The campaigns of President Obama and Republican Mitt Romney are seizing on a new way to bring credibility to their positions: packaging on-air comments and criticisms from reporters and commentators in ads and press releases.
And now NBC and MSNBC, whose on-air voices are particularly popular among Obama and Romney ad writers and publicists, are demanding that the campaigns cease and desist.
The latest plea came from NBC today, a day after the Obama campaign used on-air comments from chief correspondent Andrea Mitchell to hit Romney’s Tuesday foreign policy address to the VFW. They issued a press release headlined: “Mitchell:’ Mitt Romney is yet to be specific’ on major foreign policy issues.” It even included a video clip of Mitchell’s analysis of Romney’s speech.
In a statement to Secrets, NBC said they have complained to the Obama campaign. “NBC News and MSNBC have not granted any campaign permission to use our news material. As is our practice, we request the Obama campaign refrain from using our material,” said the statement.
They sent a similar statement to Romney’s campaign recently when they used quotes from Meet the Press and Morning Joe. NBC said that the request to stop went to Team Romney after they used clips of David Brooks’ comments on Meet the Press and Mark Halperin’s on Morning Joe.
“In the course of this campaign we’ve previously sent similar notes to the Romney campaign after their ad featuring an archived clip of Tom Brokaw, and MSNBC has sent the same to the Obama campaign for use of Ed Schultz in an ad,” added NBC.
