We’ve seen this pattern before. A non-sourced, anonymous story enters the right-wing blogosphere and gets picked up by mainstream media, allowing the right to stovepipe their insanity. This one began with a post at the Chicago Tribune Swamp page:One Democratic strategist said that shortly after an appearance on Fox he got a phone call from a White House official telling him not to be a guest on the show again. The call had an intimidating tone, he said.The message was, “We better not see you on again,” said the strategist, who spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to run afoul of the White House. An implicit suggestion, he said, was that “clients might stop using you if you continue.” (Emphasis mine)
Administration officials immediately denied the report:
“While we have our disagreements with FOX, administration officials appear on the network and we have no issue with others who choose to do so,” White House senior communications adviser Dan Pfeiffer emails me.[...]Needless to say, such a claim is gold for those looking to paint the White House pushback against Fox as a Nixonian campaign of intimidation designed to squelch Fox’s legitimate journalistic scrutiny of the administration. Right wing bloggers have been all over the story.
But Pfeiffer argues that the evidence proves the story false. “This is simply not true,” he emails. “At the same time the reporter was writing this story, David Plouffe was appearing on FOX and David Axelrod was on the day before.” (Emphasis mine)
But on Sunday, the LA Times was a willing patsy for Teh Wacky™, complete with a misleading source:
White House Communications Director Anita Dunn said that she had checked with colleagues who “deal with TV issues” and that they had not told people to avoid Fox. On the contrary, they had urged people to appear on the network, Dunn wrote in an e-mail.But Patrick Caddell, a Fox News contributor and former pollster for President Carter, said he had spoken to Democratic consultants who said they were told by the White House to avoid appearances on Fox. He declined to give their names.
Caddell said he had not gotten that message himself from the White House. (Emphasis mine)
“Former pollster for President Carter” sounds alright until you know Caddell’s long history of pissing off Democrats, channeling talk-radio memes about Bill Clinton, adopting conservative talking points, calling the New York Times “the czar’s secret police” and supporting Swift Boat Veterans, accusing Obama of “gangster politics,” and going on Glenn Beck’s show to promote a bizarre theory that George Soros runs the White House:
Caddell is hyping his own role on Faux Noise. Beck can introduce him as ‘the Democrat Obama doesn’t want you to see.’ His career has never been about Democrats or a progressive agenda; it has always been about Patrick Caddell. None of that matters, however, as long as the LA Times can print “former pollster for President Carter” and pass him off as an unbiased respondent.
The Times’ utter failure to do even cursory source-checking turns his exercise in self-promotion into fodder for the wingnutosphere. It adds to the delusion of a president gone bad. None of it is true, but it has all the truthiness needed to infect the minds of millions.
