Who’s behind the White House war on Fox News?

michellemalkin.com ^ | October 14, 2009 | Michelle Malkin

[the anti-liberal]

Who’s behind the White House war on Fox News?

By Michelle Malkin  •  October 14, 2009 05:06 AM

President Obama with Anita Dunn, David Axelrod, Rahm Emanuel, and Robert Gibbs (via White House Flickr stream)

My syndicated column today follows up on yesterday’s Fox News Derangement Syndrome post. Who has Obama stocked his communications shop with, you ask? Beltway flacks for corruptocrats. Meet some of the key people behind the White House war on Fox News.

Birds of a feather…

****

Who’s behind the White House war on Fox News?
by Michelle Makin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2009

White House interim communications director Anita Dunn assumed the role of lead Fox News Channel-basher this weekend. The attack was a dud. The left-leaning Nation magazine ridiculed President Obama’s press shop for turning him into the “whiner-in-chief.” AOL media columnist Jeff Bercovici called the war on Fox a “loser’s strategy” that “signals weakness.” And that’s the friendly fire.

Dunn found refuge in rival CNN’s green zone, where she blasted Fox News as a “research arm of the Republican Party.” Unhappy with headline-generating Fox News hosts who have wrested control of the news cycle from Team Obama, Dunn complained about “opinion journalism masquerading as news.”

Well, that is certainly an apt description of an Obama-sympathizing “news” segment on Wolf Blizter’s CNN Politics show, which purported to “fact check” a Saturday Night Live skit mocking the president’s lack of accomplishments. Yes, the “real” news fact-checked the fake news to cover for Obama’s deficiencies. Zero complaints from the White House communications office about that. Or about authentic CNN journalist Anderson Cooper using his prime-time show to make vulgar sexual jokes about Tea Party activists. Or about the joint White House-ABC News health care reform infomercial that aired earlier this summer.

Some “opinion journalism” is more equal than others.

Debates about the blurred lines between opinion and journalism are all well and good. But don’t the talking points-crafters in the Oval Office have something better to do than carp about the talking points they don’t like hearing on the one cable network that hasn’t been completely overrun by Obama sycophants? (Full disclosure: I’ve been a Fox News contributor since 2001.)

Where are the seasoned press gurus to help Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama appear more presidential and less petty and thuggish?

The corruptocrat affiliations of Obama’s communications team are illuminating. His press shop can’t rise above the fray because they’ve been entrenched in the Beltway fray for years. They can’t help themselves.

Democratic media consultant Dunn’s claim to fame is her decade-long service as chief strategist for disgraced Democrat and former Senate Majority Leader-turned-health care lobbyist Tom Daschle. She was in the thick of his failed re-election campaign as Daschle asserted a bogus property-tax homestead exemption claim on his $1.9 million D.C. mansion – which he listed as his primary residence despite voting in South Dakota and claiming it as his primary residence in order to run for re-election. And Dunn was with Daschle during the years he failed to pay gobs of taxes on a luxury car and driver provided to him by crony donor Leo Hindery, Jr.

After working as communications manger for Obama’s political action committee and then as senior adviser to his 2008 presidential campaign, Dunn “trained” White House press secretary and anti-Fox sniper Robert Gibbs. Deputy communications director Dan Pfeiffer is another young protégé of Dunn’s who worked with her on the disastrous 2004 Daschle re-election campaign.

(Another Daschle connection: Obama transition adviser John Podesta, who served as Daschle’s counselor and has helped staff the administration with many alumni of his left-wing think tank, the Center for American Progress. One CAP fellow, Hugo Chavez-admiring radical Mark Lloyd, has attacked conservative talk radio – second home of several Fox News hosts — and is now the FCC’s “Diversity Czar.”)

Dunn is married to Robert Bauer, a Washington, D.C. corporate lawyer who served as general counsel for Obama for America. It was Bauer who lobbied the Justice Department unsuccessfully last fall to pursue a criminal probe of American Issues Project (AIP), an independent group that sought to run an ad spotlighting Obama’s ties to Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers.

It was Bauer who attempted to sic the DOJ on GOP donor Harold Simmons and sought his prosecution for funding the ad. It was Bauer who tried to bully television stations across the country to compel them to pull the spot. All on Barack Obama’s behalf.

While conservatives revel in the Left’s hysteria over Fox News Channel’s dominance, more of Obama’s friends hope he’ll wipe his nose and man up. Fat chance. As long as he’s surrounded by career flacks who demonize dissent to distract from the Beltway stench, the White House will remain an all-whine zone.

[Salvation]

Obama
Emmanuel
Axelrod

Whoever the communications czar is? There are so many......Is it Mark Lloyd?

[Defiant]

Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, Odinga, Mao and Stalin.

[ZULU]

I think you can take the “shell” out of “nutshell”.

