When a liberal rag tells Obama and company they need to get ahold of themselves:
The Obama administration really needs to get over itself.
First, the president and his aides go to war with Fox News because the network maintains a generally anti-Obama slant.
Then, an anonymous administration aide attacks bloggers for failing to maintain a sufficiently pro-Obama slant.
These are not disconnected developments.
An administration that won the White House with an almost always on-message campaign and generally friendly coverage from old and new media is now frustrated by its inability to control the debate and get the coverage it wants.
They should listen.
But noooooo. The Mao lover, and Obama aide, gives a rundown on the administrations modus operendi:
President Obama’s presidential campaign focused on “making” the news media cover certain issues while rarely communicating anything to the press unless it was “controlled,” White House Communications Director Anita Dunn disclosed to the Dominican government at a videotaped conference.
“Very rarely did we communicate through the press anything that we didn’t absolutely control,” said Dunn.
“One of the reasons we did so many of the David Plouffe videos was not just for our supporters, but also because it was a way for us to get our message out without having to actually talk to reporters,” said Dunn, referring to Plouffe, who was Obama’s chief campaign manager.
“We just put that out there and made them write what Plouffe had said as opposed to Plouffe doing an interview with a reporter. So it was very much we controlled it as opposed to the press controlled it,” Dunn said.
And when they find out they can’t control the media….they send out the hounds, like liberal writer and author of such books as The Bush Tragedy, Jacob Weisberg, here in which he describes how “unAmerican” Fox news is:
..He is also accusing Fox of forcing MSNBC and CNN to swing to the left instead of maintaining their world-renowned objectivity in news reporting. (Yes indeed, that was sarcasm.) (Via Hot Air.)
Consider Fox’s Web story on the episode. It quotes five people. Two of them work for Fox. All of them assert that administration officials are either wrong in substance or politically foolish to criticize the network. No one is cited supporting Dunn’s criticisms or saying that it could make sense for Obama to challenge the network’s power. It’s a textbook example of a biased journalism.
Meanwhile, ABC presented what was essentially an infomercial on Obamacare earlier this year. A CNN reporter went off on the people she was supposed to be objectively interviewing, and ultimately lost her job—probably because she’s not supposed to be so overt in her liberal bias. But that’s objective journalism. (Say, did ABC present the other side of the healthcare debate in its informercial? I’m thinking not.)
The funniest part of the whole article from Weisberg is the point in which he says Fox has forced the otherwise “objective” news stations like….cough MSNBC cough….to tilt to the left because of Fox’s bias.
Are they high? These stations we’re anything BUT non-biased during the Bush years and now that Obama is in office their love fest can’t be contained. But it’s all because of the all powerful, all mighty, Fox news that they became that way. Fox forced them to call the station worse then Al-Qaeda? Fox forced them to call President Bush fascist?
Puhlease.
Most Americans recognize the majority of the media is liberal, and that’s not a good thing. There is a reason why Fox is kicking all their asses.
And President Obama’s brilliant new strategy?
Complete idiocy.
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