For two weeks, my favorite non-story, story has been the on-going feud between the White House and FOX News.  It's a favorite because it's the proverbial watercooler story that gets everybody talking.  Sadly, it also diverts our attention from the bigger, more pressing and serious stories (Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, the joblessness problem, our lack of preparedness for a pandemic of any kind -- i.e., those long lines for the swine flu vaccine) that really need our attention.  Interestly, those stories always have a way of jarringly putting themselves back on the front page.  This weekend's suicide bombings in Baghdad and the deadly helicopter crashes in Afghanistan have, at least for the moment, knocked the White House - FOX News feud out of the news.

Usually, a White House only picks a media fight when it wants to remove the spotlight from something it has done that has gone terribly wrong or wants to turn attention away from something embarrassing.  The Obama White House doesn't have either of the situations in play, so it begs the question, "why fight with FOX"?  One reason may be that it's tired of the Glenn Beck tirades.  It's understandable that the White House might not want to deal with a network that actively promotes a host who accuses the President of having issues with white culture and of being a racist?  It's an absurd charge given that President Obama is half white and was raised by his white mother and grandparents.  In spite of Beck, this White House must deal with FOX, even if it views it with suspicion.  Why?  The U.S. is an example for the rest of the world.  It can't tell the despots of the world that they must tolerate dissent (even if it's biased, wrong, unfair, or made up), if it won't do so itself.  It's much more important to set that example than it is to try to freeze out or punish a network the administration thinks is out to get it. 

The Obama administration isn't the first to feud with the media.  There was no love lost between the Bush administration and MSNBC's Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow.  The Bush administration, toward the end, didn't send its people to appear on MSNBC's air.  Former spokesperson Dana Perino admitted as much during an appearance earlier this month on the FOX and Friends morning show.  It was wrong of the Bush administration to behave that way then, and it's wrong of the Obama administration to do so now.

There is an old saying in Washington, "keep your friends close and your enemies closer."  I don't know who said it, but in this town, it's always the right move.  President Obama should go right into the lions' den and directly confront FOX on the issues where he believes the network is either biased or wrong.  It's very easy for talk show hosts to say things when they're unchallenged by the people they're talking about, but it's a little more difficult to make nasty or hateful allegations directly to the person's face, especially when that person is the President.

As for FOX News and all the other cable networks, it's time for them to decide what they want to be.  Do they want to be news networks, or talk radio on TV?  Either is good.  Just make a choice.  It's difficult to straddle the line.  It's fine to have the kind of programs hosted by Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, Joy Behar, Jane Velez-Mitchell, and all the rest, but let's all stop pretending these folks are journalists doing news-type programs because they're part of a "news network on cable".  And, let's realize that when these shows run alongside other "real" news programming, even if they're contained to different parts of the day, people of all stripes will question the ENTIRE network's perspective.  It won't matter that  the news shows are perfectly fair, balanced, and objective.  If cable networks want to be talk radio on TV, go all in and do it.  But, don't throw in some "news shows", blur the line and still expect to be treated like a news network. 

Former President Jimmy Carter opened a can of worms with his statement at a town hall meeting that he repeated in an interview on NBC Nightly News that some of the anger at and opposition to President Obama and his health care reform efforts are fueled by race. He said much of this anger and opposition is coming from Southerners, and while acknowledging how far the South has come in terms of race relations, he said, "that racism inclination still exists, and I think it's bubbled up to the surface because of belief among many white people -- not just in the South but around the country that African Americans are not qualified to lead this great country."

As is always the case in every political debate, where you stand on this depends on where you sit. If you're white, you may not see the opposition having any racially-tinged roots at all and think the protests are based on disagreement with President Obama's policies. If you're black, you may see racial animus in everything the tea partiers are doing and saying. The truth is somewhere in the middle. Not everyone who opposes the President is against him because of his race, but some definitely are. Neither of these facts can or should be ignored. The issue is whether anyone can objectively point that out without being deemed a racist him or herself.

Race is an explosive issue and has been since this country's founding. Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called race this country's birth defect. The issue of race is fixable, but it'll take a lot of uncomfortably hard work and an enormous effort on the part of all of us. Doing so means those on both sides have to commit to not saying and doing inflammatory things where race is concerned.

For example, what would happen if those tea party protesters who oppose higher taxes and don't want the government having a role in reforming health care just stuck to those issues? What if there were no signs like the one waived during the original protests last April that said "I'm not your ATM" and displayed a black hand taking money out of a white hand, or the one on display this past weekend picturing President Obama as an African witch doctor, or the one that said "the zoo has an African and the White House has an African?" Those signs may be provocative, draw attention, and make for great television, but they provide ammunition for people who believe the tea party protests are only a cover for those who didn't and would never vote for a non-white man for President. The issue of race screams so loudly from those kinds of signs that nothing else the opposition says, no matter how legitimate, is heard.

