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ABC News Exec Joins Left Wing Firm Which Boasts ‘Far-Reaching Role’ in Electing Obama

Emily Lenzner, Executive Director of Communications at ABC News for its DC-based shows, who spent eight months in 2007-2008 as editorial producer for This Week with George Stephanopoulos (for whom she also toiled inside the Clinton White House) , has left ABC News for Anita Dunn ‘s “strategic communications firm.” SKDKnickerbocker announced Monday she’ll be a Managing Director with the firm led by Dunn, the Obama administration’s Communications Director in 2009. SKDKnickerbocker’s “About” page boasts: We helped Barack Obama by being the only firm in America to do direct mail and television advertising for his 2008 presidential victory. We helped SEIU fight to stave off millions of dollars of healthcare cuts. Their “ Case Studies” page , which touts work for a bunch of liberal candidates, highlights “FAR-REACHING ROLE IN ELECTION: Obama for America.” That page trumpets : “No other firm had as far-reaching a role in President Obama’s election…with Anita Dunn serving as one of the top officials of the campaign and the firm producing both television advertising and direct mail for the campaign.” The firm’s press release on Lenzner hailed her revolving door spins: “A Washington native, Lenzner’s career has spanned the worlds of politics and media from the Clinton White House and New York politics to broadcast news and the entertainment and digital media industries.” Lenzner’s revolving comes a month after Jennifer Loven , an 18-year AP veteran and the wire service’s chief White House correspondent, decided to put her communications talents to work for The Glover Park Group, a DC-based “strategic communications firm” founded in 2001 by a bunch of Clinton and Gore staffers, most prominently Joe Lockhart, who found themselves unemployed after the 2000 election. (Obama-media revolving door list: Complete list, now up to 17 . Loven and Lenzner, however, are not on the list since neither worked in the Obama administration or campaign, though both are now working for firms advancing his agenda.) Lenzner’s resume, as recounted in the press release: Emily Lenzner has spent most of her career in media and politics with an expertise in strategic communications and media affairs. Most recently Emily served as the Executive Director of Media Relations for ABC News in Washington, where she was responsible for all public relations and communications for This Week with Christiane Amanpour, Nightline, and ABC’s Washington Bureau. In this role, she managed all PR for Ms. Amanpour and previously Jake Tapper and George Stephanopoulos; Nightline’s current anchors and previously Ted Koppel; as well as ABC News’ political and DC-based on-air talent. Emily took a year off from ABC to run media relations for National Public Radio in Washington, where as the number two communications executive for the network, she established new procedures to make the company’s media relations efforts more streamlined and effective. Emily returned to ABC In 2007 to serve as George Stephanopoulos’ editorial producer on This Week for eight months in 2007 and 2008 before returning to ABC’s communications department. Prior to her first tour at ABC, Emily was an account director at Fenton Communications in New York, where she managed clients, including off-shore wind power company BlueWaterWind and Russell Simmons and Andrew Cuomo’s partnership to repeal the Rockefeller Drug Laws. She was the press secretary for Tom Golisano during his 2002 campaign for New York Governor… From 1995 to 1997, Emily was the associate producer for the News at Noon at KIRO TV in Seattle. Before that she served as a White House staff assistant to George Stephanopoulos, when he was senior advisor to President Bill Clinton… In 2007, the MRC’s Tim Graham tipped me, Lenzner married Peter Cherukuri , Vice President and general manager of Huffington Post’s Washington, D.C. office .

