By Hans Nichols
She criticized Fox for using edited footage of a rally to make it appear that opposition to the president’s health-care plan was bigger than it was.
“The people who exposed this: Jon Stewart of the Daily Show on Comedy Central,” Dunn said yesterday at the Bloomberg Washington Summit. “That’s where you are getting fact-checking and investigative journalism these days.”
She also suggested, when asked, that Obama was aware of the strategy to criticize Fox. “I am not a person who is known for going rogue,” she said.
“We’re under no illusions of what the political agenda of, you know, certain news networks are,” Dunn said of Fox. “We obviously have talked to them before. We’ll talk to them again in the future.”
After the controversy between the White House and Fox News erupted, Karl Rove, former President George W. Bush’s political adviser, said that cable news channel MSNBC had a left-leaning bias. Dunn disputed that contention.
“MSNBC has as a host of their morning program a former Republican congressman who was a member of Newt Gingrich’s revolution,” she said, referring to Joe Scarborough, the former Florida Republican congressman who hosts “Morning Joe.”
Different Network
“I do regard them as different as a network,” Dunn said of MSNBC.
Dunn also criticized Rove and the Bush administration for holding secret meetings in the White House.
“We are running this transparent and very accountable administration,” she said. “That was not the case when Karl Rove was calling the shots in the White House for eight years.”
Responding to criticism that Obama has taken too much time for his review of Afghanistan policy and U.S. troop deployments, she said Americans appreciate a deliberative approach.
The White House is “taking the time to do it correctly, making sure that you’ve asked all the questions, that you’ve challenged all the assumptions,” Dunn said.
She said Obama’s September speech to Congress about health care redefined the debate and was a highlight of her eight-month tenure as the communications director.
Health-Care Momentum
Obama’s congressional address gave the issue “the momentum that you’re seeing today” for overhaul legislation, she said.
She also said she expects the “toughest” financial- industry revisions to be completed this year.
“At the end of the year, there’s going to be the toughest financial reform law signed by President Obama that we have seen in generations,” she said. “And hopefully be able to prevent future meltdowns.”
Dunn will be replaced next month by Dan Pfeiffer, a longtime Obama aide. She assumed her position in April after interim communications director Ellen Moran left the White House to serve as chief of staff to Commerce Secretary Gary Locke.
Her husband, Bob Bauer, will replace Greg Craig as White House counsel, the administration announced yesterday. Dunn will remain a consultant to the White House.
Dunn said the White House could have done a better job in harnessing new technologies to reach the American people, as she said they successfully did during the campaign.
She reserved her sharpest barbs for News Corp.’s Fox and played down the network’s prospects for an interview with Obama while the president is on a four-country, eight-day trip to Asia.
“There are no confirmed television interviews in China,” she said.
“We wish her well in her new position,” said Dana Klinghoffer, a spokeswoman for Fox News.
To contact the reporter on this story: Hans Nichols in Washington at hnichols2@bloomberg.net
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