The Huffington Post explains the position further: “The Obama administration has created and staffed a new position tucked inside their communications shop for helping coordinate rapid response to unfavorable stories and fostering and improving relations with the progressive online community.”
The position has apparently been designated for Jesse Lee, according to the Huffington Post. An internal memo from Communications Director David Pfeiffer states:
This week, Jesse Lee will move from the new media department into a role in the communications department as Director of Progressive Media & Online Response. For the last two years, Jesse has worn two hats working in new media and serving as the White House’s liaison with the progressive media and online community. Starting this week, Jesse will take on the second role full time working on outreach, strategy and response.
The White House provided a brief biographical description of Lee that reads:
Lee worked in the New Media department for the Transition team doing online outreach, having done online communications for the Democratic National Committee during election season. Prior to that he was Senior New Media Advisor to Speaker Nancy Pelosi for the 110th Congress, having worked for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee online from 2004-2006. Lee graduated from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut in 2002.
The creation of the media position is reminiscent of President Obama’s progressive predecessors like Woodrow Wilson, who hired journalist Walter Lippman and psychologist Edward Bernays to sway popular opinion and control the media. It was Lippman and Bernays who ran the war propaganda campaign that swayed American public opinion to be in favor of entering World War I.
In his 1928 book Propaganda, Bernays wrote:
The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.
Meanwhile, the notion that President Obama requires a new position to control the message in the media seems to wholly ignore the effective ways in which all opposition to this administration has been treated, most notably, Fox News. Fox News has been targeted by MSNBC, NBC, ABC, CBS, and CNN, as well as by Joe Klein of Time magazine, and a number of other media sources that attempt to paint Fox News as an illegitimate news source.
For example, Rahm Emanuel, former White House Chief of Staff, in an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union, said of Fox News, “It’s not a news organization.”
George Soros-funded Media Matters has openly admitted to engaging in a “war on Fox.” Media Matters founder David Brock stated that he has launched a “strategy of containment” against Fox, a $10 million plan that utilized “guerilla warfare and sabotage” against the news station.
Leftist George Soros has utilized his wealth to control the media and target conservative voices. Soros’ Open Society Institute donated $1.8 billion to National Public Radio, interestingly during the same week that Juan Williams was fired from NPR for his appearance on Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor. NPR used the funds to hire 100 new journalists.
Soros’ Open Society Institute funds Free Press, which started a campaign to “end hate speech,” i.e., conservative speech on talk radio. It also funds the Huffington Post.
Additionally, George Soros donated $1 million to TeaPartyTracker.org, a website created by the NAACP to help combat alleged Tea Party racism.
The Obama administration and those on the Left have already targeted the presence of oppositional voices to the current administration. For example, civil rights activist Al Sharpton has called for the removal of conservatives like Rush Limbaugh from the airwaves. Similarly, the Federal Communications Commision has proposed a number of measures that clearly indicate an effort to silence opposition.
President Obama himself bemoaned the abundant access to information, during his commencement address at Hampton University in Hampton, Virginia:
You’re coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don’t always rank that high on the truth meter. And with iPods and iPads; and Xboxes and PlayStations … information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation. So all of this is not only putting pressure on you; its putting new pressure on our country and on our democracy.
In other words, there are too many contradictory “truths” available to the individual that may lead to confusion.
Is this why the Obama administration has hired a director of progressive media and online response? To control that burdensome abundance of information available to the public?
Besides, it seems that President Obama already employs someone to serve this very purpose: Cass Sunstein, Obama’s confidante, and more importantly, head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.
In a 2008 Harvard Law Review paper written by Sunstein, he asserted that he would regard any information spoken against the regime in power as “a conspiracy theory.” According to Sunstein, the government should be employing covert agents to “cognitively infiltrate online groups and website as well as other activist groups which advocate views that are ‘false’ about the government.” Sunstein admits that even if the oppositional voices are in fact correct, they need to be discredited so as to “increase the citizens’ faith in government officials.”
Perhaps Sunstein is not doing enough to help “squash” the negative media coverage of this administration.
Enter Jesse Lee, and likely the beginning of new efforts to end the constitutional freedoms of speech and the press.
