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A Wolf in the Fox House |
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Howard Wolfson, who was a top strategist for the presidential campaign of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, is going where some Democrats were unwilling to go during the early days of the election season: the Fox News Channel.
Foreshadowed by Terry McAuliffe’s outburst a few months ago, the move comes as a slap in the face to progressives, media critics and bloggers, who have maintained for years that Fox is in fact anything but Fair and Balanced.
Wolfson spoke with the NYT over the phone on Monday:
“I thought that Fox’s coverage during the primary was comprehensive and fair and evenhanded,†Mr. Wolfson said Monday in a telephone interview from Liverpool, England, where he was vacationing. “It’s a huge audience, and it is important to have a strong, progressive voice on the network.â€
It makes me absolutely sick to see another ‘Democrat’ legitimizing, and even going as far as praising, Fox News channel as anything more than the low-class propaganda dump that it is.
How is this for fair coverage during the primary?
It seems to me that Howard Wolfson has more allegiance to the name Clinton than he does to the Democratic party or the values it ostensibly adheres to.
I’ll place money right now on the fact that Fox will use Howard Wolfson as a concern troll, allowing him to point out Obama’s weaknesses and McCain’s strengths, to create the illusion of fair and balanced coverage. John Moody, an Executive VP at Fox hinted at this when he commented on the hire to Reuters yesterday.
“We really think we’ve got the chess board covered,” Moody said.
The Democrats are going to have to do some serious housecleaning before long. There are a lot of us who don’t see the political value of sharing associations with folks like Howard Wolfson and Terry McCauliffe.
Update: Nick Juliano has more:
Much of the Clinton campaign came to favor Fox toward the end of the campaign in the face of what they saw as a pro-Obama bent from the rest of the networks. (For example, unlike, say, CNN or MSNBC, Fox gleefully spread the rumor that Obama was educated in a Madrassa, referred to his fist bump as a “terrorist fist jab,” implied his wife was an unwed mother and hosted a guest who joked about killing Obama.)
Update 2: FishBowl DC has Fox’s Statement:
FOX News Channel (FNC) has signed Howard Wolfson as a contributor, announced John Moody, Executive Vice President of News Editorial. Wolfson, the former co-chief strategist and communications director for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign for President, is scheduled to make his debut on the network on Wednesday, July 9th.In making the announcement, Moody said, “Howard was part of the inner working circle of Senator Clinton’s campaign and has a unique perspective on just how unconventional this election year already is. He has proven himself on key campaigns throughout the last decade and is recognized as one of the top communications and political thinkers in the Democratic Party. We look forward to benefiting from his insight during the general election campaign and beyond.”
wow. for me, one of the best things about how the primaries turned out is that I no longer have to see Howard Wolfson on TV. I guess that will remain the case as long as I avoid Fox