Kagan and the press - more stealth and control from the White House

From the editor: We give you two news stories, nearly 7 months apart but, obviously, related. First, an event from yesterday and then, from last October. The point of this post is to document Obama's continuing stealth and controlling strategy with regard to the Minion Media. While that media are his friend, he only uses them to advance his unspoken agenda. Its kind of like the way he treats his wife. Understand that Obama has not held an official news conference since last July, his second conference, at that time.

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From cBS News: The White House today posted on its website a video allowing Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan to speak "in her own words" about her personal history and perspective. In the interview, conducted by a White House staffer who produces videos for the administration, Kagan discusses her childhood, parents and professional career. At one point she jokes that people get confused between her job as solicitor general arguing cases before the Supreme Court and the attorney general, who puts "the labels on the cigarette packages." While the White House seems to believe the American people deserve to hear from Kagan, it has not made her available to reporters. That prompted some consternation at today's White House briefing.

"It appears that Solicitor General Kagan did an interview yesterday right after the president's announcement," said a reporter. "You've now posted that on the White House Web site. Who did the interview? And can I have one?" "I think it's -- I think it's on the website if you want to see it," responded Press Secretary Robert Gibbs.

Soon after, the reporter can be heard saying, an edge in her voice, "So a White House staffer interviewing her." Gibbs says yes, and the reporter asks if Kagan would like to do another interview. "She has -- she's not told me that, no," replied Gibbs, prompting the reporter to respond, "Tell her we're deeply frustrated." The decision to post an interview with Kagan conducted by a government employee - not a journalist - is in line with the Obama administration's policy of regularly using new media tools to go around traditional media. Doing so allows the administration to better control its message - and, in this case, avoid any uncomfortable questions for their Supreme Court nominee. Still, it's worth noting that it seems to be unprecedented for the nominee to be heard from at all before the confirmation hearings, other than in the initial introduction and in brief photo ops with senators.

"This White House has taken its use of the web to a new level with this move," said CBS News White House correspondent Peter Maer. "The ultimate unfiltered message. Kagan 'in her own words' without anyone else's words." end of the cBS report. Source: cBS News

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More from the editor: Anyone surprised with this story? Midknight Review is not. And here is why -- an interview with Anita Dunn, the Mao loving White House babe in which she describes the Obama strategy of controlling the media, using that source to present a censored and "approved" view of Mr. Obama and his policies. From FoxNews, we have this:

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October 19,2009 FoxNews: 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."

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.

Dunn complained about the fact-checking last Sunday. In the January forum, she provided details about the lengths to which the Obama campaign went to control the media message. 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 oud r 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." end of FoxNews report.

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Obama is our first openly anti-free press/free speech president and the Major Minion Media continues to "take it on the chin" for this clown in Our White House. As we write this post, Obama and Karzai have held a joint conference. We cannot call it a "press conference" because Obama only allowed two questions from the American media and two from the Afghan/Arab media. --- jds

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