EDITORIAL

President Harry S. Truman was not very popular with the press when he was in the White House.

He was poked and prodded, and even his family was in the cross hairs of the media of that day.

Except for Truman’s outburst at the press when they were particularly tough on his daughter’s piano playing, he took the attitude “if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.”

Perhaps the current president could use such wisdom when dealing with a media that at times treats him as the Second Coming and at others claims he is a threat to freedom.

Apparently, President Barack Obama is not happy with the tweaking that is being done by the Fox News Channel.

He has displayed his distaste for the channel’s parent company, which was made public back when he was campaigning for the presidency. In the last days of the campaign, the New York Post, among others, lost their seats on the Obama plane.

To be fair, it should be noted that Sen. John McCain did the same thing to two columnists seen as leaning toward Obama during the campaign.

After seeking and securing the most public job in the world, Obama now is president. Among his responsibilities is having to tolerate criticism and actually learn from it.

As Winston Churchill so aptly noted, “I am always in favor of the free press but sometimes they say quite nasty things.” The function of the media is to be the watchdog of a free society. They may snarl and make a lot of noise, but that’s the price that’s paid for the service they perform.

The mystery here is that all branches of the news media, in its various forms, are sitting back and allowing the Office of the U.S. President to single out one of their members because the administration doesn’t agree with what they are saying or reporting.

The president, like a teacher with an unruly child, is barring a major media outlet from the classroom while all the others are simply relieved that it isn’t them.

The major TV networks, radio stations, newspapers and Internet outlets should be circling the wagons to protest, in the strongest terms possible, discrimination against one of their own and ask themselves: who will be next?

Any seasoned politician who deals with the media, in whatever form, quickly realizes that it’s a walk through a hall of mirrors.

The media’s job is to reflect and report what they see from their side of the looking glass. The account may be elliptic, but that’s what makes it interesting—and imperative that consumers not rely strictly on any one source for the news.

President Obama has chosen to walk the hall, asking, “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?”

With little regard for the kind of fairness that has nothing to do with beauty, he seems interested only in the reflections that are most flattering.