Obama Operatives Training Media How to Sell Obamacare

The Old Media is getting a little help from team Obama on how to report about Obamacare the “correct” way. 

To achieve that goal, Obama operatives are setting up propaganda symposiums for journalists and giving large cash donations to journalism associations to help spread Obama’s word.

This Obamacare propaganda campaign seriously blurs the line between government and “journalism” and seems to be a blatant attempt by team Obama to write the media’s Obamacare stories for them.

Rusty Weiss recently discussed a series of large donations made to the Society of American Business Editors and Writers (SABEW), the latest of which was donated expressly for the purpose of relaying the left-wing agenda on Obamacare.

The donation, a $15,000 grant, was made by the Commonwealth Fund, a group now headed by former Obama operative David Blumenthal, who served as the national coordinator for Obama’s Health Information Technology effort.

The Commonwealth Fund has long been a backer of Obamacare and is staffed by Obama operatives. The organization has been cited for repeatedly downplaying any ills that Obama’s healthcare proposals might cause and playing up only the positive aspects of the law.

Despite its complete obeisance to Obama’s policies, we see a “journalist” organization taking money from the group in order to push the group’s Obamacare propaganda.

Not all journalists are so taken with the whole effort, though. When earlier donations From Commonwealth Fund to the SABEW came to light in 2010, one journalist expressed his shock, saying, “I may be wrong, but this sounds like a program to teach reporters to write supportive stories about the health care reform law.”

Pursuant to satisfying the latest Obamacare-pushing grant, the SABEW sponsored a symposium meant to “help” journalists “understand” how Obamacare should be written about for public consumption.

The symposium was targeted to a select group of  journalists from such news outlets as Reuters, Money Magazine, MarketWatch, the Dallas Morning News, and the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.

The event began with an address by former Obama administration member Sherry Glied. Completely erasing any pretense that the event was impartial, the SABEW also stocked its discussion panels with members of Commonwealth Fund and other Obama operatives.

The symposium had such helpful presentations as one that helped reporters with “targeting messages.” Then there was Rachel Klein’s PowerPoint presentation that told reporters that uninsured Americans “don’t know the health reform law will help them.” She went on to inform reporters on how great Obamacare was for Americans.

Klein is the executive director of a left-wing group called Enroll America, a group whose main purpose is to “enroll” people in Obamacare. Klein’s group also proudly counts as its close advisers the National Council of La Raza, Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and others.

The symposium was all so blatant that even former SABEW president Rob Reuteman was forced to admit that it was all a bit too cosy, if not entirely unethical, to have Obama’s operatives instructing the media on how they should “report” on Obamacare.

With all this hand-in-hand cooperation going on, it is odd indeed that President Obama recently claimed that the media isn’t liberal enough for him.