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http://www.thenation.com/blogs/campaignmatters/372700/obama_campaign_escalates_fox_attack_at_debate>by Ari Melber on 10/16/2008
It was quick, but Barack Obama ramped up his battle with Fox News during the final presidential debate.
Responding to the false charge that he backed tax hikes for people making under $50,000, Obama cited news reports rebutting the charge. "Even Fox News disputes it," he said, "and that doesn't happen very often when it comes to accusations about me." Voters are used to Republican politicians hammering the press, but such a pointed reference is unusual for top Democrats – and remarkable for the non-combative Obama.
The line, delivered during the last major televised event of the campaign, is part of a broader strategy to confront Fox News, said an Obama aide after the debate.
Standing beneath a dark blue campaign sign in the "spin room" at the Hofstra gym, Obama communications director Dan Pfeiffer said the campaign had determined that Fox was a "powerful infrastructure whose goal is to drive a cultural schism in America."
Pointing to the channel's "calculated" efforts to "push issues like ACORN and Bill Ayers," Pfeiffer said the campaign will confront "anyone who seeks to advance a false argument about Obama." Some reporters at Fox are "fair and admirable," he added, but "they're the exception rather than the rule."
A few steps away, McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds was incredulous when I relayed Pfeiffer's take. "For Barack Obama to complain about media coverage is like a fish complaining about water," he said, "it's absurd." Bounds, who appears on all the cable channels for the campaign, also pointed to "independent studies" that indicate Obama actually receives better coverage.
Complaints about Obama's press coverage, Bounds continued, were just a distraction from Obama's record. The real fight is "not between Obama and Fox news," he said, "but between Obama and the truth."
The Obama campaign also pointed to Obama's criticism of Fox News in the forthcoming issue of the New York Times Sunday magazine. "I am convinced that if there were no Fox News, I might be two or three points higher in the polls," Obama told reporter Matt Bai. "If I were watching Fox News, I wouldn't vote for me, right?
Because the way I'm portrayed 24/7 is as a freak!... there is an entire industry now, an entire apparatus, designed to perpetuate this cultural schism, and it's powerful," he added. Pfeiffer hit on the exact same "cultural schism" point in our exchange.
Meanwhile, his colleagues in the campaign press shop, Bill Burton and Robert Gibbs, recently hammered Fox in combative guest appearances, with Gibbs famously confronting Sean Hannity for giving a platform to a guest with a history of anti-Semitism. Campaign Manager David Plouffe took another shot at Fox for stoking stories about ACORN.
"We understand that Fox News Channel is turning themselves into the 24-hour ACORN channel," he told reporters this week. Campaign surrogates have also gotten in on the act. Sen. Sherrod Brown has tweaked Fox at recent Ohio rallies for Obama, drawing boos from excited supporters.
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Fox's conservative links are well known, from former Republican operative Roger Ailes running the show to a fleet of conservative advocates like Bill O'Reilly. The channel insists its anchors are fair and balanced, but even Fox's "news" reporting on Obama has drawn fire, from airing a false story about his early education to devoting extensive time to old allegations about Ayers – long before they were raised by the McCain campaign.
According to one person who has worked at Fox News, many objective people work at the channel, but the larger system has political and journalistic flaws. "There is an interest
in stories that are more problematic for Democrats, first and foremost," said the source. "Then they get through the system because there's not a central system that checks any facts. There's just not."
Fox News has long faced charges of bias from liberal critics, of course, including organized attacks from coalitions of bloggers, the progressive group Brave New Films, and the civil rights organization ColorofChange. One effort even scuttled Fox's attempt to host Democratic primary debates last year. "
from what i hear, faux news is only a small part of the vile and lies.....dems need to take on lou dobbs and most of cnn, especially glenn beck....
Yet the channel has never faced a sustained assault by a major presidential campaign -- delivered by prominent surrogates, pressed in direct confrontations on Fox's own airwaves, and personally advanced by the nominee himself. Maybe in an Obama White House, the terms of "fair and balanced" will get renegotiated. "
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