As NewsBuster Tom Blumer reported September 15, when Gibson was asked that morning by a Chicago radio host about the Senate's decision to cut ACORN's funding over the organization's growing scandal, the ABC "World News" anchor didn't have a clue.
With this in mind, as the Roundtable discussion on Sunday's "This Week" turned to recent White House attacks on FNC, Ingraham used the Gibson incident as an example of how "of all the networks, Fox was going to hold the administration the most accountable...That's why they don't like Fox News" (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript):
LAURA INGRAHAM, TALK RADIO HOST: Can I speak as the Fox representative on this show? By the way, you're all going to be banned from any future White House events for having me at this table. Bill Schein said that, and I know him well, he said that because he believes that of all the networks, Fox was going to hold the administration the most accountable. And the last time I checked, I thought that was the role of the press. I think, and again, I might not be invited back, George, but when Charlie Gibson didn't know what the ACORN story was all about, that was a collective gasp you heard across the United States. Charlie Gibson is an esteemed journalist. How do you not know about a story about a, about a group where President Obama cut his political teeth that had been exposed to the extent that Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill were ready to pull the rug out from under them and their funding? That's the kind of story that the White House doesn't want to have reported and repeated on other networks. That's why they don't like Fox News. [...]
I think a lot of people say if the Administration had the same view of, of, of the way to treat other threats to the United States, whether economic threats or real threats, Islamic jihadists, and don't probably put Fox in that same category, then it would be okay. I mean, they're so impassioned about Fox, meanwhile, it's kind of like very even rhetoric about other threats...I just think honestly the passion, the passion when you send out Emanuel and Axelrod and the President comments on it, I haven't seen them talk about other real threats in the same coordinated and sophisticated way as they're going after Fox. I mean, honestly, it looks defensive...We want him to treat the terrorists like that.
Earlier in the segment, George Will offered his views on the White House attacks on Fox:
Look, no president in the history of this republic has less reason to complain about mistreatment in the press than Barack Obama. Liberals have academia, they have mainstream media, they have Hollywood. They're all for diversity in everything but thought. And out here is this, this one channel, Fox, and they're all up in arms because, in the words of Miss Dunn of the White House, "It is opinion journalism masquerading as news" which some of us would say describes the New York Times and certainly MSNBC.
Yes, some of us would say that, George.
