From NewsBusters: Unlike Nixon, Obama's Media Attacks Generate Little Press Anger
By Lachlan Markay (Bio Archive)October 20, 2009 - 16:25 ET
"Is Barack Obama turning into Spiro Agnew? The White House's attacks on the Fox News smack of the distaste for media opposition espoused by Nixon's vice president almost 40 years ago but are being met with a decidedly different reaction today by the elite media.
"Pundits have wondered aloud since last week why the White House would pursue a strategy that seems to be boosting the ratings of a purported 'opposition' news network. MSNBC's Joe Scarborough posited today that the White House's attacks on Fox News are designed to prevent the mainstream media from picking up on stories damaging to the administration (video embedded below the fold, h/t to NB reader Kirk W.).
"Every time Fox breaks a story on the radical connections of a White House advisor or appointee, the news is potentially damaging to the administration. But damage is only really done if the rest of the media picks up on the story, reports it, and turns it into a national news sensation, a la Van Jones...
"White House reporter Helen Thomas even compared the administration's actions to those of the Nixon administration, which notoriously attempted to stifle dissent in the press."What the hell do they think we are, puppets?" Thomas asked.
"Given the uproar over Spiro Agnew's scathing critique of stilted media coverage of President Nixon's call for the "silent majority" to support the Vietnam War, it is striking that there has been this virtual silence on the Obama administration's attacks on Fox News (one Washington Post blogger astoundingly stated that "Fox should stop whining").
"Agnew's suggestion that the media distorted the news by misrepresenting and sensationalizing facts, due to preconceived positions on those facts, was derided by critics in the news media at the time. The New York Times criticized the "totalitarian stance [Agnew] represents."
"Norman Isaacs, then-president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, said
"What we're facing now is a drive for a real one party press, not through free expression but through open intimidation by the top officials of our government... I cannot help but wonder what the substantive difference is between the administration's position and that in practice in the Soviet Union.
"Democratic politicians also criticized what they saw as a totalitarian attempt to stifle political dissent in the news media. According to the Fredericksburg Free-Lance Star, "Democratic leaders...have accused the Nixon administration of seeking to stifle criticism and suppress dissent in the United States." The Star recalled Hubert Humphrey's statement that,
"The Nixon administration's attack on the news media, as expressed by Vice President Agnew...alarm those who believe in the right to dissent and in a free press... Certainly government officials have a right to defend their actions and to challenge those who criticize them... But when the highest officials of the government launch a deliberate and premeditated attack upon the right to comment...this is a serious matter and a cause for alarm.
"No such characterizations have been raised against the Obama administration, which is employing Agnew-esque tactics designed to downplay and minimize criticism of the White House. That is a real problem, especially given that the media today are of the same political persuasion as the president. Left-leaning journalists who are sitting on their hands while a lone outpost of "truth to power" journalism is being attacked at the highest levels of executive power are setting a terrible precedent for future journalists.
Read the whole thing with videos: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/lachlan-markay/2009/10/20/unlike-nixon-obamas-media-attacks-generate-little-press-anger
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