Caught on Tape: Obama Adviser Explains How to Control Media

White House Communications Director Anita Dunn made headlines last week for calling out Fox News. Now she's drawing attention for comments she made about how the Obama campaign managed to control and route around the traditional press. You can bet this video is going viral. (Embedded below).

In footage from a January conference, Dunn candidly explains the campaign's disciplined emphasis on disintermediation:

The reality is that 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, what the tactic was ... One of the reasons we did so many of the David Plouffe videos was not just for our supporters, but also because it was a way for us to get our message out without having to actually talk to reporters. We just put that out there and make them write what Plouffe had said -- as opposed to Plouffe doing an interview with a reporter. So it was very much we controlled it, as opposed to the press controlled it. And it did not always make us popular with the press... increasingly by the General Election, very rarely did we communicate through the press anything that we didn't absolutely control.

The political establishment -- from top reporters to rival campaigns -- was slow to grasp this dynamic during the actual campaign. Back in January 2008, for example, Obama broke several viewership records on YouTube, reaching voters directly, without comment from the press or countermeasures by other candidates:

Obama was the only presidential candidate to tape a rebuttal to President Bush's State of the Union for YouTube.... [it] was the most watched clip in the world... The public has shown overwhelming and sustained interest in hearing from Obama directly. This is the third Obama video to shoot into YouTube's top three in the past 10 days -- past clips of naked celebrities and Scientology rants -- and the first video that was shot specifically for web viewers, rather than broadcasting documentary footage of a speech.... The traditional media has been slow to grasp Obama's YouTube surge. (There has not been a single article in a major newspaper about the new records in the last 10 days.) YouTube politics are largely covered for gaffes (Macaca) and attacks (1984 ad). But the press is starting to notice the flipside of the Obama Campaign's communication strategy. It's the part that affects them. As the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz reports in a new article:

"In an age of all-out political warfare, the Obama campaign is a bit of an odd duck: It is not obsessed with winning each news cycle. [Obama] remains a remote figure to those covering him, and his team, while competent and professional, makes only spotty attempts to drive its preferred story lines in the press... Obama often goes days without taking questions from national reporters... the absence of a senior official traveling with the press is a sign of benign neglect.... Newsweek correspondent Richard Wolffe [adds] 'The contact is limited. . . . They see the national media more as a logistical problem than a channel for getting stuff out.'"

So reporters are noticing that Obama is not using them to get stuff out. As a presidential candidate, of course, he is getting tons of stuff out. But whenever possible, he is routing around the filters and gatekeepers so that he can speak directly to voters.

It is a classic disintermediation approach.

The campaign events, speeches and clips are targeted to reach the voting public and bypass media framing. Kurtz describes how a Times reporter finally confronted Obama on a recent trip with a question -- about whether Bill Clinton was getting "inside his head." It's the kind of vapid media framing that annoys candidates and voters alike. And apparently, many people would rather hear Obama speak substantively in response to the State of the Union than hear him take strategy questions. There is a potential downside here, of course. The media does not usually like being disintermediated.

I wrote that in January, though at the time, no Obama aides would confirm the strategy on the record. So Dunn's blunt assessment is illuminating -- at least from the insidery lens of political media -- to see how the upper echelons of the campaign prioritized primary sourced messaging over the tactical coverage that dominates political news.

Her conference video continues:

Senator Obama himself did a lot of local television. We went to as much live television as posisble. So it couldn't be edited when it came to him -- it was live. So that he could speak in a longer than 12-second soundbite; So that what the voters heard we determined, as opposed to some editor in a TV station. But we went to alternative media a great deal.... One of the reason the website works so well is we used opportunities in the traditional media to drive people online, to basically say: 'That's where you can get more information; That's where you can get updated information.'

Notice that Dunn's emphasis is not the conventional description of Obama's web success, which focuses on (impressive) fundraising and field developments. She is interested in leveraging the reach of broadcast media to recruit and transfer audiences towards the campaign, as a primary source of media itself.

Dunn's conference video was buried on YouTube, racking up only 300 views on a Spanish language account in the 9 months since it was uploaded. It got a second life on Sunday night, however, when the sensationalist conservative website WorldNetDaily touted it in an overheated article that reads like it's from a Right Wing issue of The Onion:

OBAMA WATCH CENTRAL White House boasts: We 'control' news media Communications chief offers shocking confession to foreign government

It always goes back to the foreign stuff, apparently. The article also echoes Glenn Beck's counter-attack -- the Fox anchor responded to Dunn's criticism of the network by noting that she once quoted Mao in an educational address. (The horror!)

Of course, it's a little rich that this footage about routing around sensational media is only surfacing because sensational media is counter-attacking Dunn for her criticisms of sensational media.

As she explains in the same video, however, "thanks to YouTube, anything you say you should expect to be on YouTube."

Ari Melber writes for The Nation, where this piece first appeared.

