The President vs. the Peacock

"It also came personally from Gillespie, one of the top figures in the White House and a veteran politico as former head of the Republican Party."

John D. McKinnon and Rebecca Dana write in the Wall Street Journal (subscription required): "The White House got involved in a media feud, criticizing NBC for its handling of a recent interview with President Bush and questioning whether its cable talk-show hosts are skewing the broadcast network's point of view.

"The broadside by White House counselor Ed Gillespie, in a letter to NBC News President Steve Capus, elevated a battle over network coverage that has previously pitted MSNBC's left-leaning Keith Olbermann against Fox News's conservative Bill O'Reilly. Recently, each has intensified his attacks on the other's parent company and on executive higher-ups. Fox News is owned by News Corp., which also owns Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones & Co. NBC is owned by General Electric Co. . . .

"Mr. Engel, the NBC correspondent who conducted the interview with Mr. Bush on Sunday in Egypt, has been an occasional target of Mr. O'Reilly, who has said Mr. Engel was being too critical of the Iraq war. . . .

"In a reply letter to Mr. Gillespie, Mr. Capus wrote that 'We appreciated President Bush's decision to do the interview with NBC News, and believe Mr. Engel's reporting accurately reflects the discussion with the President.' He also said that 'the notion this was, 'deceitful editing to further a media-manufactured storyline,' is a gross misrepresentation of the facts,' and that the full Bush interview was posted Sunday on its Web site.

"He then offered: 'Editing is a part of journalism. We take the collective body of information surrounding a story, distill it and produce a report. We strive in all cases to be fair and accurate. In some instances, where appropriate, we offer interviews in their entirety -- in live broadcasts, or posted on our website.'"

Elana Schor writes in the Guardian: "The White House today accused NBC news of twisting George Bush's remarks on Iran and suggested that the television network had absorbed the bias of two of its star pundits. . . .

"Conservatives in the US have long frowned on what they consider a liberal bias at NBC, singling out the network's cable TV pundit Keith Olbermann for his fiery tirades against the Bush administration."

Dan Eggen and Peter Slevin write in The Washington Post: "The dispute illustrates the reverberations from Bush's speech on Thursday, in which he compared those who seek talks with Iran and radical Islamic groups to those who gave in to the Nazis before World War II. 'We have an obligation to call this what it is -- the false comfort of appeasement,' Bush said.

"Although Bush did not mention Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.), the remarks were widely seen as an attack on the Democratic presidential front-runner, who has said he would be willing to talk with Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad without preconditions during his first year in office. . . .

"White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said that while the administration often criticizes media coverage, it felt that the NBC report 'was particularly egregious.'"

Alex Pareene blogs for Gawker: "[R]eading the full transcript, it's clear that Bush does basically agree with Engel's question, just without mentioning Barack Obama.