White House Press Secretary Dana Perino made her first visit to Bill O’Reilly’s Fox News show this week, and the host suggested that White House officials shouldn’t even bother talking to news outlets they consider to be hostile.<\/p>\n
O’REILLY: OK. Now, I told Tony Snow — I mean, I know Snow. You know him pretty well. I said, “Listen, Snow. You’re crazy,” because he gave interviews to people who were overtly hostile to him…<\/p>\n
PERINO: He did.<\/p>\n
O’REILLY: … and the president. Yes, he did. He went in there, and he gave it his best shot. And I said, “Why are you bothering with these people? They’re never going to give you a fair shake. They’re always going to stab you in the back.” But Snow said, “Look, it’s my job to try to convince them.” Are you of the same philosophy?<\/p>\n
PERINO: Well, I’m no Tony Snow. But I — I will give it a shot, if I — if I’m given the opportunity.<\/p>\n
O’REILLY: All right. So you will go into the enemy camp to try to convince?<\/p>\n
PERINO: You have to. You have to.<\/p>\n
O’REILLY: You know, I have to say, with all due respect, you’re wasting your time on some of these people.<\/p>\n
PERINO: Well…<\/p>\n
O’REILLY: They hate you. They’re always going to hate you. No matter what you do, they’ll destroy it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Now, at first blush, I’m not quite sure what Perino is talking about. She believes the White House “has to” talk to progressive media outlets? Like Tony Snow did? I’ve been paying fairly close attention, and it seems that the Bush Bubble tends to exclude those White House critics quite well, including progressive media.<\/p>\n
But more importantly, O’Reilly’s broader point is intriguing.
\n
\nIf a political figure identifies a media outlet that treats him or her unfairly, according to O’Reilly, the pol should avoid the outlet. There’s no point in “wasting your time” talking to a pseudo-journalist who won’t give you a fair shake.<\/p>\nOddly enough, Democratic presidential candidates came to that exact same conclusion a few months ago, and said they would steer clear of a debate sponsored by Fox News. After all of these years, Dems know the partisan network is “always going to stab you in the back.” So, what’s the point?<\/p>\n
And yet, O’Reilly recently said John Edwards should be “ashamed<\/a>” of himself for turning down an invitation to debate on the Republican’s news channel. (Given the network’s treatment<\/a> of the former senator, it was a no-brainer.)<\/p>\n
I’m sure he didn’t mean to, but with Perino, O’Reilly was making the Dems’ case for them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
White House Press Secretary Dana Perino made her first visit to Bill O’Reilly’s Fox News show this week, and the host suggested that White House officials shouldn’t even bother talking to news outlets they consider to be hostile. O’REILLY: OK. Now, I told Tony Snow — I mean, I know Snow. You know him pretty […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13036\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}