Obama Effect already working to embargo Fox News story

By Ray Robison

Yesterday, Fox News reported the hearings held by Senator Joe Lieberman with cabinet officials concerning a shortage of flu vaccine. I'm sitting in Afghanistan not getting much broadcast TV news. I wanted to find out more, so I searched Google News for related articles. It turns out that as of this writing, the rest of the media is not reporting this event, at least in print.

Try this. Go to the Google search page, click on the "News" tab. Now enter "Joe Lieberman".

As of the time of this writing, I only find one mention of the hearings, from Fox News, in any of the big media outlets. Let's be clear on this. A leading Senator is holding hearings with three cabinet officials about an immediate health crises and no national media is covering it? Really?

I couldn't believe it. So I tried "Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee" as a search term. No luck.

Now try this. Go back to the Google News search and try "flu vaccine shortage". What you will find is a collection of local media stories (many of them) and very few national media mentions. The LA times covered the shortage as a Mexico, US problem.

The national print media is ignoring the flu vaccine shortage. They are not covering government investigations of the shortage and the impact. Yet Fox News is. Fox News is also the only national media organization being targeted by the White House.

What's the deal here?

Now go to your trusty Google News search page. Click the "2004" tab and search for flu vaccine stories from that year. What you will find, if you don't recall it off the top of your head, is a full on effort by the Democrats to blame George Bush for the flu vaccine shortage. The Democrats said then that it proved he was incompetent. Senator John Kerry claimed it showed Bush didn't care about the health of the vulnerable old and young.

In 2004, with President Bush in office the media flooded the lane with flu shortage stories. Today, only Fox News has chosen to protect your interests over that of President Obama. Yet it is Fox News, the White House claims, that is not a "real" news organization.

This is clear evidence that the White House is targeting Fox News for reporting straight stories that could damage the administration and in doing so it has scared the rest of the national media off of the story. And it is working all too well.