Sandy GholstonThe right-wing nuts, led by Fox News has been on the attack against White House communications director Anita Dunn due to her strongly-worded criticism of the conservative network for its obvious right-wing bias (that includes both opinion and news content that leans heavily to the right). The righties have been working hard to falsely portray her as an admirer of former Chinese communist leader Mao Tse-tung and now the latest is a disgraceful and sloppy attempt (a “Hail Mary” to borrow a football analogy) by Fox News to grossly mischaracterize Dunn’s comments about the campaign strategy of Team Obama during the presidential election of 2008.
Media Matters has been leading the charge to correct Fox News misinformation on this issue:
DUNN: A huge part of our press strategy was focused on making the media cover what Obama was actually saying as opposed to, you know, why the campaign was saying it, what the tactic was, that we — we had a huge premium both on message discipline, on people in the campaign not leaking to reporters and people in the campaign not discussing our strategy, and also on making the press cover what we were saying.
So we, you know, 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; we just put that out there and make 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.
That is what Dunn said, but here is how Fox News mischaracterized her comments to put them in the most negative light possible (remember that this is coming from a “legitimate news organization”) in an ongoing retaliation effort:
The Obama campaign’s press strategy leading up to his election last November focused on “making” the media cover what the campaign wanted and on exercising absolute “control” over coverage, White House Communications Director Anita Dunn told an overseas crowd early this year.
In a video of the event, Dunn is seen describing in detail the media strategy used by then-Sen. Barack Obama’s highly disciplined presidential campaign. The video is footage from a Jan. 12 forum hosted by the Global Foundation for Democracy and Development in the Dominican Republic.
“Very rarely did we communicate through the press anything that we didn’t absolutely control,” Dunn said, admitting that the strategy “did not always make us popular in the press.”
This is, of course, a gross and irresponsible mischaracterization of what Dunn said. Fox misleads readers into thinking that Dunn was saying that the Obama campaign controlled the media which is false and irresponsible on the part of people at Fox News.
Notice how Fox takes single words quotations and frames them based on their own right-wing bias (an effort that is even more powerful considering its ongoing vendetta against Anita Dunn).
Here is how Media Matters boiled it down:
WorldNetDaily, followed by the Drudge Report and Fox Nation, falsely claimed that during a January 12 speech, White House communications director Anita Dunn boasted about the White House’s “control” over the media. In fact, Dunn was discussing the Obama campaign’s strategy for controlling the campaign’s message, not the media; moreover, her comments were made before Obama had taken office and before she became communications director.
So, the campaign was not controlling the media, but making sure its own message was controlled and consistent. This distortion by Fox News is done purposely and, I believe, maliciously simply to attack Anita Dunn in retaliation for her strong comments about what she perceives as bias on the part of Fox News.
Fox News, of course, responds like an elementary-school child would … with attacks, lies, gossip and essentially name calling.
Check out the Media Matters research to see the depth and breadth of the lies coming from the far right in a desperate attempt to attack Anita Dunn.
