Apparently the leftwing media is not hard left enough for the socialist in chief. The banning of the white press at this newsmaker event was no accident.
The headline on this piece is utterly misleading. In fact, it's just the opposite -- Obama seeks a completely filtered news op. Any reporter or journalist who wants access better toe the commie party line.
At a time when his Washington honeymoon is turning into a hazing, President
Barack Obama and his team are launched on a strategy to sail above the
traditional White House press corps
by reaching out to liberal commentators, local reporters and ethnic media.
The highest-profile moments in the new approach have been well-noted, such as
the president giving an interview to progressive radio host Ed Schultz and Obama
calling on a reporter from the liberal-leaning Huffington Post at his first news
conference.
But those moves are only part of a much larger strategy aimed at
communicating directly with audiences the White House believes are more
sympathetic to the president’s agenda — and one in which much of the work is
being done by Obama’s top advisers.
On the day Obama released his ambitious spending plan, the administration put
White House budget director Peter Orszag
on a conference call with liberal-leaning writers. Senior administration aides
have followed up by promoting the budget to local radio talk shows during
morning drive time.
Jared Bernstein, Vice President Joe Biden’s economic adviser and a favorite
of the labor-liberal wing of the Democratic Party, also held a conference call
with friendly reporters.
White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel has done conference calls with black and Hispanic media outlets.
Obama himself plans to meet soon with liberal bloggers, according to an
administration official. With little fanfare, he’s already sat for
interviews with Black Enterprise magazine, Telemundo and Los
Angeles-based Hispanic radio host Eddie “Piolin” Sotelo.
[..]
Obama has a special stake in encouraging this movement. The campaign
that vaulted him to power began mostly outside his party’s Washington
establishment and was based heavily on the strength of his personality
and promises to change the capital’s culture.
At his first news conference, for instance, his aides seated Schultz in the front row and called on reporter Sam Stein from The Huffington Post.
Unlike
some of his predecessors, however, Obama and his aides tend not to
boast about their media strategy or publicly exalt in how they are
confronting or marginalizing the traditional news media.
Of course not, they are creating their own propaganda machine.
“You’ve got lots of people that aren’t cable junkies or news junkies,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs
said, explaining the thinking behind the tailored media strategy. “This
gives us the opportunity to reach a little bit different of a segment.”
Another top aide used a sports analogy for the comprehensive strategy: “Flood the zone.”
Dan Bartlett, Bush’s White House communications director, said that he and his counterparts in the Obama administration were simply following the path of their audience.
“The lagging role of the mainstream media has prompted people to seek
information from a wide variety of outlets that are often now aligned
with their personal interests,” he said.
That can mean hoops fanatics or duck hunters, but it also often now means political partisans.
“The president has to be careful to tend to his base,” said Dee Dee Myers,
press secretary in Clinton’s first term. “A lot of what he’s doing,
like giving trillions to corporations, is not that popular on the left
flank of the Democratic base. So going to places like Ed Schultz
or engaging the Huffington Post or MoveOn is a way to say, ‘Look, we
get it; we’re talking to a lot of the people who brung us.’”
[...]
Going on opinion shows “allows you to more discreetly mobilize people for certain causes,” said Bartlett.
“It’s like mainlining into a vein — you’re getting the drugs where they need to go,” he said.
There's more on this unbelievable seizure of control of the press here.
