Team Obama Pushes Back

Every White House fights back against the press.

Jack Kennedy canceled his subscription to the New York Herald Tribune. LBJ complained that the New York Times was run by "a bunch of commies." Richard Nixon had some journalists wiretapped and his veep called them "nattering nabobs of negativity." Ronald Reagan said he'd had it up to his keister with leaks. George Bush 41 had those 'Annoy the Media -- Reelect Bush' bumper stickers. Bill Clinton railed against the 'knee-jerk liberal press.' Bush 43 called a Times reporter a "major-league ass--" and his vice president accused the Times and Washington Post of endangering national security.

So it comes as no surprise that the Obama White House isn't happy with its coverage and is battling back. We've seen glimpses of this when the president grumbles about the 24-hour news cycle and how cable news keeps giving airtime to the loudest and rudest voices.

The tension strikes some folks as surprising, perhaps because Obama received such favorable coverage during the campaign. But I always expected the thrill up the leg to fade as the new president started making decisions and the press corps settled into its usual adversarial role.

Now comes Time with a piece on the administration's frustrations in the wake of the town-hall summer:

"All the criticism, both fair and misleading, took a toll, regularly knocking the White House off message. So a new White House strategy has emerged: rather than just giving reporters ammunition to 'fact-check' Obama's many critics, the White House decided it would become a player, issuing biting attacks on those pundits, politicians and outlets that make what the White House believes to be misleading or simply false claims, like the assertion that health-care reform would establish new 'sex clinics' in schools. Obama, fresh from his vacation on Martha's Vineyard, cheered on the effort, telling his aides he wanted to 'call 'em out.'

"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."

The article singles out Communications Director Anita Dunn, saying "she has become a devoted consumer of conservative-media reports and a fierce critic of Fox News, leading the administration's effort to block officials, including Obama, from appearing on the network. 'It's opinion journalism masquerading as news,' Dunn says. 'They are boosting their audience. But that doesn't mean we are going to sit back.' Fox News's head of news, Michael Clemente, counters that the White House criticism unfairly conflates the network's reporters and its pundits, like Glenn Beck, whom he likens to 'the op-ed page of a newspaper.' "

Dunn's comments are interesting, given that she told me when Obama stiffed "Fox News Sunday" during his mediathon that he would be appearing on Fox sometime in the coming weeks.

And is keeping the president off Fox -- as opposed to having him reach the channel's audience -- going to affect the likes of Hannity and Beck?

Time says the White House was also unhappy when The Post "ran a second op-ed from a Republican politician decrying the '32' alleged czars appointed by the Obama Administration. Nine of those so-called czars, it turned out, were subject to Senate confirmation, making them decidedly unlike the Russian monarchs. 'The idea -- that the Washington Post didn't even question it,' Dunn says, still marveling at the decision."

That would be this July column by House GOP whip Eric Cantor, saying: "At last count, there were at least 32 active czars that we knew of, meaning the current administration has more czars than Imperial Russia."