Fox News Disowns Wednesday Morning Obama Video Package

Whatever credits indicate, Fox News producers claim that nobody officially backed Wednesday morning's controversial "Fox & Friends" Barack Obama factoid package, the Associated Press reported this afternoon.

The cable news morning show twice aired an almost four-minute package credited to a Fox News producer that lined up quotes from President Obama against statistics reflecting his administration's four-year performance. It juxtaposed the quotes and statistics against ominous music, grainy file footage of Obama and various sundry patriotic images such as fluttering stars and stripes, a bald eagle and youngsters playing baseball.

When addressing how gas prices have risen since Obama's 2008 election, Fox manufactured a cartoon car bearing Obama's campaign logo and belching steam. To help viewers visualize falling household incomes and savings, someone sent an animated piggy bank tumbling down stairs.Through it all, someone cherry-picked newscaster sound bites warning that "more Americans are out of work," as well as of "inflation fears rising" and "fear we'll see the long gas lines of the '70s."

Just to really cute smug, the package concludes with an Obama sound bite: "That's the power of hope. That's the change we seek. That's the change we can stand for."

Anchor Steve Dooey, following the package, called it a "job well-done."

Media watchdogs Media Matters for America called it "essentially a four-minute anti-Obama attack ad," with spokeswoman Jessica Levin adding "It looked like a very slickly produced Republican ad." Though Ed Morrissey of the right-leaning blog Hot Air "[didn't] disagree with much, if anything" about the ad, even he criticized, "If anyone wanted to look for evidence tha the overall Fox News organization intends to campaign against Obama rather than cover the campaign, this vieo would be difficult to refute as evidence for that claim."

Network programming executive vice presiden Bill Shine acknowledged that an associate producer created the package, but that "senior level" brass never approved it, and would not have approved it had they been approached with it.

Though originally posted to the network's website, it's since been removed.