The weekly magazine's longtime media writer, Ken Auletta, has a lengthy piece in this week's issue about how the Obama administration is dealing with, or trying to deal with, the shifting Beltway media landscape, one that now features gutted newsrooms and, thanks to the Web, a nearly invisible attention span. (Ironically, The New Yorker's article about how the Internet is changing White House coverage is not available online. But Politico has the highlights, here. )

Auletta rounds up lots of the usual D.C. media suspects and gets their take on whether Obama is overexposed and if coverage of his campaign in 2008 was too fawning. Auletta also deals with the topic of Fox News and the White House's pushback from last year. But there, Auletta seems to fall down a bit.

Writes Auletta [emphasis added]:

Fox News is thriving. Glenn Beck's year-old show draws 2.3 million daily viewers, twice its predecessor's audience. The network's broadcasts now attract more viewers each evening than CNN, MSNBC, and CNBC combined. Why? Michael Clemente, Fox's senior vice-president for news and editorial programming, insists that Fox News is asking the “hard questions” that “too few people are asking.”

Ugh. I mean, c'mon. Fox News' ratings are up because it's asking “hard questions” about Obama? I guess if by “hard questions” you mean calling him a racist and leading an almost pathologically hateful campaign against the president of the United States, then that quote is accurate.

Instead, The New Yorker won't say boo about Fox News' trademarked hate. And worse, the New Yorker article won't even quote somebody saying boo about that. It's the Topic That Cannot Be Discussed.

Why? Because there continues to be a collective reluctance within the “serious” press to discuss honestly what Fox News does on the air these days. Fox News is obviously not ashamed or embarrassed by it, so why do journalists tiptoe around the facts? Are journalists afraid of being accused of being liberal or partisan? But how is it “partisan” to simply point out that Fox News relentlessly promoted the candidacy of Republican Scott Brown in Massachusetts and that Fox News allowed Brown to use the cable channel as a national fundraising platform?

Those facts are not even in dispute. Fox News did it on national television. And yet so many press watchers continue to look away and pretend there's nothing unusual about Fox News' proudly partisan programming these days. To pretend that one of the country's three 24/7 news channels has not dedicated itself to attacking the president and the Democratic Congress 24/7.

By pretending that Fox News isn't doing what Fox News is doing, we're left with a gaping disconnect. For instance, in his New Yorker account, Auletta details the Sarah Palin “death panel” smear from last summer and points to it as an example of how the Obama White House was not able to control the news agenda.

From Auletta:

As assertions about death panels and socialized medicine reached critical mass on conservative radio, cable shows, and the Web, the White House was hampered by political considerations. Officials didn't want to look as if they were in a personal spat with a potential foe in the 2012 elections, [Anita] Dunn says.

But the bogus “death panel” smear came to life only because Fox News (and yes, its so-called news team, not just the opinion hosts) practically co-sponsored the smear and hyped it relentlessly, and continued to do so well after it was publicly debunked. Meaning, Fox News is part of the story because Fox News has become a purely political player.

So, why, in an article about the Obama White House and the shifting media landscape, did The New Yorker leave that part out? Why didn't The New Yorker set aside just one or two paragraphs to explain what Murdoch's radical crew is actually doing?

Hint: It ain't news.