[mojitojoe]

Obama
Emmanuel
Axelrod

Whoever the communications czar is? There are so many......Is it Mark Lloyd?
______________
Add Jarrett and Gibbs.

[ZULU]

“I’m afraid Pax Americana is gone. Just look at the dollar. And our Chinese enablers and creditors now own most of our public debt securities.”

Don’t despair. That’s what they want.

We survived the French and Indian War, the Brits and Tories, a major civil war, two world wars and a cold war.

I think America can survive this fruitcake and his Bolsheviks if we stick together, don’t give up, out-will him, and PUSH BACK!

Make sure you send those capons in the GOP a letter telling them to FORGET any contributions until they strip Olympia Snowe (figuratively - UGH that was an AWEFUL thought) of ALL her committee assignments and STOP supporting her with campaign money. Tell them if they don;t you will contribute only to selected conservative candidates (which you should be doing anyway, but they won’t know that - their stupid, which is why we are where we are.)

[Palladin]

The more the WH complains, the more FOX ratings rocket through the roof!

[o_zarkman44]

Beck is a genius.

The whitehose has never disputed anything he has said, instead attacking Beck personally and his media partner in Fox News.

Dunn will never call. Because Beck speaks the truth.

[Le Chien Rouge]

The more Obama’s policies are challenged or fail, the more the Obama team will blame on FOX news, ‘right wing extremists’ or Sarah Palin.

The left is ALWAYS in victimization mode.

[malia]

President Ronald Reagan ......... (do enlarge the pix) I could not post it .. and .. I tried, really!!!

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5170280

[UCANSEE2]

...is he coming down out of the Manchurian Mothership there?

No. But it looks like Soros is trying to get his hand back up his puppet.

[smokingfrog]

[1000 silverlings]

don't get in their way, they're going to turn the whole world purple

[musicbymuzak]

Meee too! Haha. Who’s driving it ?

[libstripper]

...is he coming down out of the Manchurian Mothership there?

This is the Coming of the Mahdi after he emerged from the Sacred Well in Kenya where he was immaculately begat by Allah himself.

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

[Brad from Tennessee]

Obama’s orders are FAXed to the White House daily from a garage apartment in Berkley by someone with a beard, a nipple ring and a prescription for medical marijuana.

[FreedBird]

The people who watch the other networks probably are not very smart or cannot get cable t.v. They follow like a bunch of sheeple and probably buy anything those networks advertise without much thought. Thoughtless people who follow blindly are probably are large part of the population.

[the anti-liberal]

^and probably buy anything those networks advertise^

They bought the whiner-in-chief, they were sold an empty bill of goods and now the rest of us have to foot the bill.

[Salvation]

Also Dunn

[Future Useless Eater]

It's no wonder they hate Beck!

http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/ratings/the_scoreboard_monday_october_12_140066.asp#more

The Scoreboard: Monday, October 12

By Kevin Allocca on Oct 13, 2009 04:34 PM

25-54 demographic: (L +SD)

Total day: FNC: 447 | CNN: 141 | MSNBC: 118 | HLN: 160

Prime: FNC: 700 | CNN: 163 | MSNBC: 201 | HLN: 230

	5p:	6p:	7p:	8p:	9p:	10p:	11p:
FNC	Beck:	Baier:	Shep:	O'Reilly:	Hannity:	Greta:	O'Reilly:
	879	573	505	934	630	537	492
CNN	Blitzer:	Blitzer:	Dobbs:	Brown:	King:	Cooper:	Cooper:
	118	68	200	163	150	175	152
MSNBC	Matthews:	EdShow:	Matthews:	Olbermann:	Maddow:	Olbermann:	Maddow:
	127	154	147	228	158	218	144
HLN	Prime:	Prime:	Issues:	Grace:	Behar:	Grace:	Showbiz:
	102	115	196	283	150	273	261

Data by Nielsen Media Research. Live and same day (DVR) data.


Total Viewers: (L +SD)

Total day: FNC: 1598 | CNN: 517 | MSNBC: 382 | HLN: 324

Prime: FNC: 2453 | CNN: 564 | MSNBC: 683 | HLN: 566

	5p:	6p:	7p:	8p:	9p:	10p:	11p:
FNC	Beck:	Baier:	Shep:	O'Reilly:	Hannity:	Greta:	O'Reilly:
	3178	2404	1978	3370	2113	1868	1471
CNN	Blitzer:	Blitzer:	Dobbs:	Brown:	King:	Cooper:	Cooper:
	515	486	642	529	580	581	489
MSNBC	Matthews:	EdShow:	Matthews:	Olbermann:	Maddow:	Olbermann:	Maddow:
	585	551	537	881	616	553	354
HLN	Prime:	Prime:	Issues:	Grace:	Behar:	Grace:	Showbiz:
	255	288	504	735	399	601	434

Data by Nielsen Media Research. Live and same day (DVR) data.