The media has a role in interrogating politics, asking questions
Every relationship — personal, professional or otherwise — should have tension.
The relationship between the press and the Obama Administration should be no different.
In recent weeks, we have seen the tension rise between the White House and some members of the media, primarily those employed by the Fox News Channel. But according to the article “This Obama-Fox War Ain’t Nothin’” by Jack Shafer in Slate, Barack Obama is not the first president to directly attack members of the media.
Shafer draws the conclusion that the fight between Obama and Fox news “would barely count as basketball-court trash talk, let alone words of war.” He suggests that if we want to see a real battle between a president and the media, we will have to hop in our DeLorean and set the date sometime between 1932 and 1939.
The war between Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the media was not only more intense, but far more serious, Shafer claims.
Fox News was singled out by the Obama Administration because, according to David Axelrod, “they’re not really a news station.” It pales in comparison to what FDR and his administration dealt with.
Shafer cites an incident where FDR’s Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes debated Frank Gannett, founder of Gannett Media, in front of an audience of 2,000. Sec. Ickes believed the press was being controlled by its advertisers while Gannett claimed the FDR Administration was attempting to “censor or prosecute newspapers that resisted the administration.”
Fox News, like Gannett, claimed that the president is not only trying to discredit the media but also attempting to legislate himself a dictatorship.
Interaction between the media and the Obama Administration is healthy; there should be an intuitive discourse about the issues at hand. But it is futile to single out one news network as the “bad guy.” President Obama should take a look at FDR’s struggle with the media.
He should also heed the debate between Gannett and Sec. Ickes and create an open discussion by encouraging general debate about the issues. During his campaign for president last year, Obama said he wanted to be held accountable for the decisions he makes while in office. Fox News commentators are doing just that — dissenting against what they believe is wrong.
How many times have we heard Keith Olbermann make outrageous claims about George W. Bush? Too many to count.
But this is the right of news commentators. And though I don’t agree with most of the things that Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly say, it is their right to say it.
It is up to us, the American people, to decide what is actually news and what is news commentary.
