By: BYRON YORK
Chief Political Correspondent
Washington Examiner
10/24/09
It’s pretty unremarkable to describe the Obama White House’s growing enemies list — the insurance companies, Chamber of Commerce, Fox News — as “Nixonian.” But there’s one place where, if you venture such an opinion, you’d better be prepared to apologize — quickly and profusely.
On National Public Radio’s “Talk of the Nation” Wednesday, NPR political editor Ken Rudin said the White House campaign against Fox News is a bad idea. “It’s not only aggressive, it’s almost Nixonesque,” Rudin said. “I mean, you think of what Nixon and Agnew did with their enemies list and their attacks on the media; certainly Vice President Agnew’s constant denunciation of the media. Of course, then it was a conservative president denouncing a liberal media, and of course, a lot of good liberals said, ‘Oh, that’s ridiculous. That’s an infringement on the freedom of press.’ And now you see a lot of liberals almost kind of applauding what the White House is doing to Fox News, which I think is distressing.”
It’s not the usual thing you hear from NPR analysts. Reaction from the NPR audience was negative, and within 24 hours, Rudin was in backtrack mode…
The rest is here.
