Fox News: They Report and Decide, We Watch

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Nearly a year after winning an historic election, President Barack Obama has decided to pick a fight with the Fox News Channel, the Rupert Murdoch-owned conservative cable network that he believes hasn't been giving him a fair shake since taking office.

When the President saturated the Sunday morning airwaves to discuss his health care plan, he was interviewed on every network except Fox.  The White House went so far as to deny Fox News press passes to interview certain officials, until the other networks put their collective feet down.

In the annals of the White House's relationship with the news media, it's nothing new.  Richard Nixon had a contentious relationship, to the point of putting some journalists on his "enemies list".  George W. Bush, without much fanfare, simply excluded MSNBC and other liberal journalists from his activities.

The reason President Obama has a big problem with Fox News is the channel itself.  Critics claim their news reporting is slanted to the right, the hosts have lower I.Q.s than their ratings, and that the national discourse is harmed when interviews turn into shoutfests.

Fox News, according to Nielsen, has the five top-rated programs among cable news networks, led by "The O'Reilly Factor".  Twelve million viewers make up the combined total for these shows, which is ten million less than the amount of people who watch the broadcast networks' evening news.

On the few occasions that I voluntarily watch Fox News (they seem to be on in sports bars and department stores), Neil Cavuto played a March interview with Alan Grayson, a Democratic congressman from Florida whose take on the Republicans' health care plan ("Die Quickly") has been widely viewed.  After several minutes of rudely interrupting Rep. Grayson while he was trying to get his point across, Cavuto came back live calling him a "nut" and announcing that from now on his show would be a "No-Nut Zone".  A second or two later, "The Glenn Beck Show" was starting.

Beck is the former radio DJ who has found fame as a conspiracy theorist with a flair for the dramatic.  He's still on the air despite calling the President a "racist", prompting several prominent sponsors to ditch him.  On this particular broadcast, Beck claimed that socialists were dominating the White House, government is about to control everything, and used a chalkboard to explain how the federal deficit is destroying the country.

What distinguishes Fox News from the other guys is conflict, which makes for good TV.  Who knows, at any moment, Beck, Bill O'Reilly or Sean Hannity might either say something ridiculous or blow their tops at their guests.  Try getting that from Larry King or Anderson Cooper.

Conservatives are not all cartoon villians as Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow would like you to believe.  There are some that put out their points of view in a calm, civil manner.  But they're not the ones who are running the Republican party right now.  Instead, the GOP is being led by entertainers such as Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber, and by extremists who hijacked the health care debate, egged on by Fox News.  And we haven't even mentioned Rush Limbaugh.

President Obama can't expect all of the people to like everything he does.  He also can't expect to control what people say about him.  But he shouldn't make any attempt to muzzle a network that has the right to cover him in ways they consider appropriate, no matter how crude those ways sometimes are.