White House's Unprecedented attack on FoxNews

As one might have heard, the President and members of the President's staff---Rahm Emanuel, Anita Dunn--have commenced a full fledged attack on the FoxNews Organization. These acts have never been seen before by any previous administration in history, so why is this one doing it? The White House suggests that FoxNews is an opinion network as opposed to an actual news organization. President Obama has said in interviews that he does not get the most favorable coverage from Fox; and while that maybe true, the whole point of a news organization is to present the news, not to provide favorable coverage to the current administration.

The FoxNews Channel has had, and continues to have, substantially better ratings than CNN and MSNBC combined for quite some time now. One may be puzzled when thinking why the Obama administration would choose to alienate Fox viewers--when they are the largest viewing population of cable news. In a recent Foxnews poll, around 2/3 of fox viewers are either independents or democrats, so obviously Foxnews is not an arm of the Republican party. The claims on the left and from the White House, are clearly false, and could possibly hurt Mr. Obama if they are not stopped soon.

The underlying issue here however, is much bigger than unfavorable coverage of the current administration; it is a clear attack on free speech. The Executive Branch is a very powerful institution, but when it comes to limiting the rights of free speech, they do not stand a chance. Today in the New York Times, they reported that the other news organizations are standing behind Fox in an effort to defend the profession of journalism. This is a clear sign that the first amendment is not to be meddled with.

In addition, the President is a smart man, and therefore should stop these childish attacks on a respectable news organization. Continuing to attack FoxNews will only make things worse for the President--he might be labeled as thin skinned, or making an attempt to limit the freedom of the press. Both would hurt the president substantially, and the White House knows that, so they should just stop the childish attacks, and get on with the Nation's business at hand.