Bureau chiefs band together for Fox

After the White House tried keeping got involved with Treasury's decision whether or not to allow Fox News in a round robin of interviews with "pay czar" Kenneth Feinberg, the five networks bureau chiefs banded together until Fox was permitted in.

The joint action shows one of the difficulties if the administration tries to marginalize Fox, especially when that disrupts the network pool. (Fox's own report via Johnny Dollar).

UPDATE: From what I hear, the situation was more between Treasury and Fox after the networks decided to pool interviews with Feinberg that had been requested by some, but not all of the networks. The bureau chiefs agreed that all networks should be included in the pool, including Fox, which had been missing from Treasury's list of networks involved in the interviews. The White House was contacted by Treasury, but as a spokesperson points out, they did not keep Fox from interviewing Feinberg.

“The fact that Major Garrett conducted an interview with Ken Feinberg at a time when all the other networks did speaks for itself," deputy White House press secretary Josh Earnest told POLITICO.

“This White House has demonstrated our willingness to do a round of interviews with a range of networks but not Fox," Earnest added. "Clearly, that didn’t happen yesterday.”

Indeed, the White House conducted interviews recently between Obama and five Sunday show hosts without including Fox's Chris Wallace.

UPDATE 2: A Treasury official tells Mediaite: "There was no plot to exclude Fox News, and they had the same interview that their competitors did. Much ado about absolutely nothing."