Anita Dunn keeps up Fox News offensive
Outgoing White House communications director Anita Dunn didn’t back down from her broadside against Fox News Channel in an interview Friday.
“The reality is that, you know, let's face it, you know, we're under no illusions about what the political agenda of, you know, certain news networks are,” Dunn told Bloomberg’s Al Hunt in an interview conducted as part of the Bloomberg Washington Summit at the Newseum. “The media environment in this country has changed so dramatically over the last decade.”
Dunn pointed to this week’s controversy in which Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart called out Fox’s Sean Hannity for presenting footage from an older event as part of a recent anti-health care rally to make appear better attended than was the case.
“An opinion show on a certain news network was using edited footage to make it appear that a rally last week in political opposition to the president was much larger than it appeared,” Dunn said. “The people who exposed this? Jon Stewart on "The Daily Show," on Comedy Central, OK? Well, that's where you're getting, you know, fact-checking investigative journalism these days, folks.”
And she said that the White House criticism has been effective in preventing other networks from picking up stories broken by Fox.
“It did help people get a sense of perspective again,” Dunn said. “People took a step back and said, ‘Hmm, am I really wanting to go chase those stories?’”
But Dunn declined to say that MSNBC, which employs several liberal commentators as anchors in prime time, is equally ideological.
“Now, I will say this: MSNBC has as their host of their morning program a former Republican congressman who was a member of Newt Gingrich's revolution,” Dunn said in defense of the network. “I do regard them as different as a network, absolutely.”
Asked by Hunt if President Obama was aware ahead of time that she was planning to attack Fox, Dunn responded, “I am not a person who is known for going rogue, OK?”
Responding to other questions, Dunn denied that the White House is too close to Wall Street, saying, “I think there are many people on Wall Street who feel that we are, you know, leading the gang with the pitchforks often.”
And she dismissed the mini-controversy over whether or not Obama’s male-only basketball games are a slight to women.
“I don't want to play basketball with the president,” Dunn said she was told by other women in the White House. “I mean, none of us did. We work really long hours. We want to go home. We want to see our kids.”
Sources: Politico
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