What if those who support the President and his reform efforts actually listened to the concerns of those who have honest disagreements with the President's policies and separated them from the sign-waving protesters and other provocateurs on TV and radio? It's not racist to say you're worried that the "savings" from Medicare and Medicaid being talked about won't be enough to fund all the reforms and that taxes will have to be raised at some point. It's not racist to say you don't like how the President is running the government. It's not racist to say you're concerned about the growing national debt. (That some conservatives and Republicans didn't seem concerned about the rising debt during the Bush administration is a different argument for another day.)

The legitimate reasons for opposing this President's or any other President's ideas and proposals deserve to be heard. That was true when liberals protested President Bush and the Iraq War in 2003, and it's true today for real conservatives protesting President Obama's health care reform plan. And yes, there were fringe elements on the left who said things about President Bush that were as wrong as the things being said today about President Obama. Perhaps they were less explosive because there wasn't a racial element to them, but that doesn't make them any less offensive. When those on the fringe are allowed to say and do inflammatory things and no one in the sane center talks them down, the real debate never gets heard, especially when race is involved.

COMMENTARY

Now that the “White House Beer Party”, the “Great Brewhaha”, the “Suds Saga”, or the meeting of President Obama, noted Harvard professor Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Cambridge Police Sergeant James Crowley is over, perhaps we in the media can focus on the part of this tale that we’ve either missed or ignored: The glaring discrepancy in the police report about this whole incident. Lucia Whalen held a news conference last week and said she never mentioned race when she called 911 to report something suspicious happening at Dr. Gates’ home. She also said she never mentioned race when she had what she described as a very brief conversation with Sgt. Crowley. In fact, the 911 tapes not only back up her public statement, they show something else that has gotten lost in the hoopla: She also told police during the 911 call that the two men in the house might actually live there because they had suitcases. Interestingly, she said suitcases, not backpacks as described in the police report. Yet another point that needs questioning because it is so different from the information in the 911 call.

Why has no one in the media questioned the Cambridge Police Department about the difference in what Ms. Whalen said and what is in the police report? True, the department said the police report was a “summary” of what happened at the scene and that it stands behind the report. However, our job as journalists is to probe and investigate, especially when there are discrepancies as large as this. Instead of being so preoccupied with the type of beer the President and his buds would be drinking, we should have been asking why the police were so insistent on finding out the race of the alleged suspects and why they didn’t pay more attention to Ms. Whalen’s statement, clearly heard on the 911 call, that the men in the house might actually live there.

Instead, the conversation has focused on how the President, in the minds of some, jumped to the wrong conclusion about racial profiling and on whether he should apologize. The conversation has also focused on Dr. Gates’ behavior, with many speculating that he surely did something to deserve what he got. Very little of the conversation has been about the police report Sgt. Crowley filed and why it contains the above mentioned discrepancies. Police unions and other law enforcement officials were very quick to back Sgt. Crowley and dismiss allegations of racial profiling because of his status as someone who trains officers on how not to profile. Journalists shouldn’t have been so quick to accept the police report as gospel, especially after the release of the 911 tapes which back Ms. Whalen’s version of events.

The next question is “are there more tapes or recordings of police radio transmissions that can offer more clarity”? If there are, they should be released. Journalists should be filing freedom of information act requests to get access because if the recordings released so far are all there is, we who consider ourselves journalists certainly should be asking a whole lot more probing questions about the information in the police report. Sgt. Crowley’s record may be impeccable, but even good officers can make mistakes and they can’t be allowed to slide without being questioned about their actions. So far, the reporting I’ve witnessed has largely defended the officer. No one has grilled him about the discrepancies, and journalists aren’t doing their job if they don’t. Absolutely no one is above being questioned in this situation. President Obama’s actions have certainly been put under the microscope, as they should have been, and so have Dr. Gates’. Sgt. Crowley’s actions in writing the police report should be as well, and they have not been. The only thing he’s been questioned about is whether he engaged in racial profiling, and most of the commentary has concluded that he did not. Whether that’s true will likely be debated from now until the end of time.

I interviewed University of Maryland political science professor Dr. Ron Walters on Live Tonight last week, and there’s a link here on the blog page to that conversation. He said the discrepancies in the police report deserve more attention than they’ve been given, and those of us who call ourselves journalists should be asking questions instead of focusing on the trivial and the inflammatory.

NewsChannel 8 has learned that former Defense Secretary William Cohen was inside the Holocaust Museum at the time of the shooting and was in fact, just 30 feet from the shooter according to his wife's office.  He is fine.  He was there because his wife, Janet Langhart Cohen, was to debut her one-act play "Anne & Emmett at the Holocaust Museum tonight.  That event, the world premiere of the play Mrs. Cohen wrote and directed, has been cancelled.

  Dr. Larry Sabato, director of UVA's Center for Politics on the Virginia Democratic Gubernatorial Primary.  As always, Dr. Sabato's analysis is dead on.

  This is my monthly chat with DC Council Chairman Vince Gray.