ABC News Suddenly Notices Obama’s Fascist Control of the News

Yeah, it’s not like ABC didn’t already have a heads-up concerning Obama’s fascist control of the news.   After all, Anita Dunn let the cat out of the bag over a year ago when she famously explained:

“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 made 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.”

Hey, ABC, how’s that “transparency in government” working out for ya’?:

Obama’s Media Machine: State Run Media 2.0?
White House Hones Online Messaging Operation Ahead of 2012 Campaign

By DEVIN DWYER – ABCNews

As the 2012 presidential campaign kicks into gear, President Obama’s White House media operation is demonstrating an unprecedented ability to broadcast its message through social media and the Internet, at times doing an end-run around the traditional press.

The White House Press Office now not only produces a website, blog, YouTube channel, Flickr photo stream, and Facebook and Twitter profiles, but also a mix of daily video programming, including live coverage of the president’s appearances and news-like shows that highlight his accomplishments.

[…]

But while these innovative communications tools ostensibly offer greater transparency and openness, critics say they have come at a troublesome expense: less accountability of the administration by the independent, mainstream press.

Over the past few months, as White House cameras have been granted free reign behind the scenes, officials have blocked broadcast news outlets from events traditionally open to coverage and limited opportunities to publicly question the president himself.

Obama’s recent signing of the historic New START treaty with Russia and his post-State of the Union cabinet meeting, for example, were both closed to reporters in a break with tradition. And during a recent question and answer session with the president and visiting Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the White House imposed an unusual limit of just one question each from the U.S. and Canadian press corps.

“The administration has narrowed access by the mainstream media to an unprecedented extent,” said ABC News White House correspondent Ann Compton, who has covered seven administrations. “Access here has shriveled.”

Members of the press have always had quibbles with White House media strategies, calling cut-backs in access an affront to transparency, even as administration officials insist they’re simply taking advantage of new technologies.

But some say the current dynamic is different, and dangerous.

“They’re opening the door to kicking the press out of historic events, and opening the door to having a very filtered format for which they give the American public information that doesn’t have any criticism allowed,” said University of Minnesota journalism professor and political communication analyst Heather LaMarre.

[…]

“If Nixon had announced he was going to start the ‘Nixon channel’ and said they were only going to put up stuff he approved of, people would have said, ‘Oh my God, this is like Communist Russian state media,'” said David Perlmutter, director of the University of Iowa School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

“But now social media have a friendly face on them, so these media tools are not seen by the public — particularly younger Americans — as some sort of power grab by the president or government,” he said. “They’re just modern ways of reaching out and communicating.”

[…]

And the Overton Window moves even further to the Left…

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