There’s no doubt that President Obama didn’t expect soft ball questions yesterday when he went on Fox News Channel’s’ Special Report to be interviewed about health care reform by Bret Baier, but the lack of respect displayed by the Fox News personality was astounding!

As Obama pointed out, Baier repeated interrupted him while trying to answer the host’s questions. Not once, not five, ten, or a dozen times. 16 Times! Incredibly, Baier said that Obama was dodging his questions, to which Obama responded, “Well, I’m trying to answer your questions and you keep on interrupting.”

Source

Share this article

Last week Ken Feinberg of the Treasury Department, the so-called “Pay Czar,” held a round-robin interview with several networks. Fox News, playing the victim, complained that it was a White House “ban,” even though the interview was handled by the Treasury Department and not the White House.

On Thursday night, Fox News ran a shocking report that the “Obama administration” had “contacted the White House pool” and made executive pay czar Kenneth Feinberg available for round-robin interviews, “but specified that all members of the pool were welcome except Fox News.” They billed it as the Obama administration’s “first concrete step” in the direction of treating Fox News Channel like it’s not a real news organization.

Mediaite also addressed the idea that all the networks joined together in a show of solidarity to force Fox News to be included, stating that, in actuality, it appears that it was on the basis of their mutual pool arrangement.

Talking Points Memo has provided a somewhat different story, discrediting Fox News’ version of the events. Additionally, a Treasury spokesperson stated, “There was no plot to exclude Fox News, and they had the same interview that their competitors did. Much ado about absolutely nothing.”

Feinberg did a pen and pad with reporters to brief them on cutting executive compensation. TV correspondents, as they do with everything, asked to get the comments on camera. Treasury officials agreed and made a list of the networks who asked (Fox was not among them).

But logistically, all of the cameras could not get set up in time or with ease for the Feinberg interview, so they opted for a round robin where the networks use one pool camera. Treasury called the White House pool crew and gave them the list of the networks who’d asked for the interview.

The network pool crew noticed Fox wasn’t on the list, was told that they hadn’t asked and the crew said they needed to be included. Treasury called the White House and asked top Obama adviser Anita Dunn. Dunn said yes and Fox’s Major Garrett was among the correspondents to interview Feinberg last night.

Simple as that, we’re told, and the networks don’t want to be seen as heroes for Fox.

Experiencing the situation firsthand was FNC’s Major Garrett, who confirmed that a mistake had been made, possibly by both sides, but FNC was not purposefully excluded as initially reported by Fox News.

Garrett finally explained his side of the supposed FNC snub, saying “the Treasury Department did not receive on that day a specific request from Fox to interview Feinberg,” but he has a “standing request from me as senior White House correspondent on Fox to interview any newsmaker at the Treasury at any given time news is being made.”

Keep in mind that over the past year, Major Garrett has been involved with some misquotes and false claims. However, if his account is true, it doesn’t excuse the innaccurate initial reports from Fox News.

Share this article

While speaking to Katie Couric, Glenn Beck was presented with a question from a Twitter user. He was asked what he meant by “white culture,” the phrase he used while calling President Obama a racist. Beck refused to define it any of the dozen times Couric prompted him for an answer. Whatever answers he did provide were snide and childish.

Emphasis was going to be added to the parts where either he’s asked the question, or provides an immature answer, but the whole transcript below would be bold…

COURIC: A twitter question is, adrianinflorida: what do you mean by white culture?

BECK: Um, I, I don’t…

COURIC: You said he had a deep-seated hatred for the white culture, what is that? What is the white culture?

BECK: I guess it’s…gosh. I’m so tempted to make news here today.

COURIC: No no, I’m just curious, this was actually adrianinflorida.

BECK: What to do? What to do? Adrian, Go to glennbeck.com. Listen to it. You can hear all of it.

COURIC: No, but you didn’t really address white culture, I think, in your explanation about President Obama, I haven’t seen the whole show, but can you? Just for our purposes?

BECK: Just for your purposes? So this will be a little secret between us?

COURIC: No, for this show, can you explain what you mean by the white culture? Because some people say that sounds kind of racist.

BECK: Really? It’s amazing to me that, for the first time, I think in history somebody can ask a question and say, “Don’t you think that maybe we have several pieces here?” We have several pieces; George Bush says my grandmother was a typical African-American that had, that had her views bred into her. You don’t think maybe we would ask questions about that comment? How is it that the first time I think in history, you should check on it, somebody says, “Hey. There’s some red flags here maybe we should look at?” … How am I? How am I the target for asking questions?

COURIC: People just want to know. What is white culture?

BECK: I’m going to see if I can play your game. People just want to know.

COURIC: You know, well, Adrian wants to know.

BECK: That’s good for Adrian.

COURIC: No but I mean it’s fine if you make a statement though, shouldn’t you be able to defend exactly what you mean by it. I’m not –

BECK: Katie, how many times have you said, how many times have you said something where you’re like, “I didn’t think. What’s white culture? I don’t know. What’s the white culture?”

What? What is the white culture? I don’t know how to answer that that’s not a trap.

COURIC: Mhmm.

BECK: You know what I mean?

COURIC: Yeah I’m not, I’m just, I’m not trying to trap you, I’m just, I think people wanted to know what that meant exactly.

BECK: Well we know Adrian does.

COURIC: Yeah, and you’re not going to answer her?

BECK: I’m not going to get into your sound bite gotcha game which we already are. We already are.

COURIC: No we’re actually, this is completely unedited so if you felt like you wanted to explain it, you have all the time in the world.

BECK: Mhmm.

COURIC: No? Don’t want to go there?

BECK: Nope.

COURIC: But basically, you stand behind your assertion that in your view, President Obama is a racist.

BECK: I believe that Americans should ask themselves tough questions. Americans should turn over all the rocks and make their own decisions.

Original Story

Share this article