White House Battles Drudge Over Health Care Video Clips

WASHINGTON — The White House is turning to the Internet to hit back at a Web posting that claims to show President Barack Obama explaining how his health care reform plans eventually would eliminate private insurance. 

The three-minute White House video features Linda Douglass, a former network television correspondent and now White House Office of Health Reform communications director, sitting in front of a computer screen showing the Drudge Report Web site. That site carries a series of video clips from another blogger who strings together selected Obama statements on health care to make it appear he wants to eliminate the private health insurance business. 

In the video Douglass says the site is “taking sentences and phrases out of context, and they’re cobbling them together to leave a very false impression.”