But such criticism ignores the fact that the Bush administration repeatedly gave exclusive access to Fox News, which often used such opportunities to ask softball questions and run specials about the administration. For instance:

* During an exclusive interview with then-President Bush on the June 8, 2005, edition of Your World, host Neil Cavuto asked Bush questions such as: "Let me ask you about the economy, sir. Almost any objective read tells you that we're still doing very, very well. ... Do you think you get a bum rap in the media on the economy?" and "Do you ever get mad at your fellow Republicans?" As Media Matters for America noted at the time, Media Research Center president L. Brent Bozell III defended Cavuto from criticism that he had lobbed "softball" questions to Bush, asserting that Bush was asked "some challenging questions" and that the interview "was no puff job."

* Similarly, Cavuto's July 31, 2006, exclusive interview with Bush also featured softballs, false assertions, and a failure on Cavuto's part to ask any substantive questions regarding the Iraq war, as Media Matters documented. In addition, Cavuto rarely challenged Bush's answers, including Bush's claim that "I think about Al Qaeda every day" -- even though he previously asserted that he was "not that concerned" about Osama bin Laden. After the interview, Cavuto repeatedly praised the president and his ability to withstand the Miami humidity, telling Fox News' Brian Wilson that Bush "was dry as toast" and "looked great."

* On February 16, 2006, Cheney granted his first interview after accidentally shooting a hunting companion in the face to Fox News' Brit Hume. As Media Matters noted, in airing the interview, Fox News omitted Cheney's comments about drinking a beer the day he shot his hunting companion, Harry Whittington, and even excluded the comments from what it said was the "full interview" posted on its website. Yet, on the February 19 edition of Fox Broadcasting Co.'s Fox News Sunday, Hume gave himself high marks for the manner in which he conducted his interview with Cheney, saying "[t]he last thing in the world that Dick Cheney needed on that day was a soft interview," and "my job was to simply sit there and walk through this episode with him and ask all the relevant questions." Moreover, Hume neglected to ask a number of "relevant" questions, as Media Matters noted. For example, Cheney appeared to accept responsibility for shooting Whittington ("Well, ultimately, I'm the guy who pulled the trigger"), but Hume failed to ask Cheney why he allowed surrogates -- without challenging or correcting them -- to publicly blame Whittington for the accident.

* On September 30, 2006, Fox aired a special on then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, titled "Why He Fights," which promised to "examine why President Bush stands behind him and what drives the 73-year-old Rumsfeld to soldier on." In a "Reporter's Notebook" entry on the documentary, Bret Baier, who interviewed Rumsfeld, wrote: "[F]or me, Rumsfeld continues to be one of the most fascinating figures in President Bush's war cabinet." He continued, "At 74 years old, he is a self-made millionaire many times over. He once served as the nation's youngest defense secretary -- now he's the oldest. So what keeps him going? What makes him continue to fight?" Baier further described the special as a "series of one-on-one interviews with Rumsfeld that took place over the course of several months," adding: "I traveled with Rumsfeld to Iraq numerous times, spoke with him at the Pentagon, and even rode along with him as he traveled to and from the White House."

* On the October 16, 17, and 18, 2006, editions of The O'Reilly Factor, host Bill O'Reilly aired portions of his October 16 interview with Bush, which consisted of such "tough questions" as whether Hillary Clinton is "soft on terrorism," whether "the anti-Bush press" is responsible for popular opposition to the war, and whether Bush was aware that critics "are trying to destroy you." O'Reilly also asked Bush, "[Y]ou work hard, right?" In his introduction to the October 16 interview segment, O'Reilly stated that "[b]ecause every presidential interview is finite," he would concentrate on "what is happening now." Absent from the interview, O'Reilly stated, would be any questions that "look back," because, "What good does it do to rehash WMDs?" According to the on-screen text, "Looking back doesn't do anybody any good."

* On October 13, 2007, Fox News aired "Dick Cheney: No Retreat," which was described as "an exclusive interview" with Cheney and teased as "a rare glimpse into the life of the vice president."

