Liberal PR firms are printing money – without oversight – when it comes to the Obama administration. Former White House communications director and current Obama confidant, Anita Dunn, has unfettered access to the White House. She has made over 100 visits to the White House in the last three years and continues to work for multiple companies that lobby the Obama administration. Since she left her full-time role at the White House in 2009, the size of her PR Agency, SKD Knickerbocker, has doubled.
While in politics there are few people with pure motives, clearly Dunn is making millions because of her access to the White House and Obama. She represents multiple clients with interests in front of the White House. While she is undoubtedly smart and good at what she does, why is it that other than one media feature, this hypocrisy has been largely ignored by the media?
Where are the investigative reporters? Where are the request for documents and hounding stories about her, which we would undoubtedly witness if she were a conservative in a conservative administration? Undoubtedly, the fact that Dunn’s partner at the same PR firm, Hillary Rosen, created a national uproar when she said a few months ago that Ann Romney, who raised five sons, had “never worked a day in her life,” would have been a far bigger problem. Could anyone imagine the pestering reporters and endless headlines we’d observe if this was a Republican affiliated firm?
Similarly, ObamaCare is being supported by a $20 million public-relations firm contract employed by the Health and Human Services Department. The $20 million is being paid to public relations agency Porter Novelli via their DC office, which is headed by Catherine “Kiki” McLean — a former “on-air surrogate of the Obama for America campaign.” Another HHS contract for almost $6 million was paid to Eric Whitaker, at the University of Chicago medical center, where Michelle Obama was formerly employed.
And those are only some of the PR contracts we know about – as according to House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp and oversight subcommittee Chairman Charles Boustany, for the last 5 months their inquiries about the marketing of ObamaCare have been ignored. Aren’t taxpayers entitled to know where their money is spent? And is not taxpayer dollars on partisan political causes government funded propaganda?
Similarly, while every minor incident in Israel is front-page news and Syria’s massacres of tens of thousands of its own citizens is relegated to occasional media snippets, this week it was revealed that Washington-based Qorvis Communications continues to work on behalf of the president of Equatorial Guinea’s family. The President of Equatorial Guinea’s son and the government ministry he ran have fallen under increasing scrutiny over the past year as corruption and money-laundering investigations in the U.S. and France have resulted in allegations that millions of dollars were siphoned out of the West African country.
This PR firm has worked for such “enlightened” countries as Yemen, Saudi Arabia (after 9⁄11), and the government of Bahrain, which has spent $32 million on publicity since the start of protests there in February 2011. Public Relations pros are getting paid very well to spin liberal media stories to the media.
Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: Click here.
Leave a Reply