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The relationship among media outlets is simple: competition. While the audience is potentially very large---there are more than 300 million of us---the number of Americans who routinely watch, listen and read the traditional media is much smaller.
But although most young people get the majority of their news from the Internet---where the information is fragmented, unreliable and occasionally pure nonsense---for millions of others television, radio and newspapers offer the best combination of news that has been professionally gathered, edited and presented. It is not for nothing that, of the hundreds of millions of dollars raised by politicians to fuel their campaigns, the overwhelming mass of it is spent on traditional media.
But the relationship between politicians and media has always been rocky: they need each other but are wary, and properly so, for even outlets that are sympathetic can swoop like vultures on politicians who forget that the media are in business to make money. No viewers, readers or listeners? Well, then: no ad revenues and no business.
This is why the recent verbal battle between the White House and Fox News is so startling, since one would expect that professionals in the West Wing would understand that going to war with any of the media is a dangerous proposition with much to lose and little to gain. As is understood by most investment professionals, the risk-to-return ratio of stonewalling the media is not attractive.
Embedded in what it perceives to be the nexus of the universe, with the ability to get the boss on the air any time it chooses, the staff of every administration eventually becomes tipsy with perceived power and boringly sanctimonious. The less mature of them often react adversely to every real or imagined slight, and that always works to the tremendous disadvantage of the White House. The current imbroglio is no exception.
Fox's ratings have not suffered from the White House's ill-advised ambush, but the spectacle of the White House casting aspersions on anyone's right to express his opinion makes everyone among the media very uneasy. And the Congress, too. In the midst of mid-term campaign, and linked as they are to Obama's popularity, Democrats are understandably distressed by anything the White House does to alienate the Great Uncommitted Middle, the large majority of Americans who view government and politicians with skepticism and even cynicism.
Barack Obama's staff would be well advised to read the Constitution and the history of how and why it was crafted. The presidency was neither designed to be---nor is---as important or as powerful as they think it is. And the First Amendment was written specifically to prevent muzzling precisely the kind of criticism that elected officials and their attendants find so unnerving.
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I advocate nothing of the kind. My advice is that one should expect very little in the way of justice in a procedure that is not designed to administer it.
