Fox Reporter’s Racist Tweet: “Blacks Riot At Burger King”
Media Matters for America
March 25, 2011
Media Matters has documented that Fox Nation has frequently race-baited.
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The White House is ‘helping’ liberal groups to get their political messages in sync with the official line.
Ben Smith at Politico reported on the latest development in this White House-coordinated campaign to use these think-tankers to whip up support for its agenda. It is a newly formed coalition, the Common Purpose Project, which blogger Jane Hamsher describes as “one of the many groups Rahm Emanuel has set up to coordinate messaging among liberal interest groups.” This one includes the direct participation of White House officials, according to Smith:
The Common Purpose meeting every Tuesday afternoon at the Capitol Hilton brings together the top officials from a range of left-leaning organizations, from labor groups like Change to Win to activists like MoveOn.org, all in support of the White House’s agenda. The group has an overlapping membership with a daily 8:45 a.m. call run by the Center for American Progress’ and Media Matters’ political arms; with the new field-oriented coalition Unity ‘09; and with the groups that allied to back the budget as the Campaign to Rebuild and Renew America Now.
Unlike those other groups, however, the Common Purpose meeting has involved a White House official, communications director Ellen Moran, two sources familiar with the meeting said. It’s aimed, said one, at “providing a way for the White House to manage its relationships with some of these independent groups.”
Common Purpose was founded by Erik Smith, a former aide to Dick Gephardt. The group’s political director is former Obama aide, Miti Sathe. “Common Purpose is formed as a 501(c)(4), which leaves it focused on policy, rather than electoral, work,” notes Smith. “Part of the group’s role is to enforce a kind of message discipline.” He tells the story of how last month “some of the more liberal members of the coalition” were launching a campaign against conservative Democrats under the banner “Dog the Blue Dogs.” The White House, Smith alleged, “was in the midst of discussions with members of the congressional Blue Dog caucus, and objected to the slogan, which was promptly changed, and the page describing the drive is gone from CAF [Campaign for America’s Future, a participant in the Common Purposes calls]’s website.”