The Telegraph reports:
Anita Dunn, a senior White House aide, has boasted of how Barack Obama’s presidential campaign managed to “absolutely control” the press during the 2008 election.
The top campaign strategist who has shot to attention recently as President Obama’s main attack dog against Fox News, the conservative-leaning cable network, was speaking at a conference in the Dominican Republic in January.
“Very rarely did we communicate through the press anything that we didn’t absolutely control,” she said.
I’ll be interested to see how the press responds to this. What is their purported journalistic integrity worth to them?
Anyway, this gives us a new perspective on Anita Dunn’s attacks on Fox News. She says Fox News isn’t a real news agency, which probably means they weren’t able to control it.
UPDATE: Fox News says that the White House opened its war against them because they (Fox) had the temerity to fact-check their guest from the White House:
The video drew attention after Dunn kicked off a war of words with Fox News last Sunday, calling the network “opinion journalism masquerading as news.” The White House stopped providing guests to “Fox News Sunday” in August after host Chris Wallace fact-checked controversial assertions made by Tammy Duckworth, assistant secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Chris Wallace’s interview with Duckworth is here, and she certainly did get raked over the coals. Isn’t that what’s supposed to happen when you don’t have your facts straight?
To sum up: The real press is controlled. Reporting facts the White House doesn’t want people to hear is “opinion journalism masquerading as news”.
UPDATE: It’s not just Fox News’s allegation. Anita Dunn did specifically tie its boycott of Fox News to Wallace’s fact-check of Duckworth:
DUNN: . . . Major [Garrett] came to me when we didn’t include Chris.
KURTZ: Chris Wallace DUNN: In the round of Sunday shows, Chris Wallace from the Sunday shows. And I told Major quite honestly that we had told Chris Wallace that having fact-checked an administration guest on his show, something I’ve never seen a Sunday show do, and Howie, you can show me examples of where Sunday shows have fact-checked previous weeks’ guests.
Additionally, I wouldn’t really call what Wallace did “fact-checking”. A typical fact-check is done afterward, and doesn’t give the subject a chance to respond. What Wallace did would better be described as “asking questions”.
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