President Barack Obama had absolute "control" over media coverage during his presidential campaign, according to the White House communications director.

Former top adviser to Obama's 2008 campaign, Anita Dunn, had described the campaign's press strategy in detail in a forum earlier this year, Fox News reported.

"Very rarely did we communicate through the press anything that we didn't absolutely control," Dunn said, admitting that the strategy "did not always make us popular in the press."

She argued that the campaign favored live interviews so that Obama's words could not be edited.

The forum was hosted by the Global Foundation for Democracy and Development in the Dominican Republic in January. In the forum, she provided details about the lengths to which the Obama campaign went to control the media message.

The Fox News report came after Dunn began a war of words with the US media outlet last Sunday, calling the network "opinion journalism masquerading as news."

In August, the White House stopped providing guests to Fox News Sunday after host Chris Wallace fact-checked controversial assertions made by Tammy Duckworth, assistant secretary of the Department of Veterans' Affairs.

Dunn complained about the fact-checking last Sunday.

AGB/TG/DT