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ABC News Exec Joins Left Wing Firm Which Boasts ‘Far-Reaching Role’ in Electing Obama

NBC’s Andrea Mitchell Relays Iranian State Spin on Today

NBC’s Andrea Mitchell reporting live from Tehran on Tuesday’s Today show, on the American hikers held hostage in Iran, relayed Iranian government spin, that the Ground Zero mosque protest and controversial Koran “desecrations” have “added to the tension here, the anti-American spirit.” Spurred by a question from substitute anchor Carl Quintanilla about the protests in New York city, Mitchell actually held up one of the state-owned newspapers and relayed that “if the government needed any excuse to drum up more anti-American fever,” they have it, as she noted “all the headlines” in Iran are about the “desecration” and “burning” threats of the Koran. The following segment was aired on the September 14 Today show: CARL QUINTANILLA: But we begin this morning, in Iran, where tense negotiations are underway to free one of the three American hikers detained there for more than a year. NBC’s chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell is in Tehran. Andrea, good morning. ANDREA MITCHELL: Good morning, Carl. As you say it’s been tense, feverish negotiations led by Swiss diplomats here representing the United States and an Iranian lawyer retained by the Shourd family, trying to win her release, trying to get prosecutors to relent on their demand for that bail, $500,000. And it’s been a roller coaster, as you point out. There were plans to release her, then those were retracted. So they’re waiting to see, but there are some signals today that she could be released at any time. And they are, of course, hoping for that to happen. Carl? QUINTANILLA: Andrea the discussions about this, this potential release, the discussions in this country about the would be mosque near Ground Zero, what has all of that done to the political climate there, where you are? MITCHELL: Well it has really added to the tension here, the anti-American spirit. And, in fact, if the government needed any excuse to try drum to up more anti-American fever, you can see the state owned newspapers today, all the headlines are about the desecration threat, the burning threat and also what happened in Washington last weekend, on 9/11, when some pages were torn out of Koran, out of the holy book. That has inflamed the anger here and they are planning big protests today. Carl? QUINTANILLA: NBC’s Andrea Mitchell in Tehran. Andrea, thank you for that.

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NBC’s Andrea Mitchell Relays Iranian State Spin on Today

Former Majority Leader Dick Armey Credits CNBC’s Santelli for Sparking Tea Party

February 2009 was a pretty dark time for the conservative movement. The arguably most liberal president in the history of the United States has been sworn in to office just weeks early. The Congress had solid Democratic majorities in both chambers. And there were overtures that only way to save the nation from suffering the worst of a downtrodden economy was through an avalanche of costly legislation that would create huge budget deficits and ever-expanding bureaucracy. But in the midst of that dark spell, CNBC’s Rick Santelli lit the spark that ignited the conservative pushback. On CNBC’s Feb. 19, 2009 “Squawk Box,” Santelli called for a “tea party” in Lake Michigan to protest the idea the Obama administration was preparing to enact a massive housing bailout to reward people who took part in risky behavior by purchasing a home they couldn’t afford. According to former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, now the chairman of FreedomWorks , often portrayed as a Tea Party villain by the American left , Santelli really is a father of the movement. Armey, along with Matt Kibbe, president and CEO of FreedomWorks, credit Santelli in an Aug. 17 Wall Street Journal op-ed and more extensively in their book “Give Us Liberty: A Tea Party Manifesto.” And on CNBC’s Aug. 19 “Squawk Box,” Armey explained the importance of Santelli. “The Santelli rant, which we talk about with great affection in our book, immediately went to the Internet and the Internet is so important to this movement, in terms of the baffled liberals who can’t understand what’s going on without a George Soros,” Armey said. “It’s the Internet, because that went viral. And everybody said – and that’s where the term ‘tea party’ comes in.” Armey explained that his organization served as a mechanism for the activists to coordinate the Tea Party movement. “So what we found happening very soon is with people who had found us because they said, ‘I like that guy on TV. I want to have a tea party. How do you do it? Well, let’s go see who does it.’ That’s how they found FreedomWorks and they asked us, ‘Give us some, you know, advice how to do this, how to put it together,’ and so forth. And we developed this mentoring relationship.” Despite accusations of opportunism , Armey explained his organization predated the Santelli rant and the entire movement. “We’ve been doing this since 1984, and we are the best there is at,” he added. Later in the program, Santelli responded Armey’s appearance on “Squawk Box.” “[T]he rant was a year and a half ago,” Santelli said. “The Tea Party movement is really moving along. It’s pretty cool after a year and a half.”

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Former Majority Leader Dick Armey Credits CNBC’s Santelli for Sparking Tea Party