  Matt Osborne: The Media Stovepipe
Reported by Huffington Post on Monday, 9 November 2009 (on November 9, 2009)
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We\'ve seen this pattern before. A non-sourced, anonymous story enters the right-wing blogosphere and gets picked up by mainstream media, allowing the right to stovepipe their insanity. This one began with a post at the Chicago Tribune Swamp page:
One Democratic strategist said that shortly after an appearance on Fox he got a phone call from a White House official telling him not to be a guest on the show again. The call had an intimidating tone, he said.
The message was, \"We better not see you on again,\" said the strategist, who spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to run afoul of the White House. An implicit suggestion, he said, was that \"clients might stop using you if you continue.\" (Emphasis mine)
Just to be clear, the story cites one anonymous Democratic strategist. Administration officials immediately denied the report:
“While we have our disagreements with FOX, administration officials appear on the network and we have no issue with others who choose to do so,” White House senior communications adviser Dan Pfeiffer emails me.
[...]
Needless to say, such a claim is gold for those looking to paint the White House pushback against Fox as a Nixonian campaign of intimidation designed to squelch Fox’s legitimate journalistic scrutiny of the administration. Right wing bloggers have been all over the story.
But Pfeiffer argues that the evidence proves the story false. “This is simply not true,” he emails. “At the same time the reporter was writing this story, David Plouffe was appearing on FOX and David Axelrod was on the day before.” (Emphasis mine)
But on Sunday, the LA Times played a willing patsy for this scheme , complete with the same source presented in a misleading way:
White House Communications Director Anita Dunn said that she had checked with colleagues who \"deal with TV issues\" and that they had not told people to avoid Fox. On the contrary, they had urged people to appear on the network, Dunn wrote in an e-mail.
But Patrick Caddell, a Fox News contributor and former pollster for President Carter, said he had spoken to Democratic consultants who said they were told by the White House to avoid appearances on Fox. He declined to give their names.
Caddell said he had not gotten that message himself from the White House. (Emphasis mine)
Get that? Patrick Caddell, cited in both articles as a witness, cites anonymous sources about something he hasn\'t experienced. And \"former pollster for President Carter\" sounds alright until you know Caddell\'s long history of pissing off Democrats, channeling talk-radio memes about Bill Clinton, adopting conservative talking points, calling the New York Times \"the czar\'s secret police,\" supporting Swift Boat Veterans, accusing Obama of \"gangster politics,\" and going on Glenn Beck\'s show to promote a bizarre theory that Obama is a George Soros sock-puppet:
Curiously, it\'s not clear that Caddell has many connections in the Obama administration. I\'m not sure how much a member of Obama\'s administration would want to speak with him, given his track record.
Dollars to donuts, Caddell is making it up to hype his own role on Faux Noise. With breathless anticipation, Beck can now introduce him as \'the Democrat Obama doesn\'t want you to see!\' The LA Times story will serve as his citation, even though he is the only named or quoted source in either the LA Times story or the Swamp story.
We have been here before.
The career of Patrick Caddell has never been about Democrats or a progressive agenda; it has always been about Patrick Caddell. He wants revenge on a political party that disowned him years ago. None of it matters, however, as long as the LA Times can print \"former pollster for President Carter\" and pass him off as an unbiased respondent. See how that works?
The Times\' utter failure to do even cursory source-checking turns his exercise in self-promotion into fodder for the wingnutosphere. It adds to the mass delusion of the Glenn Beck Cult that Obama is a dangerous tyrant, a self-feeding process in what I call \"the Samsara of Wacky\".
While Caddell stuffs the heads of Beck\'s audience with nonsense, just how many viewers do you think will do their own fact-checking on the media stovepipe where he gets his hot air?
Osborne Ink is a Weapon of Media Deconstruction
\"News that\'s fairly liberal, but never unbalanced.\"
Links: Full news story
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