An Open Letter to President Barack Obama

Dear President Obama:

Thank you so much for having your administration shed light on Fox News Channel’s biased agenda. I watched with interest on the last two Sundays as Ms. Dunn, Mr. Emanuel and Mr. Axelrod made the rounds of my favorite news channels, ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN, and explained how FNC is broadcasting “opinion journalism masquerading as news”, that they are “not really a news organization”, how they are a “Republican Party mouthpiece”, and how they have a “perspective” and a “point of view”. Given these problems with FNC, I was elated that you are going to “treat them as you would an opponent” – that is until I decided to just check out what that evil FNC is up to.

I’m just an old retired engineer, who has plenty of time on his hands and with nothing better to do than watch TV all day, between naps that is. I’m also somewhat ornery in my old age, and I’ve been called a pessimist. I prefer “pragmatist”. So rather than take your staff’s word for it, I had to check it out for myself. Wow - what an eye opener! I had no idea that Anita Dunn, your White House Communications Director, told a recent high school graduating class that one of her favorite political philosophers” is Mao Tse-tung and is one of two people that she “looks to most”! As I recall, Mao was responsible for the deaths of over 40 million of his own people. Why didn’t I see that on the “real news” channels? And then I saw your FCC Diversity Officer, Mark Lloyd saying this: “What we're really saying is that the Fairness Doctrine's not enough. And that having a sort of over-arching rule that says broadcasters ought to be fair or ought to provide issues important to communities and that they ought to do it in a fair and balanced way is simply enough. Unless you put some teeth into that and put some hard, structural rules in place that are going to result in fairness.”¹ We know that the Fairness Doctrine was about the government getting into the censorship business. Now I interpret Mr. Lloyd’s statement to mean that he intends to use policy to control the content of broadcast media. Is that true, Mr. President? Why didn’t I see that on the so-called main-stream media? Given that you seem to want to silence FNC and in light of Mr. Lloyd’s radical views, his powerful position in the FCC is very disturbing.

Mr. President, with my failing memory and encroaching senility, I can’t be sure, but I think I saw you take an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States. Unless it’s been amended recently, and I was taking one of my frequent afternoon naps and missed it, the First Amendment of the Constitution is still in place. Please protect our right to free speech!!

Finally, having had my eyes opened by Fox News, I have shared my discovery with all my Democratic and Independent friends via my rather large e-mail list and even larger Facebook Friends list. Many of them were in the dark as well, and I’ve received numerous expressions of gratitude from those who now understand that something very sinister is going on in your administration. So again, thank you so much for bringing Fox News Channel to my attention!

Sincerely, your new worst critic,

Alan


References:

1. Fairness and Accuracy In Media's CounterSpin Radio, July 2007