Joe Klein is wrong:Klein,
writing about the "war" between Obama and Fox News: (emp add)
Let me be precise here: Fox News peddles a fair amount of hateful crap. Some of it borders on sedition. Much of it is flat out untrue.
But I don't understand why the White House would give such poisonous helium balloons as Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity the opportunity for still greater spasms of self-inflation by declaring war on Fox. (...)
If the problem is broader--that Fox News spreads seditious lies to its demographic sliver of an audience--the Administration should probably be stoic: the wingnuts will always be with us. The best antidote to their garbage is elegant, intelligent governance. The next-best antidote is occasional engagement: I thought Obama came away from his O'Reilly and Chris Wallace interviews much the better for it. (Though you don't want to sit down with a thug like Hannity or a weirdo like Beck.)
The problem with war is that it diverts attention from the actual news.
The Fox nonsense is not confined to a narrow sliver of an audience. It spreads.
But regarding the second assertion, that it "diverts attention from the actual news", it appears that
so far, when an anti-Obama Fox lie or distortion gets play, it quickly gets
channeled into the war meme. That diffuses it considerably. The "war" is diverting attention, but not so much from the actual news. Joe Klein is incorrect. He should know better.
posted by Quiddity at 10/23/2009 01:30:00 PM
The spread was spelled out in "Outfoxed". They repeat the GOP meme all day long on the Fox opinion shows, it spills to a Fox newstory as people are concerned with the meme, then spreads to other networks as all the commotion created by Fox needs to be reported on. Kinda sad how easy it is for them to set the agenda.
Roger Ailes in 2012!
