President Obama vs. FOX

President Obama’s Director of Communications, Anita Dunn, made it clear recently that the Obama Administration was going to take on FOX. Dunn said “We are going to treat them (FOX) the way we would treat an opponent . . . We don’t need to pretend that this is the way legitimate news organizations behave.”

Despite these and other criticisms from the White House, FOX has continued the trend toward even greater domination of cable news programming. FOX's Glen Beck, Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly shows struck huge audience shares last week and across the past month. The Nielson ratings show that these shows, along with FOX news programming, are on pace for their best year yet. In the past two weeks, since the White House first began it’s criticism, FOX’s ratings have soared 9%.

Many of FOX’s gains in audience share appear to have come at the expense of MSNBC’s Keith Olberman and Rachel Maddow shows, which tend to be more supportive of Obama’s policies.

This situation sets up an interesting class discussion about the dynamic relationship between the White House and the press. Did Obama’s attack on FOX backfire? Or did it simply mobilize those viewers who were already critical of Obama’s policies? Notwithstanding the FOX surge in ratings, is there any political advantage for Obama in casting FOX as providing a biased perspective?

Another useful exercise to generate class discussion on media bias: Divide the class into three groups, with one assigned to watching FOX, the second to MSNBC, and the third to CNN. Ask each group to watch one hour of programming on a particular evening, and in class ask students to report on the way news of that day was covered...