CNN iReport

INDY'S CORNER - October 20, 2009

So, here's a textbook example of why some people maybe have a teensy problem with FOX's style of reporting. 

Exhibit A is the first five minutes of this YouTube video, in which Communications Director Anita Dunn talks about the Obama campaign strategy. She discusses concerns that the news media would edit the candidate's message into misleading soundbites, something that kind of tends to happen every now and then during election cycles.  (Any Palin supporters want to chime in, here?)

The campaign thus opted for increased use of live appearances and prepared video, to minimize such opportunities. It was Campaign Communications 101 - Staying In Control of the Message - denying your opponents the chance to take your words, lift them out of context, and twist them.  All campaigns do this to the best of their ability, and there is nothing sinister about it.

Which leads us to Exhibit B, FOX's coverage of the aformentioned video, front-and-center on their website today.

Top White House Official Says Obama Team 'Controlled' Media Coverage During Campaign
White House Communications Director Anita Dunn is seen in a video from January talking about how the Obama campaign exercised absolute "control" over media coverage. 

Pay close attenion to what's going on here; "control" (note the quotation marks) is being used in a very different context than the original, implying censorship of the media, and making an emotional appeal to readers' fears of an Orwellian future.  It's a classic persuasive tactic, straight from page one of the Yellow Journalism Playbook.

On to the first paragraph:

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.

Another set of "quotes" around the word "making!"  Oh dear!  Should we be "arming" ourselves to fend off a "Communist" takeover of "the United States?" Before we "dive" into the "shallow end" without a "helmet," maybe we should check the original "quote:"

DUNN: 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.

See where they extracted and twisted the word "making," to create an appearance that the campaign was out to Mussolini the media? (Giving credit where it's due, FOX does cite the full quote... at the very end... in much smaller print than the big, salacious, cherry-picked snippet of a title.)

It doesn't get any better from there.  Is it a factually false story?  No.  Is it a complete misrepresentation of the meaning of Dunn's words?  You betcha!  It waltzes right up to the libel line, but never crosses, and it's a perfect example of exactly the type of "journalism" that Anita Dunn is talking about - news editors manipulating a message.  Not in an op-ed, not from a blathering pundit, but in the section reserved for supposedly legitimate news reporting.

If that's not enough, here's another example of aggregiously dishonest journalism, again from FOX, again directed at Anita Dunn.  In Exhibit C (Video), Anita Dunn borrows one quote by Chariman Mao Zedong in one limited context, that of fighting for one's own beliefs in spite of opposition; "You fight your war, and I'll fight mine."  In Exhibit D (Video), note how FOX's prize buffoon Glenn Beck takes the usage of that one quote to imply, with great melodrama, that Anita Dunn "worships" Mao, and is therefore clearly a fascist.  After all, if you cite one quote by Mao, you must believe in his entire murderous worldview, right?  It all makes perfect sense, if your cerebrum is composed of finely aged Gouda.

Do liberals do this sort of thing, too?  Absolutely.  Is it just as revolting?  Absolutely.

So what's an intelligent American of any political persuasion to do? 

First and foremost, keep your critical thinking cap on, and never take it off.  Keep your B.S. Detector finely calibrated.  Then, when you hear it beeping at you, waste no time in grabbing your remote, and changing the channel.