For one year now, the Obama Administration isn't shy about its dislike for Fox News. Remember that, only last year, Then-White House Communications Director Anita Dunn said that Fox News "operates almost as either the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party. Then Obama's advisor, Valerie Jarret said of Fox News that they were "clearly biased".
In a new interview with Rolling Stone Magazine 's Jann S. Wenner, President Barack Obama was asked about his thoughts on Fox News. The president compared Rupert Murdoch's Fox News to William Hearst's Paper, saying that just like Hearst, Murdoch is using his media outlets to advance his own political views.
Rolling Stone Magazine :What do you think of Fox News? Do you think it's a good institution for America and for democracy?
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA : Look, as president, I swore to uphold the Constitution, and part of that Constitution is a free press. We've got a tradition in this country of a press that oftentimes is opinionated. The golden age of an objective press was a pretty narrow span of time in our history. Before that, you had folks like Hearst who used their newspapers very intentionally to promote their viewpoints. I think Fox is part of that tradition — it is part of the tradition that has a very clear, undeniable point of view. It's a point of view that I disagree with. It's a point of view that I think is ultimately destructive for the long-term growth of a country that has a vibrant middle class and is competitive in the world. But as an economic enterprise, it's been wildly successful. And I suspect that if you ask Mr. Murdoch what his number-one concern is, it's that Fox is very successful.
Yes, President Obama basically called Fox News "Destructive for the long-term growth of a country". I can already hearing Right Wingers screaming that Obama is setting to shut down Fox News. And I wish it was the case tho.
Here what Obama and democrats are fighting against :
That's just a small sample of how "Fair and Balanced" Faux News really is when it comes to Democrats and President Obama.
The president also took on the Tea Party activists. When asked if he thought that the Tea Partiers were manipulated, he agreed that The Tea Party Movement was largely financed by special-interest lobbies:
"There's no doubt that the infrastructure and the financing of the Tea Party come from some very traditional, very powerful, special-interest lobbies. I don't think this is a secret. Dick Armey and FreedomWorks, which was one of the first organizational mechanisms to bring Tea Party folks together, are financed by very conservative industries and forces that are opposed to enforcement of environmental laws, that are opposed to an energy policy that would be different than the fossil-fuel-based approach we've been taking, that don't believe in regulations that protect workers from safety violations in the workplace, that want to make sure that we are not regulating the financial industries in ways that we have."
But he was somehow generous (in my opinion) towards them when asked what he was his feelings towards the movement :
"I think the Tea Party is an amalgam, a mixed bag of a lot of different strains in American politics that have been there for a long time. There are some strong and sincere libertarians who are in the Tea Party who generally don't believe in government intervention in the market or socially. There are some social conservatives in the Tea Party who are rejecting me the same way they rejected Bill Clinton, the same way they would reject any Democratic president as being too liberal or too progressive. There are strains in the Tea Party that are troubled by what they saw as a series of instances in which the middle-class and working-class people have been abused or hurt by special interests and Washington, but their anger is misdirected.
And then there are probably some aspects of the Tea Party that are a little darker, that have to do with anti-immigrant sentiment or are troubled by what I represent as the president. So I think it's hard to characterize the Tea Party as a whole, and I think it's still defining itself."