{"id":7265,"date":"2006-04-28T12:35:41","date_gmt":"2006-04-28T16:35:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=7265"},"modified":"2006-04-28T12:35:41","modified_gmt":"2006-04-28T16:35:41","slug":"we-dont-watch-cnn-here-you-can-only-watch-fox","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/we-dont-watch-cnn-here-you-can-only-watch-fox\/","title":{"rendered":"‘We don’t watch CNN here, you can only watch Fox’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ordinarily, [tag]White House[\/tag] press [tag]gaggle[\/tag]s are relatively quick and painless. Yesterday’s wasn’t. Scott [tag]McClellan[\/tag] and the Washington Post’s Jim [tag]VandeHei[\/tag] had quite an illuminating discussion<\/a> en route New Orleans, not about Katrina, gas prices, Plame, or Iraq, but about the [tag]television[\/tag]s on board Air Force One. Seriously<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“It’s come to my attention that there’s been requests — this is a serious question — to turn these TVs onto a station other than [tag]Fox[\/tag], and that those have been denied,” VandeHei told McClellan, who is soon to be replaced by former Fox anchor and self-described conservative Tony Snow.<\/p>\n

“My question would be, is there a White House policy that all government TVs have to be tuned to Fox?” VandeHei asked.<\/p>\n

“Never heard of any such thing,” McClellan responded. “My TVs are on four different channels at all times.”<\/p>\n

VandeHei noted that McClellan has four televisions in his office, and clarified that he was referring to the ones that reporters can see.<\/p>\n

“They’re always turned to Fox, which a lot of people consider a [tag]Republican[\/tag]-leaning network.” VandeHei noted that the televisions are paid for with taxpayer dollars.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

McClellan asked VandeHei if he’d asked to have the channel changed. VandeHei said administration officials told him, “We don’t watch [tag]CNN[\/tag] here; you can only watch Fox.”<\/p>\n

McClellan initially dismissed the concern, calling it “quite amusing,” but came back 18 minutes later to report that the station had been changed to CNN, per the [tag]press[\/tag] corps’ request.<\/p>\n

Last month, we learned that Dick Cheney insists<\/a>, when he travels, that all hotel-room [tag]TV[\/tag]s are tuned to [tag]Fox News[\/tag]. But forcing the White House press corps to watch the Republicans’ network?<\/p>\n

I guess it’s not enough to bombard reporters with propaganda from the press secretary; the Bush gang figures they should reinforce the message with TV “news” broadcasts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ordinarily, [tag]White House[\/tag] press [tag]gaggle[\/tag]s are relatively quick and painless. Yesterday’s wasn’t. Scott [tag]McClellan[\/tag] and the Washington Post’s Jim [tag]VandeHei[\/tag] had quite an illuminating discussion en route New Orleans, not about Katrina, gas prices, Plame, or Iraq, but about the [tag]television[\/tag]s on board Air Force One. Seriously. “It’s come to my attention that there’s been […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7265","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=7265"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7265\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}