It seems conventional wisdom favors restoring a little more "imperiousness" to the White House's relationship with the press. Across the board, commentators are calling the White House's attacks on Fox News a bad idea. Even Fox News thinks this is a bad idea. While one of the arguments in the NYT article makes sense, it seems tough to figure out just why the White House should avoid butting heads with Fox News.

No one seems to have a problem with the facts of what has been said about Fox. in their own article they quoted Rahm Emanuel and Anita Dunn without contradicting the bulk of their claims. This seems like an odd twist in what may prove to be a very entertaining fight between the administration and Fox News.

The argument against engaging Fox News' brazen partisanship that makes the most sense was in the NYT article:

People who work in political communications have pointed out that it is a principle of power dynamics to “punch up “ — that is, to take on bigger foes, not smaller ones.

The previous tactic of the administration, explicitly ignoring Fox News, and giving it few if any officials to interview, seems like a long-term strategy that might bear fruit. It seems likely then that a decision was made to head off the inevitable campaigns against various administration officials Fox News would continue to make by taking the fight out into the open.

The carrot-and-stick approach to the media has been in use for a long time, and criticizing the White House for taking a stand against Fox News without disagreeing with claims Emanuel, Dunn, or Axelrod has made does not make a strong case for why the White House should back off.

“The media's the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power. Because they
control the minds of the masses."

Malcolm X