White House: Fox News is ‘arm of the Republican Party’

By David Edwards and Daniel Tencer
Sunday, October 11th, 2009 -- 1:43 pm
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billoreillyfox20090327 White House: Fox News is arm of the Republican PartyThe White House's communications director says that Fox News is little more than a wing of the Republican Party.

"The reality of it is that Fox News often operates as either the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party," Anita Dunn told CNN's Howard Kurtz on Sunday. "And it’s not ideological. I mean, obviously there are many commentators who are conservative, liberal, centrist, and everybody understands that. What I think is fair to say about Fox is — and certainly the way we view it — is that it really is more of a wing of the Republican Party."

Dunn was responding to Kurtz's question about her appearance in a Time magazine article, published Thursday, in which she described Fox News as "opinion journalism masquerading as news."

"They are boosting their audience," Time quoted her as saying. "But that doesn't mean we are going to sit back."

Time described Dunn as "the general" in the White House's war against Fox News:

Story continues below...

The take-no-prisoners turn has come as a surprise to some in the press, considering the largely favorable coverage that candidate Obama received last fall and given the President's vows to lower the rhetorical temperature in Washington and not pay attention to cable hyperbole. Instead, the White House blog now issues regular denunciations of the Administration's critics, including a recent post that announced "Fox lies" and suggested that the cable network was unpatriotic for criticizing Obama's 2016 Olympics effort.

"They’re widely viewed as, you know, a part of the Republican Party," Dunn said on Kurtz's Reliable Sources. "They take their talking points, put them on the air, take their opposition research, put them on the air, and that’s fine. But let’s not pretend they’re a news network they way CNN is."

This video is from CNN's Reliable Sources, broadcast Oct. 11, 2009.



Download video via RawReplay.com

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Story comments are below...

  • chadhinajosa
    First Grayson , now Dunn. Now maybe others'll get a backbone, too.
  • comradebillyboy
    She has a firm grasp of the obvious.
  • wiseturtle
    Well no shit!! WHO didn't know that??
  • Phil E. Drifter
    all the inbred hicks south of the mason dixon line.

    (No offense to any inbred hicks south of the mason dixon line who read RS.)
  • none taken friend
  • dennycrane
    You get FAUX NEWS free on your first tier cable. CNN,MSNBC you have to pay to get it. If you are an old bastard trying to live off of your "pension" that the rich capitalist pigs have stole from you, are you going to pay "extra" for the "news?" "Hell no, I get all the "news" I need from FAUX NEWS."

    The "Dumbing Down of America" starts right here.
  • dittohead
    Any "News" network that openly cheers and celebrates on every single one of their shows when the US loses the Olympics, and gets angry and pissed off when the US President is awarded the Noble Peace Prize for his efforts to improve international relations, shouldn't be called a news network. This kind of behavior shows the maturity of a three year old.

    Fox News especially these past few months have been nothing more than whiny crybabies. And they're projecting this emotion on the white house instead.
  • dittohead
    Of course “Fox News” isnt news - have you just figured it out?

    http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/arti...

    “In February 2003, a Florida Court of Appeals unanimously agreed with an
    assertion by FOX News that there is no rule against distorting or
    falsifying the news in the United States.

    “Fox” argued that, under the First Amendment, broadcasters have the right
    to lie or deliberately distort news reports on public airwaves. Fox
    attorneys did not dispute Akre’s claim that they pressured her to
    broadcast a false story, they simply maintained that it was their right to
    do so.”
  • icenine
    CNN has been more bold lately about acknowledgment of Fox as a Republican party media outlet masquerading as a news organization. I don't know why it's taken this long for anybody/everybody to lower the boom on that corrupt organization.
  • tjfxh
    Bravo. The Dems are finally growing a spine. Maybe Alan Grayson is getting through to them.
  • starvapor
    The White House's communications director is correct about FOX News....
    FOX news is little more that a launching platform for cultivating and encouraging right-wing-nut-loon-clowns and religious fanatics.

