Sins of Omission: Without any pretense of objectivity, Fox News ignores Obama's presser

What I did with Photoshop today ...

In the same way the GOP seems to be knowingly turning its back on mainstream America, Fox gave the White House the cold shoulder today, declining to broadcast Pres. Obama's press conference marking 100 days in office. (They chose instead to enrich our cultural landscape with episodes of "American Idol" and "Lie to Me.")

It's the first time that a major news agency declined to air a prime-time presidential press conference. Fox News did send reporters to the presser, but coincidentally, I'm sure, no members of the Fox press were invited to ask the president a question.

In the last 100 days, Fox has provided a forum for any vituperative wingnut desirous of attacking Obama, no matter how unfounded the accusation, unproven the conspiracy, or unkind the personal insult. (Take a look at FAIR: Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting and their monthly magazine, Extra!, for sustained and in-depth criticism of Fox News' tactics.)

You can see numerous examples of Fox-sponsored mudslinging over the past 100 days in this video made by ThinkProgress.org. As the video's creators explain:

"On the first 100 days of the Obama presidency, the conservative movement has undergone a period of radicalization. From knee-jerk opposition to the President's policies, to petty insults and conspiracy theories aimed at smearing Obama, to the embrace of the radical tea party protests, the Republican party has responded by lurching further to the right."

Where are the Republicans headed with all the demagoguery? Nowhere good. During the last 100 days, as the Obama administration worked on bailouts and foreclosures and health care and equal pay and foreign policy and more, the GOP has decreased its support base and the damaged Americans' opinion of the Republican Party.

Still, in a two party system, lack of overall equilibrium is disturbing. If Republicans continue to stampede, frenzied as lemmings by paranoia and knee-jerk opposition to anything they didn't think of first, will they take the rest of the country with them of the cliff?

• The CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released today showed that only 31 percent of Americans approve of how Republican leaders in Congress are handling their jobs, down 13 percent from February.
• Millions of whites who voted against President Obama in November have changed their minds and now support him, according to a new national poll from Quinnipiac University.
• In a poll of registered voters conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press during the first two months of 2008, just 27% identified themselves as Republicans, the lowest percentage of self-identified Republican voters in 16 years of polling by the Center.

You wouldn't know any of this from watching Fox News, which is living in a fantasy world of its own making. Media watchdogs like MediaMatters.org have a full-time job keeping track of the falsehoods streaming out of Fox News on practically an hourly basis, as demonstrated by the list of MediaMatters.org stories in the category Attacks on Barack Obama from just the past two days:

• The "Worst Media Moment of Obama's First 100 Days" is... Wednesday, April 29, 2009
• Rush calls Obama "cold" and "partisan" for commenting on Fox-sponsored tea parties Wednesday, April 29, 2009
• Limbaugh on Obama's view of American values: "We're not gonna waterboard Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, we're going to murder a million babies a year" Tuesday, April 28, 2009
• Limbaugh on Obama comment that Al Qaeda not constrained by constitution: "he's basically again saying 'Look, I kind of envy al Qaeda' " Tuesday, April 28, 2009
• Limbaugh on auto bailout: "Don Obama has made Don Corleone look like Daffy Duck" Tuesday, April 28, 2009
• Limbaugh, Beck assign political motives to response to swine flu Monday, April 27, 2009
• Limbaugh: Obama is "poison to prosperity" Monday, April 27, 2009
• Limbaugh says his friend believes "Obama is terrorist attack number 2; Obama is the follow-up to 9-11" Monday, April 27, 2009
• Limbaugh and friends speculate on who's really "running the show": Axelrod, Soros, King Abdullah, or Alinski? Monday, April 27, 2009
• Limbaugh on swine flu: "President Bamster is going to exploit it" Monday, April 27, 2009

Astounding, isn't it?
(For more links to media watchdogs and critics, visit Stephen Macek's Media Criticism page. For more on Fox, see Robert Greenwald's "Out-Foxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism.")