* On February 2 and February 3, 2008, Fox News aired a documentary titled "George W. Bush: Fighting to the Finish," after, as Fox itself described, "FOX News' Bret Baier was granted unprecedented access by George W. Bush as the president begins the final year of his extraordinarily consequential tenure."

Media Matters has also noted that Fox News hosted events from Bush and Cheney's post-2008 election "legacy tour" where Fox News interviewers utterly failed to push back against statements that were highly disputable, or echoed those statements themselves:

* In a December 17, 2008, interview with Bush that aired on Special Report, host Bret Baier asked Bush, "Do you believe that there hasn't been a terrorist attack on U.S. soil in more than seven years because of the policies your administration has implemented?" The question tracked a talking point reportedly contained in a "two-page memo" that the Los Angeles Times reported "presents the Bush record as an unalloyed success" and "mentions none of the episodes that detractors say have marred his presidency."

* In an interview that aired on the December 22, 2008, edition of Fox News Sunday, Cheney told host Chris Wallace that "the actions that we took, based on the president's decisions and based on some outstanding work by the intelligence community and by the military, has produced a safe seven and a half years. I think the record speaks for itself." Wallace did not note that a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released on April 17, 2008 -- titled "The United States Lacks Comprehensive Plan to Destroy the Terrorist Threat and Close the Safe Haven in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas" -- found that "[t]he United States has not met its national security goals to destroy terrorist threats and close the safe haven in Pakistan's FATA [Federally Administered Tribal Areas]." Nor did Wallace note that investigative journalist Ron Suskind has reported that many CIA analysts believe Al Qaeda leaders have declined to attack the United States again for strategic reasons, not due to the Bush administration's counterterrorism policies. Further, the degree to which several terrorist attacks the Bush administration supposedly thwarted were credible threats has been disputed. In the interview, Cheney also claimed that the tax cuts were "how we recovered from the aftermath of the 9-11 attacks," and Wallace did not point out that lost revenue through tax cuts has been the greatest single contributor to the deficit during the Bush administration, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP).

* During an interview that aired on the January 11 edition of Special Report, Brit Hume asked Bush, "[H]ow badly would it hurt, in your view, if these enhanced interrogation techniques -- that some call torture -- were abandoned and were not used?" Bush replied in part: "Everything this administration did was -- had a -- you know -- a legal basis to it, otherwise we would not have done it." Hume did not note that the interrogation opinions issued by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) from August 2002 and March 2003 were subsequently withdrawn by Jack Goldsmith, who served as the head of OLC from 2003 to 2004. Indeed, Goldsmith wrote in his book, The Terror Presidency: Law and Judgment Inside the Bush Administration (W.W. Norton & Co., June 2007) that "OLC's analysis of the law of torture in the August 1, 2002, opinion and the March 2003 opinion was legally flawed, tendentious in substance and tone, and overbroad and thus largely unnecessary" [Page 151].

* During a January 12 radio interview with Cheney, Hannity said of Bush: "And I'm frustrated as somebody who is a big supporter of his that he does not get the credit that I think he deserves in keeping this country safe -- and you're a big part of this as well -- after 9-11 and the worst attack on America soil." Hannity then asked Cheney: "Does that frustrate you like it does me at all?" Cheney replied, "Oh, to some extent. But if you've been around as long as I have in this line of work, you recognize that you rarely get credit for things that don't happen." Later in the interview, Hannity said to Cheney: "Mr. Vice President, you kept this country safe, along with the president, for all the years and the days after 9-11. For that we owe you a great debt of gratitude. I know you woke up every morning and that was your number one priority."

* During his January 12 interview with Fox News White House correspondent Mike Emanuel, Cheney said: "I think probably the most important thing we did was to keep the country safe for the last seven and a half years; to disrupt, interrupt, break up all the prospective attacks and plots that were developed to come launch another mass casualty attack inside the United States. That's been a remarkable achievement. It wasn't an accident, it didn't just happen."