriously wrong," said Lachlan Markay in News Busters, when, on CNN, Anderson Cooper compares Barack Obama to Richard Nixon. (Watch) Cooper's comparison of the Obama and Nixon administrations was "lukewarm," but "if more of the mainstream media follow his lead, it could be trouble for Obama."

The other networks have already joined in, said Allahpundit in Hot Air, by "standing up to the Baby-in-Chief" when the White House tried to freeze out Fox News reporters from a press pool interview with pay czar Kenneth Feinberg. Fox's media defenders deserve praise, but don't think they were unaware that "if they had acquiesced in this freezeout, a precedent would have been set that would have been eagerly used by future Republican presidents to close them off too."

What hypocrites, said Glenn Greenwald in Salon. The networks are now whining in unison that the White House is trying to "control the media" by criticizing Fox News as something other than a news organization. But the same people now repeating right-wing attacks on President Obama—"it's Nixonian!"—were happy to sit back and be bullied and controlled by the Bush administration.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.

Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.

Sign up

"The Bush administration, in eight years, conducted more abuses to the field of journalism than anyone I can recall," said John Cole in Balloon Juice. It paid Armstrong Williams and other commentators to write favorable opinion columns. It used reporters to out a CIA agent, and kicked New York Times reporters off its planes. It even had Ari Fleischer tell everyone, mainly reporters, to "watch what they say." All the Obama White House did was "state the obvious" —that Fox's news isn't news, it's Republican opinion.