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When a society loses its memory, it descends inevitably into dementia. Mark Steyn
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October 21, 2009

Neutralizing critics, Alinsky style

Tapper asks but Gibbs doesn't answer. The question is why is it appropriate for the White House to make this kind of judgment?

Tapper: It’s escaped none of our notice that the White House has decided in the last few weeks to declare one of our sister organizations “not a news organization” and to tell the rest of us not to treat them like a news organization. Can you explain why it’s appropriate for the White House to decide that a news organization is not one –

(Crosstalk)

Gibbs: Jake, we render, we render an opinion based on some of their coverage and the fairness that, the fairness of that coverage.

Tapper: But that’s a pretty sweeping declaration that they are “not a news organization.” How are they any different from, say –

Gibbs: ABC -

Tapper: ABC. MSNBC. Univision. I mean how are they any different?

Gibbs: You and I should watch sometime around 9 o’clock tonight. Or 5 o’clock this afternoon.

Tapper: I’m not talking about their opinion programming or issues you have with certain reports. I’m talking about saying thousands of individuals who work for a media organization, do not work for a “news organization” -- why is that appropriate for the White House to say?

Gibbs: That’s our opinion.

Ed Morrissey notes the "Nixonian" vibe (but Alinskian might be more apt) and he's not the only one.

Jim Vandehei and Mike Allen of Politico don't invoke Alinsky in their piece, below, but they could have. It's a perfect fit: "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it."

Obama strategy: Marginalize most powerful critics

President Obama is working systematically to marginalize the most powerful forces behind the Republican Party, setting loose top White House officials to undermine conservatives in the media, business and lobbying worlds.

With a series of private meetings and public taunts, the White House has targeted the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the biggest-spending pro-business lobbying group in the country; Rush Limbaugh, the country’s most-listened-to conservative commentator; and now, with a new volley of combative rhetoric in recent days, the insurance industry, Wall Street executives and Fox News.

Obama aides are using their powerful White House platform, combined with techniques honed in the 2008 campaign, to cast some of the most powerful adversaries as out of the mainstream and their criticism as unworthy of serious discussion.

Press secretary Robert Gibbs has mocked Limbaugh from the White House press room podium. White House aides limited access to the Chamber and made top adviser Valerie Jarrett available to reporters to disparage the group. Everyone from White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel to White House Communications Director Anita Dunn has piled on Fox News by contending it’s not a legitimate news operation.

Read the rest. A few members of the MSM are calling this out. Do the rest not see where it's headed? Based on their self-interest alone you'd think they'd want to fight back. Or maybe they like the idea of finishing their careers writing for Pravda.

H/t: Capitol Hill Blue

*Update: More on this theme from Politico's Allen and Josh Gerstein: White House: Media shouldn't follow FOX

And since it's strictly relevant I'm going to copy a post from earlier today into this one:

Brit Hume on the WH war on FOX

Brit Hume gets it:
It is a little hard to discern a strategy behind the White House campaign of criticism of FOX News unless it's simply this: an attempt to quarantine FOX and thereby discourage other media outlets from following up stories that originate here.
Bingo, and may I add that this is precisely what husband Pundit said when I marveled at Emanuel and Axelrod on the Sunday talk shows. He pointed out that their words were not aimed at FOX but at the networks they were speaking with, warning them that if they pick up on any "FOX stories" they'll be similarly frozen out. Video of the two spouting their identical talking points and patting the good media outlets on the head, as Hume puts it, here.


Linked at Michelle Malkin (buzzworthy)
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Posted by jill at 8:54 AM
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7 comments:

  1. While I'm sure the right loves its victimhood too much to admit it - you will recall that in years past the sitting president snubbed the networks and appeared only on Fox.

    Heck, VP Cheney spent years avoiding network interviews and played paddy cake with the likes of Chris Wallace.

    My God... they were destroying the media - and they did so without conservatives ever mentioning it.

    How could that have happened?
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  2. Oh really, murph? That's the way you see it eh? Well, I believe your much hated Bush appeared on MANY more news programs, etc., that were antagonistic toward him than Obama has. As a matter of fact, when, exactly, has Obama been on Fox News? Never? Yep. That's right. NEVER.

    I thought Obama was bringing transparency to Washington? Civility? Fairness? Oh wait. That's all for someone else, NOT Obama. Right.

    Might wanna check your facts on what YOUR guy has done before you start shooting your mouth off here. Put the eight Bush years of interviews with hostile news people up against Obama interviews with ANY hostile ANYONE and I'm sure he'll come out on top. Right? Suuuuuuuuuuure.

