It was no secret that the media was in it for Barack Obama during the election. Now it is being bragged about by Anita Dunn, White House Communications Director, that they “controlled” the media to look “popular.” This comes as Dunn and the White House is attacking Fox News.
What Dunn said:
She explained that the campaign favored live interviews so that Obama’s words could not be edited — “so that what the voters heard we determined, as opposed to some editor in a TV station.”
She said Campaign Manager David Plouffe put out Web videos so the campaign could avoid talking to reporters and focus the media message.
“Whether it was a David Plouffe video or an Obama speech, a huge part of our press strategy was focused on making the media cover what Obama was actually saying as opposed to why the campaign was saying it,” she said. “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 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.”