One of Obama's senior aides has run into controversy by revealing the extent to which his presidential campaign manipulated the media.
Anita Dunn, the interim Communications Director at the White House and a top adviser to Obama's campaign is shown in a YouTube video admitting "very rarely did we communicate through the press anything that we didn't absolutely control."
The remarks were made at a conference hosted by the Global Foundation for Democracy and Development in the Dominican Republic on January 12 this year, as part of a tutorial given to President Leonel Fernandez and other government officials and guests. The videos became public after being posted on Sunday.
In the video, Anita Dunn advises "One of the reasons we did so many of the David Plouffe [Obama's campaign manager] videos was not just for our supporters, but also because it was a way for us to get our message out without having to actually talk to reporters.
"We just put that out there and made them write what Plouffe had said as opposed to Plouffe doing an interview with a reporter. So it was very much we controlled it as opposed to the press controlled it."
