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Newly Revealed Documents Show Obama White House Deliberately Made Efforts to Exclude Fox News from Interviews In 2009

Jul 14, 2011  •  Post A Comment

"Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced today that it has uncovered documents from the Obama Department of Treasury showing that the Obama administration, contrary to its repeated denials, attempted to exclude the Fox News Channel (FNC) from a round of interviews with Treasury’s “Executive Pay Czar” Kenneth Feinberg."

So wrote Judicial Watch, a self-described conservative, non-partisan educational foundation, on its website on Thursday, July 14, 2011.

The article on the Judicial Watch website continues, "The documents [were] obtained last week by Judicial Watch pursuant to an October, 28, 2009, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request…"

The article notes, "Deputy White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest bluntly described the White House’s position on Fox News Channel in an October 23, 2009, email to [Jenni LeCompte, then-Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs in the Treasury Department]: ‘We’ve demonstrated our willingness and ability to exclude Fox News from significant interviews…’ "

The story also says, "Regarding general anti-FNC bias within the Obama White House in an October 23, 2009, email exchange between Jennifer Psaki, Deputy White House Communications Director and LeCompte, Psaki writes, ‘I am putting some dead fish in the fox cubby – just cause.’ In an email on the night of October 22, 2009, commenting on a report by Fox News Channel anchor Bret Baier noting the exclusion of the network from the pool, Psaki writes to Compte and fellow White House colleagues, ‘…brett baier just did a stupid piece on it — but he is a lunatic.’ "

The article also cites examples of members of the administration during this same period of time telling other members of the media that the White House was not trying to exclude Fox News from interviews.

3 Comments

  1. “Fox News” is an oxymoron, like
    “Washington think tank.”

  2. “Fox News” is an oxymoron, like
    “Washington think tank.”

  3. If you have a person or company whose sole purpose is to tear you down and distort everything you say, why would you allow them anywhere near you? They don’t need to be in the press conferences to know what’s going on, they just need to hack into their emails and phone messages. It seems to work elsewhere in the world.

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