In Fight With Fox, White House Can't Win

By tackling Fox News head-on, the Obama administration has almost certainly bitten off more than it can chew, apparently prioritizing payback ahead of rising above the fray. "While there is undoubtedly a visceral thrill in finally setting out after your antagonists," media columnist David Carr writes for the New York Times, "the history of administrations that have successfully taken on the media and won is shorter than this sentence."

Recent shots at Fox, ranging from communications director Anita Dunn's direct assault to the lame "Reality Check" blog on the White House website, aren't just undignified—they grant Fox a status it apparently doesn't even aspire to. The network "is not in the access business. They are in the agitation business," Carr observes. "And the administration, by deploying official resources against a troublesome media organization, seems to have brought a knife to a gunfight."
(More White House stories.)