Obama: YOU LIE! Now saying Fox never requested an interview with Pay Czar Kenneth Feinberg

obama-russian.jpgObama YOU LIE! (Again). Now the White House is trying to claim that Fox News never requested pay czar Kenneth Feinberg last week, when the “pool” of reporters for ABC, CBS, CNN, and NBC boycotted to interview Feinberg, unless Fox News was granted an interview too. Michael Clemente says:

“Of course we requested the interview,”

Michael Clemente the Fox News Senior Vice President said, when responding to reports citing the White House as claiming it had excluded Fox News from a series of interviews Thursday with Kenneth Feinberg set up through the five-network TV pool.

Clemente also said that the White House had acknowledged that an employee at the Treasury Department made a mistake in initially excluding Fox.

The pool is the five-network rotation that for decades has shared the costs and duties of daily coverage of the presidency and other Washington institutions. The Washington bureau chiefs of the five TV networks consulted and decided that none of their reporters would interview Feinberg unless Fox News was included. The pool informed Treasury that Fox News, as a member of the network pool, could not be excluded from such interviews under the rules of the pool.

The administration relented, making Feinberg available for all five pool members and Bloomberg TV.

The pushback came after White House senior adviser David Axelrod told ABC News’ “This Week” on Sunday that Fox News is not a real news organization and other news networks “ought not to treat them that way.”

Media analysts cheered the decision to boycott the Feinberg interview unless Fox News was included, saying the administration’s gambit was taking its feud with Fox News too far. President Obama has already declined to go on “Fox News Sunday,” even while appearing on the other Sunday shows.

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October 25, 2009 · Filed Under Obama Czars


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