Obama to sit down for Fox interview

President Barack Obama will sit down with Fox News' Major Garrett for an exclusive interview next week, ending months of bickering between the White House and the network that kept the president mostly off its airwaves.

The news that Obama would join Garrett during the president's upcoming trip to Asia arrives hours after then-Communications Director Anita Dunn -- who first voiced criticism of the Fox franchise -- announced she would soon depart her position.

Tensions between Obama and Fox have been high for the past few months, with each side accusing the other of trying to deceive the public.

Dunn, in particular, had long maintained that the White House "would treat [Fox] the way we would treat an opponent." Other senior staff members had similarly decried the network as biased, questioned its journalistic integrity and urged other networks not to follow its lead.

Fox returned nearly all of those barbs, upping the ante. When the president opted not to appear on Fox News Sunday in September -- despite appearing that weekend on nearly every talk show to discuss healthcare reform -- host Chris Wallace convened a panel to discuss whether the president was stamping out dissent.

Those attacks continued for most of October, but administration officials and Fox executives reportedly reached some form of unofficial cease fire by the end of the month.

Tensions have since cooled quite considerably: The administration has eased its rhetoric, and Fox had the opportunity last week to conduct a sit-down interview with David Axelrod, a senior White House adviser.

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