    The laughable FOX news moto, "Fair and Balanced", is no more that reverse-psychology-propaganda marketing trash that attempts to cover the fact that there is ZERO PROFESSIONAL JOURNALIST CONTENT being disseminated from their cable and satellites.
  • canuckkid
    Fox News a propaganda arm of the Republican Right? Tell us something we don't already know, Anita....

    I find that a media source's objectivity is directly proportional to the extent to which it agrees with how I think. Let's face it: every media source has an agenda or bias of some kind - said bias is evident not only in how it covers a story, but also in how it decides what constitutes a story. In this regard, Fox isn't that different from Rawstory or Alternet. That said, Fox seems to have an agenda that doesn't necessarily correlate on a regular basis with what I believe to be honest and objective journalism - it seems to go to great lengths to report on stories that a) support the moneyed Right's point of view, and/or b) cover them in such a way that gives the moneyed Right more cred than what it may deserve.

    My two-bits worth...
  • kasinca
    And instead of proving them wrong with professionalism, the FAUX Fake correspondents will prove it correct by attacking the White House.
  • shag11
    She's right about Faux "News," that's all they are, a propaganda arm of the Repuglican party.
  • Westcoastliberal
    I think the FCC should revisit their rules on cable & satellite television concerning "willful and superfluous communications" since FOX is constantly spewing rumors, lies, and generally shit Glenn Beck & O'Reilly have made up. FOX is a menace to our democracy and unfortunately many dim-witted Americans actually rely on this network as their primary news source. At the very least the FCC should regulate use of branding bullshit as news.
  • Savantster
    .
    The only thing I think they can do is put out some "truth in advertising" kind of regulation (FOX engages in interstate commerce) and force them to remove the word "news" from their network, and force them to put up banners on occasion explaining that their network is an opinion network, not a fact based reporting network.

    Even that would be pretty messy.. and the courts already established that "for-profit cable channels can lie if they want to". Basically, the court said that there are no consumer protections for people who consume "TV" over cable..

    The problem is, when TV was first introduced, people used it to learn about the world. People believe what they see on TV, so much so that even some "shows" that are "known shows" (say, desperate house wives) have people thinking "that's how it is".. no, it's a SCRIPT, a MADE UP STORY.. some people don't get that. Hell, even the "reality TV" shows are partially scripted sometimes. The end effect is, most people are seeing things that don't reflect realty, and they are OK with that, so much so that they start to incorporate the nonsense into their daily lives.

    This all, of course, ties back to the idea of profits.. money.. private ownership of natural resources that people need to "buy" just to live, so our entire society is based on trying to make money. Everyone does it, everyone needs to do it, and those that hold the levers of power are the ones making most of it (that is, the top 10% of our society has 80% of all the wealth in their hands).

    Of course, all of this only continues to work as long as we refuse to adequately educate the masses. Teach people things, get them appreciating knowledge, and the entire scheme collapses. How we convinced people that life should be a for-profit endeavor I'll never know.
  • terrymo1
    Right on,right on!
  • hilarys
    We have allowed a de facto aristocracy to become established. We are under attack. We've been convinced that government is the bad guy when government is the People. If the government is rendered impotent, the People are rendered impotent.
  • Mr. Neutron
    Dan Rather got fired because he did an actual, investigative story, which JOURNALISTS are supposed to do, but because he doesn't have the power of subpoena or force his sources under oath, he got stuck with one forged version of an actual document (the lady that typed the REAL document said the forged copy said the same thing she typed). The rightwing echo chamber screamed about the "forged document", and the true story of George W. Bush being AWOL got swept aside, and the spineless moneymaking billionaire that owns CBS canned Rather.

    Now, FOX can make up shit week after week after week (Obama is a muslim, Obama is not American, Iraq is going great, Obama broke an economy that was doing great, Obama is a socialist) and no one gets called on it ?

    Yeah, damn right, the FCC should do what it was created to do. The NEWS is not just corporate free speech where anything goes.
  • hilarys
    Don't you know, corporations are people and money is speech.
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