The Obama administration allowed a Fox News Channel reporter to interview a Treasury Department official after other network news executives threatened to abandon pool arrangement unless Fox was included.
The dispute over “pay czar” Kenneth Feinberg’s interview on Thursday comes in the midst of an ongoing battle between the White House and Fox, the AP reported.
The White House said it had received requests from TV networks to speak to Feinberg and had asked that the interviews be recorded through the networks' pool arrangement, the AP reported. The pool is set up and paid for by ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and Fox to save time and resources, so a single camera crew can record interviews done by separate network correspondents.
The White House said Fox had not asked for an interview and the request was sent without including the network.
Network bureau chiefs held a conference call and decided that their networks would not do the interviews unless Fox was given the opportunity, a network executive told the AP on condition of anonymity because the person did not wish to be a part of the White House-Fox tiff.
"All the networks said, that's it, you've crossed the line," Chip Reid, CBS News White House correspondent, told CBS.
"The White House has demonstrated our willingness to exclude Fox from . . . television interviews," administration spokesman Joshua Earnest said Friday, "but yesterday we didn't."
In an on-air report, Fox said that the administration had specified that "all members of the pool were welcome except for Fox News."
