Just a few minutes ago I emailed a friend that I thought it was probably a good idea for Obama’s folks to take some shots at Fox News, but that “keeping it up would make him look whiny and unpresidential. He’s gotten the conversation kicked off, and that’s all he can do. He should now drop it and let everyone else keep it going.” Then I read this:
In a sign of discomfort with the White House stance, Fox’s television news competitors refused to go along with a Treasury Department effort on Tuesday to exclude Fox from a round of interviews with the executive-pay czar Kenneth R. Feinberg that was to be conducted with a “pool” camera crew shared by all the networks. That followed a pointed question at a White House briefing this week by Jake Tapper, an ABC News correspondent, about the administration’s treatment of “one of our sister organizations.”
This is really inexcusable. If the White House wants to have a public feud with Fox News, that’s fine. It’s a political decision, and they’ll either win or lose on a political basis. But excluding them from the press pool displays an appalling lack of judgment. Someone in the press office needs to take a deep breath and rethink exactly how far it’s appropriate to take this.
