Did Mainstream Media Forget How Obama Treated Fox News?

I know the mainstream media is still licking its wounds after President-elect Donald Trump smacked them around in his first press conference since winning the election.

And I hate to add salt to their wounds, but it seems they’ve got a case of amnesia.

The media feigned outrage after Mr. Trump refused to take a question from a CNN reporter.

“Don’t be rude,” Mr. Trump told CNN’s Jim Acosta when he tried to ask a question. “No, I’m not going to give you a question. You are fake news.”

He went all-out against the network because they reported on an unsubstantiated 35-page document that claimed Trump is being blackmailed by the Russian government.

Trump praised those in the media who had restraint from peddling the false report.

“I have great respect for the news, great respect for freedom of the press,” Trump said, thanking those who didn’t run the unsubstantiated story, saying his opinion of them may have “gone up a notch.”

“The journalist whom Trump called on should have yielded to CNN. Don’t allow him to refuse to answer Qs from certain news outlets,” Politico reporter Peter Sterne tweeted.

Acosta whined that incoming press secretary Sean Spicer threatened to toss him out of the press conference after he repeatedly interrupted the president-elect demanding to get his question answered.

I can’t recall the mainstream media rallying around Fox News anytime over the last eight years when President Obama attacked them.

Then-candidate Obama complained he would be polling higher if Fox didn’t exist. This may work in soap operas and song lyrics, but that’s not exactly the best start to a working relationship with the press.

“I am convinced that if there were no Fox News, I might be two or three points higher in the polls,” Obama told liberal journalist Matt Bai of the New York Times Magazine. “[T]he way I’m portrayed 24/7 is as a freak! I am the latté-sipping, New York Times-reading, Volvo-driving, no-gun-owning, effete, politically correct, arrogant liberal. Who wants somebody like that?”

Obama admitted in a softball interview with Rolling Stone that he “disagrees” with Fox News. No shock there, but added he believes Fox has a “destructive viewpoint.”

“I think Fox is part of that tradition — it is part of the tradition that has a very clear, undeniable point of view. It’s a point of view that I disagree with. It’s a point of view that I think is ultimately destructive for the long-term growth of a country that has a vibrant middle class and is competitive in the world. But as an economic enterprise, it’s been wildly successful. And I suspect that if you ask Mr. Murdoch what his number-one concern is, it’s that Fox is very successful.”

After the Democrats’ midterm election shellacking, President Obama reportedly told labor leaders in a private meeting that Fox News was partly responsible for him “losing white males” who tune into the network to “hear Obama is a Muslim 24/7.”

He needed someone to blame for the massive losses because the next election was his.

“If you’ve talked to somebody who said, ‘Well, I don’t know, I was watching Fox News and they said this is horrible,’ you can say, ‘you know what? Don’t take my word for it! Go on the website.”

During a pre-Super Bowl interview, President Obama suggested Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly was being unfair for asking questions about ObamaCare’s shortcomings, the IRS scandal and Benghazi.

Because, as Obama’s longtime adviser Valerie Jarrett said in a recent CNN interview, “The president prides himself on the fact that his administration hasn’t had a scandal and he hasn’t done something to embarrass himself…” Yes, she really said that.

President Obama insisted ObamaCare is “working pretty well in the real world” despite it being a “fanged threat to freedom on Fox News” in a speech at Northwestern University.

Nevermind the painful costs it’s incurring now, and the fact that Democrats can’t defend it to save Obama’s legacy.

At a Clinton fundraiser in New York City, President Obama predicted a close election “not because of Hillary’s flaws,” but because of Fox News and some blogs “that are churning out a lot of misinformation…”

After Trump’s successful win on election day, Obama blamed Fox News for Democrats losing elections because of “Fox News in every bar and restaurant in big chunks of the country.”

Time and time again, Obama used the bully pulpit to blame Fox News for his losses, but the mainstream media didn’t come alongside Fox.

Trump was right to do what he did – given CNN’s shameful act. CNN should commit to honest reporting – or get used to reporting from the doghouse.

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89984928
Obama Ends Fox News ‘Boycott’
April 27, 20084:00 PM ET
Heard on All Things Considered

For two years, the Democratic presidential contender had refused invitations from the network. But now, Obama sees Fox as a way to reach socially conservative, blue-collar voters.

Barack Obama refused to appear on TV’s “Fox News Sunday” for more than two years. Now he’s trying to win over blue collar and socially conservative voters. They’re key in the two states that vote next week - North Carolina and Indiana. So today, finally, he sat down with Fox’s Chris Wallace.

NPR’s David Welna has the story.

DAVID WELNA: Obama tried to make light of the fact he was ending a de facto boycott of “Fox News Sunday.”

Senator BARACK OBAMA (Democrat, Illinois, Presidential Candidate): It takes me about 772 days to prepare for these questions, although I think this was a leap year in there. So I think it’s only 771...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/23/us/politics/23fox.html
Behind the War Between White House and Fox
By JIM RUTENBERGOCT. 22, 2009

WASHINGTON — Late last month, the senior White House adviser David Axelrod and Roger Ailes, chairman and chief executive of Fox News, met in an empty Palm steakhouse before it opened for the day, neutral ground secured for a secret tête-à-tête.

Mr. Ailes, who had reached out to Mr. Axelrod to address rising tensions between the network and the White House, told him that Fox’s reporters were fair, if tough, and should be considered separate from the Fox commentators who were skewering President Obama nightly, according to people briefed on the meeting. Mr. Axelrod said it was the view of the White House that Fox News had blurred the line between news and anti-Obama advocacy...

By the following weekend, officials at the White House had decided that if anything, it was time to take the relationship to an even more confrontational level. The spur: Executives at other news organizations, including The New York Times, had publicly said that their newsrooms had not been fast enough in following stories that Fox News, to the administration’s chagrin, had been heavily covering through the summer and early fall — namely, past statements and affiliations of the White House adviser Van Jones that ultimately led to his resignation and questions surrounding the community activist group Acorn.

At the same time, Fox News had continued a stream of reports rankling White House officials and liberal groups that monitor its programming for bias.

...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 Thursday 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.”...

...Mr. Clemente suggested that the fight was part of a larger White House strategy to marginalize critics. He cited a report in Politico about a strategy session in August at which officials discussed plans to move more aggressively against opponents...

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