There's little doubt that at hand is an ongoing effort by the Obama White House to marginalize the Fox News Channel - especially after the administration attempted to leave Fox out of the White House pool last week. That is something conservative columnist Cal Thomas said is eerily comparable to Cold War tactics of the old Soviet Union.
On the Fox News Channel's Oct. 24 "Fox News Watch," Thomas alluded to an Oct. 21 column he wrote, which he compared what the Soviets did with radio signals that penetrated the Iron Curtain to deliver a message of freedom from Western Europe - they jammed them.
"I wrote a column on this, this week - if I can promote myself and my own column," Thomas said. "I likened it to what happened during the Cold War, when the Soviet Union especially tried to jam the signals of the Voice of America and Radio Europe, other entities that were trying to pump truth into the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc countries, the so-called captive nations."
As Thomas explained, the White House is attempting to dismiss the credibility of Fox News, an outlet that has had some success of bringing stories to the forefront that could embarrass the President Barack Obama - like ACORN corruption, the past deeds of former Obama "green jobs" czar Van Jones and White House Communications Director Anita Dunn expressing her affection for Mao Tse Tung. The administration's fear - those stories could bleed over from just Fox News into other news outlets.
"What we have here is an attempt to isolate one network, to give it the mark of Cain, to declare it to be illegitimate, so that as Judy [Miller] said, these stories that are discovered here - Fox isn't making them up," Thomas said. "Fox didn't create Van Jones and his signing of petitions and the defense of a cop killer. Fox isn't doing this, but if it seeps over to The New York Times, The Washington Post - then the rest of the country might find out what's going on."
But this won't last forever, Thomas explained. Eventually journalists other than those at Fox News will realize the opportunities before them and seize upon them, even if it means making the President and his administration look bad.
"I'll tell you what's going to happen - I'll make a prediction here and I don't do it very often," Thomas said. "When his, the President's ratings continue to slip, and according to one poll they just dipped below 50 percent and blood is in the water for the media - they may love this guy, but they love their careers and the controversy more. They're going to go after him like a shark."
Thomas suggested in his column that instead of employing these Chicago political machine/Saul Alinsky-type tactics against Fox News, they should have done just the opposite to fight back.
"Rather than boycott Fox - if the administration were smart - it would flood the network with its spokespeople," he wrote. "The administration apparently believes it needs an enemy to avert scrutiny from its socialist agenda, the undermining of free speech and the corruption of the U.S. Constitution. Because Republicans have no credible national leader, the administration has settled on Fox News."
