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[ManintheMiddle]

President Obama has a beef with FoxNews. Although his administration is just 19 weeks old, he's sniped at the cable news network on at least a dozen public occasions already, most recently in a roomful of "Glowbama" journalists at the White House Correspondents Dinner and yesterday in an inteview with John Harwood, of CNBC's "Closing Bell." His Press Secretary, of course, has also gotten in his jabs at several press conferences.

Which begs the question: Why is this President allowing himself to be so pestered by a single news network?

Is it that he can't take the heat in the proverbial kitchen because he's accustomed to positive press coverage the vast majority of the time?

Is it that he's thin-skinned, as some politicos have suggested?

Or is he a little fearful of the viewership numbers FoxNews racks up week in and week out, outcompeting all its cable news competitors and often even the Big Three who have the benefit of a wider audience because they're free of charge?

Or is it something deeper?

At the risk of pseudo-psychoanalysis of the current occupant of the White House, I'd venture to say it's a bit of all of these things and something else that no one is talking about openly although I'll wager more than a few are thinking, especially at FoxNews, and that is Obama's reaction is the expected end point of minority entitlement.

The "slobbering love affair," as award-winning former CBS senior reporter Bernard Goldberg has coined it, shows no signs of abating despite the last flicker of post-election afterglow. Obama is getting favorable press on a scale that hasn't been seen since JFK, who was the master at chumming it up with the Fourth Estate.

I maintain he's literally grown so accustomed to a positive reception from nearly everyone around him that he chafes at the mere mention of dissent. It's part ego but a larger part entitlement that comes with being a genuinely articulate, ambitious, self-confident Black man among mostly liberal followers who have been craving for such an individual to rise to prominence in American politics. While on the surface there's nothing really wrong with that, one has to wonder how much of the praise heaped on him in the past would have been tempered had he been White. There's a fine line between praise and fawning and the press seems to have crossed over long ago. Last week, Brian Williams of NBC actually gave the President a half-bow as they parted company after an interview.

And Newsweek has had his mug on its cover 19 times since 2004, causing even Bill Maher, no Bush supporter, to skew Obama for his celebrity status. "I keep picking up Newsweek magazines and there's Barack Obama, he is the cover, and I'm just wondering how many covers of Newsweek can you actually be on?" said Phil Bronstein, editor at large for the San Francisco Chronicle. "Because I think we have probably gone past whatever previous limit there was for Newsweek."

Obama has openly admitted as much, joking at the White House Dinner about having the mainstream media in his court to an immediate response of nervous laughter. Every step of the way from his senatorial days he's been encouraged to the point of adulation. He was propped up as the beacon of hope before he found the audacity of hope.

Even in his memoir by the same title he almost mocks the press coverage he received as a first-term senator from Illinois:

"For a three-year span, from the time that I announced my candidacy for the Senate to the end of my first year as a senator, I was the beneficiary of unusually - and at times undeservedly - positive press coverage," Obama wrote. "No doubt some of this had to do with my status as an underdog in my Senate primary, as well as my novelty as a black candidate with an exotic background."

Obama admitted that his "style of communicating," which is often "rambling," may have also found him "sympathy in the literary class." But his oratory is dazzling mostly to non-Blacks who haven't spent any time in a Black Baptist church.

And next week he will get a two hour Blue Room ABC News Primetime Special with Charles Gibson. ABC News refused not only to allow Republican ads for the event but to include conservative journalists. This sort of thing was never granted the former president, or any president in living memory, for that matter.

Of course there will be those journalists who insist that they're motivated solely by concern for the economic woes facing the nation but much was the case under both Nixon after the OPEC oil embargo and later Carter with rapid inflation.

It's one thing to want a sitting president to succeed for the sake of the country and quite another to shield him from tough questioning. The American Medical Association and several groups representing most doctors have already come out against much of the proposed health care legislation. But are they getting air time with the mainstream media?

It will be interesting to see how Obama fares in the media if the economy keeps going south in a big way and if the stimulus plan is perceived as just mounting up more debt for future generations, which is the opposition's charge already.

But what I want to know is whether any liberal out there on this forum can give a rational explanation as to why Obama finds it necessary to harp on the lone network to present dissent?

[bacasper]

As the front man for both the Dem and Rep wings of the Property Party, Obushama must do what he has been placed, as evidenced by your astute noting of all the positive press he has gotten from his political beginning and all the times he has covered Newsweek, there to do: oversee the final and complete immiseration of the working people of the country in obeisance to their slavemaster/warlord/captains of capital bosses as their system winds down in the last gasps of its dying throes.

To accomplish this requires strict control of ALL the mass media because ANY major outlet which fails to conform runs the risk of enlightening a populace entranced by BS dazzle and terrified by phony terrorism. So Fox represents a threat.

