Obama Freezes Out Fox News as a Result of Madrassa Story

February 1st, 2007 12:03 AM

Does Barack Obama have a thick enough skin to survive another nineteen months of constant media attention and scrutiny on the presidential campaign trail?

An article by the Washington Post’s Mary Ann Akers has to make one wonder (emphasis mine throughout):

Sources tell The Sleuth that the Obama camp has "frozen out" Fox News reporters and producers in the wake of the network's major screw-up in running with the erroneous Obama-the-jihadist story reported by Insight magazine.

Please tell us more, Sleuthy. As you might imagine given the subject matter, we're all ears:

"I'm still in the freezer," one Fox journalist said, noting that the people at Fox "suffering the most did nothing wrong." (It was "Fox and Friends" host Steve Doocy who aired the Insight magazine piece, which reported that operatives connected to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) found out that Obama, as a child, was educated at a Muslim madrassah in Indonesia.)

[...]

Since the madrassah incident, Obama has given interviews to ABC, CNN, CBS and NBC -- pretty much every other network except Fox. Sources close to Obama acknowledged that they're not thrilled to play ball with Fox journalists, but they stopped short of saying they are freezing the network out.

One source familiar with the dynamic between Fox and Obama, who asked not to be named, said Obama and his staff are in for a rude awakening if they think they can write off Fox News. If a candidate is serious about running for president, he or she is going to need a network like Fox to reach out to all those voters in the red and purple states, the source said.

Fascinating that someone at the Washington Post would put something like that in writing, wouldn’t you agree? After all, most in the media typically depict folks who watch FNC as being one ill-advised public display of anger away from commitment to an asylum.