White House officials to appear on Fox News

Last week, White House communications director Anita Dunn said Fox News, which airs the shows of several conservative commentators, functions "almost as either the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party. . . . We don't need to pretend that this is the way that legitimate news organizations behave."

Her comments sparked a fresh battle between the White House and the network. In response to the criticism, Fox News executive Michael Clemente said in a statement that President Obama's aides had decided to "declare war on a news organization."

The back-and-forth played out on political talk shows Sunday, with others in the president's inner circle criticizing Fox, which is home to several staunch Obama critics -- including Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck, who has called the president a racist. Beck also has pushed against administration hires. Most notably, the commentator used his show to campaign for the ouster of Van Jones, a White House environmental adviser who had been criticized for past statements and associations. Jones was then forced to resign.

Without citing specific complaints against Fox, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said on CNN's "State of the Union" that the way "the president looks at it and we look at it is it is not a news organization so much as it has a perspective."