"For even more Fox lies, check out the latest 'Truth-O-Meter' feature from Politifact.com that debunks a false claim about a White House staffer that continues to be repeated by Glenn Beck and others on the network."

Does this quote sound like something from MSNBC? MoveOn.org? Maybe even the dreaded ACORN? Would you imagine it comes straight from the official White House Web site?

We all know officials in President Obama's White House don't like Fox News. On Sunday during a "State of the Union" interview on CNN, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel said, "It's not a news organization so much as it has a perspective."

Apparently Fox isn't "a legitimate news organization" because it doesn't toe the Obama line. MSNBC, CNN, The New York Times, etc. are legitimate news organizations, it follows, because they aren't overly critical of the Nobel Prize award-winning Obama administration.

What right does the White House have to decide what constitutes a news organization? The First Amendment guarantees freedom of the press, and Fox News is certainly a media enterprise.

On one hand, we have a commercial enterprise.

Fox wouldn't be around if it didn't have an audience of millions of viewers every week driving advertisers to buy up slots. Those viewers must think it has some value. It reports on what news it considers important, drives issues it thinks matter, and therefore is a "perspective."

It was the channel that broke the ACORN scandal, where it agreed to help pimps set up underaged prostitution rings with illegal alien children. Since it was Fox, does it not count as news?

On the other hand, we have the office of the president.

The government is supposed to be impartial, a protector of all the people. Instead, Obama has decided that the government should lash out at news organizations it doesn't like, slandering them. Does that not sound — dare I say it — Nixonian?

The White House even told Fox near the beginning of October the president would not allow himself to be interviewed on any Fox shows for the rest of the year. Nixon's being channeled, it would appear.

"I have been writing for several months about how thin-skinned the White House has been about press criticism," said David Zurawik, comparing the administration to Nixon's in his column for the Baltimore Sun. "This campaign by the Obama administration is dangerous to press freedom, and it should concern everyone in the press, not just Fox."

Let's compare Obama to his immediate predecessor, shall we? George W. Bush came under more direct attack from more sources for much longer than anyone since "Tricky Dick" himself. He suffered from terrible poll ratings, made his fair share of mistakes and was called on them day in and day out.

He ended up so reviled by the public that the public punished the Republican party in the 2006 midterm elections, then voted against McCain and for "Truth and Change" because the election was made into a referendum on the Bush years.

Did Bush ever lash out against the press establishment? I never saw it. Was Cheney dispatched to lay waste to the president's critics? Of course not — that would have been the "nuclear option." Bush did his best to remain above the fray, to comport himself as a president.

Obama could learn from the man he inherited his presidency from.

- Frank Male is a senior in physics and political science. Please send comments to opinion@spub.ksu.edu.