 

Follow Ari Melber on Twitter: www.twitter.com/AriMelber

Comments

[ctom]

She'll be the first person to do an interview with Glenn Beck. Watch. They'll sell her out and as a peace offering, she'll be either on Glenn Beck or on O'Reily with Bill moderating between Glenn and her.

[sankyo]

Dunn did not quote Mao "once during an educational address." She stated that Mao was one of the two political philosopher's that she "turns too the most."
Given Mao's history, it's only logical to question his placement in Dunn's political thinking.

[plaidsportcoat]

The White HOuse and the campaign try to control messaging in favor of their candidate/­president.
Shocking.
SHOCKING!

[psychodog]

This woman is brilliant, and right now they're leading FOX around by the nose.
I can't wait to see what the administration has in store.

[ldillworth]

Spin away republicans, but I don't find this scandalous. It's a smart blend of old and new media.

[neocon666]

This is news? Ronald Reagan did exactly the same thing during the 1980 campaign. In fact, he distorted information from the media in his direct addresses. As an example, during a 60 Minutes interview, a labor union leader said that unions usually vote their pockebooks, but because the republicans were anti labor, "this time if they vote their pocketbooks, we're in trouble". Ronald Reagan made a direct address in which he only quoted the last part of the quote, but conveniently left out the fact that the union leader was referring to the republican's anti union stance, which Reagan demonstrated by firing all off the unionized air traffic controllers. George W. Bush had Fox "News", so he knew that he had a direct media line to the republican party that would spin any story in his favor.

[Kalel]

You'll see more and more politicians taking their message directly to the American people. There's nothing wrong with controlling your message. Looking at how the 24 hour news cycle feeds us five second sound bites of what they want us to hear for the sake of having two opposing talking heads argue about it is disconcerting to say the least. I have no problem with Obama or any other politician controlling their message but for their sake it better be the right message.

[JonathanStuartLeibowitz]

Fully agree. On your last sentence, I may add: it better be the message you then follow through on after the election...

[2lib4oh]

Imagine wanting your message to get out undistorted to the pubic before the news anchors have time to spin it!
The nerve of Obama !

[Tiger99]

She is also on tape stating the person that inspires her the most and the person she admires the most is Mao Tsu Tung...

She admires Mother Teresa but is more inspired by Mao... Things are starting to make more sense now...

[makeshiftriot]

Who cares?

This isn't China and while their laws are messed up, you know nothing of the people that run their country nor how they feel about their countries people.

Get some education then come back and try to make an argument. Otherwise you are just a failure.

And his name was Mao Tse Tung.

In addition to that, people who don't think the same way as you are not evil. Quit being prejudice.

"Protect the interests of the youth, women and children - provide assistance to young students who cannot afford to continue their studies, help the youth and women to organize in order to participate on an equal footing in all work useful to the war effort and to social progress, ensure freedom of marriage and equality as between men and women, and give young people and children a useful education...."

-Mao

Yes, he was oh, so terrible.

[Libertyfan]

We can call him Mao. We don't have to be polite to the former dictator of China. What matters more, that he said a few nice things about about women and children, or that he is responsible for the death of 60+ million people in peacetime? He didn't even need a war to do it. Very efficient

[psychodog]

That was a 'speech joke', that apparently went over your head.

[jimmyjones22]

If by "Control the media" they mean "Good PR," then yes, agree.

[rmct]

I guess Power does corrupt. When is he going to abolish term limits. Remeber don't question the messiah

[jimmyjones22]

Messiah? I though Sarah Palin lost the election...

[sacklunch]

Wow. No McCain lost the election. You thought Sarah was running for president?

[merger]

Good for them. I hate getting only part of a speech from leaders and then it is in the soundbites that the media wants you to hear.

[Gould123]

Poor babys, they were smart, used intelligence, witty, courage an my God, it worked for them!

[S1m0n]

Bypass some parts of the media, perhaps. Control? No.

Is this a scandal? Um, no. Both Politico and Huffington Post have this same purpose.

[One If By Land]

Her job was made considerably easier by most of the MSM that took the pablum that was spoon fed them and never questioned anything.

[S1m0n]

Huh? The MSM's candidate was Hillary Clinton, not Barack Obama. Tne Obama campaign made it's own luck.

[legalgirl]

True that!

[emlr]

They were not controlling the media, they were controlling the message. (as has been noted here already)
This way the people could hear what his message was rather than what some reporter or editor chose to take away or editorialize from his speechs To this day a lot of folks still don't understand the "Guns, religion, and immigrants" statement because of the slanted way it was played in the media.

So I say kudos to the campaign to be way ahead of the game. That was a classic campaign that I'm sure will be studied for many years to come.

[Marcospinelli]

What's Obama's definition of "public option"?

[One If By Land]

So when do you take anything a politician says during a campaign at face value? Especially a candidate like Obama whose campaign was heavy on the platitudes and very light on substantive issues?

[sacklunch]

They also controlled the questions that were asked. Still do.