MoveOn.org jumped into the battle between Fox News and the Obama White House on Tuesday, urging its 5 million members to call on Congressional Democrats to stay off the network for the rest of the year — the same timetable announced by the White House.
"To draw attention to its biased coverage, President Obama will not appear on FOX for the rest of this year," notes a MoveOn email, citing recent reporting by The Times. "It’s about time Democrats stood up to FOX," continues the missive, which calls on MoveOn members to sign a petition "asking Democrats to support President Obama’s stance by staying off FOX as long as he does."
While Obama aides have forcefully singled out Fox for two weeks running, Congressional Democrats have been oddly subdued, as The Hill recently reported:
In the House and Senate, Democrats who pledged to follow the administration’s near-boycott of Fox were hard to find, although many expressed support for Obama’s stance. And there is no evidence of any joint strategy by Democrats at either side of Pennsylvania Avenue to coordinate their efforts against Fox.
Pointing to that article, MoveOn argues that "Democrats will only find the courage to join Obama if they hear from enough concerned voters."
Media Matters, another liberal group, also dialed up its efforts against Fox on Tuesday, releasing a new web ad cataloging how the network’s daytime "news" programming echoes opinionated and sometimes inaccurate content from its evening "opinion" programming.