Just a short time ago, who ever would have thought that Fox News would be the last network to try to maintain a free and independent press? Is this really happening?

[NAVFC]

Bacasper: calling fox news free and independant? what the hell are you smoking? you post alot of crazy crap, but that certainly takes the cake.


To the OP and Insane Bacasper: do you really have to ask why Obama would have a problem with foxnews? Are you really that Naiave? Foxnews has become nothing but the 24/7 anti Obama channel. No matter what Obama does, they always find a way to report on it as if it were a bad thing, in a anti obama light, NO matter the circumstances.

THAT isnt news. Its a 24/7 smear campaign and thats all it is.


Look for example, at health care. Over 70 percent of Americans want some type of pubkic health insurance. Yet foxnews and its cronies have lamblasted Obama for seeking to do this. They kowtow to party lines, and in terms of health care the GOP will always kowtow to the insurance companies, because thats what the GOP is. They have akways been on the side of big business, etc because they believe in trickle down economics: IE: IF they consistently side with big business, then the beenfits trickle down to everyone else. But it doesnt work.

all foxnews is doing is taking every story they can, finding a way to slant it against obama and running with it. That ISNT news reporting.


They are fear mongering. Have you watched Glenn Beck?

FOXnews wants you to believe that Obama = end of the US system as we know it

[RufusW]

What's that media regulation the Democrats want to push through?... I can't find it. Anyway, I think he's warming up for that. And rightly so, Fox should be allowed to get away with some of the stuff it does, it's not a freedom of speech issue, it's a libel issue.

[E_athlete]

what a joke, you actually watch fox news and defend it. To make things even funnier you have Bill O'Reilly as your avatar.

[bacasper]

[pkang0202]

News Agency criticizes Republicans and its called "Reporting"

News Agency criticizes Democrats and its a Smear Campaign.

Don't you just love how Liberals think?

[Fox]

[rollo]

Not even worthy of being called a news channel. it is a mindless propaganda machine. I rember when Palin was asked to run for v.P one of the idiots said" Great Alaska is near Russia so she should hava a lot of experience in foreign affairs" I did like it when Shepard Smith took Ralph Nader down over his "Uncle Tom" comment about Obama. Interesting that most of the Fox talking heads gave money to the Democrats this election. I do agree Obam shouldnt stoop to mentioning this boring , stupid , pandering to the lowest forms in our electorate, toilet of a so called news network. Oh Hannity who had on a guest who is a member of a anti semitic oraganization with ties to the Aryan nation, and called him an authority on ACORN, when is he going to let himself be waterboarded?

[rollo]

Not even worthy of being called a news channel. it is a mindless propaganda machine. I rember when Palin was asked to run for v.P one of the idiots said" Great Alaska is near Russia so she should hava a lot of experience in foreign affairs" I did like it when Shepard Smith took Ralph Nader down over his "Uncle Tom" comment about Obama. Interesting that most of the Fox talking heads gave money to the Democrats this election. I do agree Obam shouldnt stoop to mentioning this boring , stupid , pandering to the lowest forms in our electorate, toilet of a so called news network. Oh Hannity who had on a guest who is a member of a anti semitic oraganization with ties to the Aryan nation, and called him an authority on ACORN, when is he going to let himself be waterboarded?

[NAVFC]

[NAVFC]

Case in point. Awhile ago on foxnews they ran a story claiming Obama sympathizes with people who agreed with 9-11.

They even played a clip of Obama saying

"And, some people would justify the offense of 9-11!" and they cut off at that spot.

Hwever, and the daily show did a segement on this, what fox didnt show was Oba,a going onto say "But al qaeda killed 3000 that day...innocent women and children" and condeming people who support 9-11. Foxnews quote mined him. This is why foxnews isnt real news.

[ManintheMiddle]

NAVFC imagined:

[RufusW]

O'Really? Fox news isn't anywhere near 'fair and balanced'. Have a look at 'Outfoxed' by Greenwald. Fox news took talking points directly from the Bush administration, it's viewpoint is decided by memos from 'head office'. Examples of Fox mis-editing material is abundent.

Their biggest names intentionally distort actual news. NAVFC is entirely correct, Hannity played this quotre from Obama, "And, some people would justify the offense of 9-11" but he (intentionally) failed to show the next 30 seconds where Obama fully renounces the act. Remember when Fox photoshopped a couple of photos of commentators it didn't like to make them look ugly..... Obama doesn't give interviews because he thinks they're a joke and they need to clean up their act.

[TheUrbanMyth]

What makes me wonder is how can it be that people who claim they wouldn't be caught dead watching Fox News, can possibly know what it is running 24/7?