    Eventually you guys are going to have to deal with what YOUR guy is doing instead of fighting against Bush. You can only blame someone else for so long before you start to look STUPID. And that day is here.
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  3. Murph, I think you are the one with the selective memory. A quick google shows that President Bush appeared on just about every network for interviews throughout his presidency, including those with agendas clearly hostile to him. FOX, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, PBS, BBC…..even MSNBC for god’s sake! Cheney, while less exposed, also appeared on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, and PBS. Both had radio interviews on NPR. I know little things like facts mean little to liberals when they are frothing at the mouth from BDS, but you should really do a little research before regurgitate your Axelrod talking points.
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  4. Poor choice of words by me - I did not mean to suggest that he ONLY ever appeared on Fox. But I do recall his shunning the networks and appearing for long, softball interviews on Fox.

    I also recall there weren't a lot of conservatives criticizing the destructive nature of his conduct.

    Neither do I believe that Pres. Obama should shun Fox News - although I understand the motivation.

    Fox News has been a GOP bullhorn since its inception - I can't imagine any member of the administration is eager to boost their ratings by agreeing to an interview.

    But they should. Because not going on boosts ratings as well - and denies a large audience of their point of view.

    If the president can go to Egypt to talk to the Arab world - he can surely suck it up and talk to Fox viewers.

    Who knows? He might even snap a few out of their crazy - but he probably has better odds in the Middle East.
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  5. Wait a minute, so their grief with Fox is that their programming seems to have a 'perspective' - i.e. opinion. Ad when asked how that makes them different from other cable news stations (also alleged to have biases to their reporting) their answer is "That is our opinion." Are they serious?

    OK, I have an idea. I am going to come out now and go on record as saying that I do not believe that the current administration is in fact an Executive form of government because they seem to have a 'perspective' to how they govern. (forget the fact that other executive administrations have had opinions - it seems to work for the White House in regards to other so-called 'news' sources after all)

    Now that we have this on record, I suggest that any proposals, actions or legislation that the White House may promote, enact or support in regards to Fox News and it's 'perspective', also be applied to the current legislation due to 'their' perspective.
    ReplyDelete
  6. Kat,

    The difference between your position and criticism of Fox News - is that Fox News claims to be an objective news network.

    "We report, you decide." and all that rot.

    The current administration was elected because their perspective won the most votes.

    Government is expected to be partisan - news is supposed to be professionally objective.

    Fox is comically right wing - and while they are certainly entitled to their point of view, others are entitled to point out their lack of objectivity.
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  7. At the risk of appearing to pile on - I'd direct this to anyone who feels that Fox News is somehow "under attack" by the current administration.

    Here's Glenn, offering a dead on rebuttal to the conservatives who silently bleated while their own dear leader went hammer and tongs against the media.

    =============
    ...each of [the] Bush measures, standing alone, is infinitely more invasive and threatening than the mild and perfectly appropriate criticisms of Fox coming from the Obama White House. Indeed, the Bush White House did exactly the same thing with NBC as the Obama White House is doing with Fox, and virtually all of the media stars who today are so righteously lamenting the "attacks on Fox" said nothing. Worse, the very same Bush official who this week said it was "like what dictators do" for the Obama White House to criticize Fox -- Dana Perino -- herself stood at the White House podium a mere two years ago and did exactly that to NBC News.

    But the Bush administration did far worse to media outlets than merely criticize them. They explicitly threatened to prosecute New York Times journalists -- to criminally prosecute them -- for reporting on Bush's illegal spying program aimed at American citizens. They imprisoned numerous foreign journalists covering their various wars. The administration's obsessive and unprecedented secrecy -- Dick Cheney refused to disclose even the most basic information about his whereabouts, his meetings, or even the number of staff members he had -- was the ultimate form of media control. And what was the Pentagon's embedding process other than an attempt to control media coverage and ensure favorable reporting? One will search in vain for much media protests about any of that.

    But it was the Bush Pentagon's "military analyst"/domestic propaganda program that was, far and away, the most egregious case in a long, long time of a White House attempting to control media content and political coverage in the United States. And with very rare exception, not a single television network or cable news program ever even mentioned any of that -- despite David Barstow's having won the Pulitzer Prize for uncovering it -- because all their networks were implicated by it. To see how extreme a form of "media control" that was, just look at what the Bush Pentagon itself said it was doing.

    As part of that propaganda program, the Bush DOD -- as they put it -- "develop[ed] a core group from within our media analyst list of those that we can count on to carry our water." They then fed those water-carriers with exclusive, secret tips about what the Government was doing, to ensure that TV programs would be forced to rely only on pro-Bush sources -- armed with "exclusives" -- while ignoring their critics.
    =============

    John Cole has a more succinct list - but his point is clear. If you have a problem with the administration offering verbal criticism of a news network - please point to your more strident condemnations of Bush's media manipulation and intimidation. Because if you truly care about an independent media - surely you must have noticed what happened over the last eight years.
    ReplyDelete

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