Fox's Chris Wallace goes on the attack

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — Faced with questions he didn't like from members of the Television Critics Association, Fox News anchorman Chris Wallace reverted to Fox News form — he went on the attack.

It's classic Fox News Channel behavior. This is, after all, a cable network that has kept a blacklist of journalists whose questions it refuses to answer (and whose phone calls it refuses to return) because of coverage it considers unflattering.

(Fox News chairman Roger Ailes once denied this in another TCA press conference, but it is irrefutable fact.)

Wallace, analysts Karl Rove and Howard Wolfson and Fox News executive vice president John Moody appeared before members of the TCA recently to discuss their political coverage. And questions were raised about both analysts.

Wolfson is Sen. Hillary Clinton's former communications director; Rove is President Bush's former political guru. So it was not out of line to ask them both if they were offering analysis or campaigning for votes for their respective political parties.

The fact is, both of them are clearly identified by their political positions on the air, but it was nonetheless a legitimate question.

As were questions about having Rove comment on the news when he's still part of the news. He is, after all, in jeopardy of being cited for contempt of Congress.

And yet Wallace chose to interpret perfectly legitimate questions as attacks, and he launched counterattacks at the questioners.

"I'm struck by what I think is a double standard in the questions that particularly Karl is being asked here," he said. "I don't understand. Maybe somebody can explain to me why it is that if Congress and the White House are having a fight (over) executive power, that that should in any way constrain an independent news organization's decision as to who it's going to have on its payroll and who it's going to talk to."

That's absolutely disingenuous. First, asking the question allowed Rove to explain his position, which he did quite capably: He said he is simply caught in the middle of a fight over executive privilege. And it allowed Fox News to explain its rationale for hiring him. Which Moody did quite capably, calling him "a certified authority on the electoral process (and) on politics; his track record speaks for itself."

Wallace, however, immediately drew the conclusion that Fox News was somehow being treated unfairly.