Fox News Pushes Unsubstantiated Claim That Obama Campaign Outsourced Work Overseas

Fox's chief Washington correspondent James Rosen hyped a Washington Free Beacon report alleging the Obama campaign employed call centers in Canada and the Philippines. But neither the Fox segment nor the Free Beacon article provided any substantial evidence to support such a claim.

The Obama campaign has been attacking Mitt Romney for his history of moving jobs overseas as a businessman at Bain Capital. After mentioning these reports on Fox News' Special Report with Bret Baier, Rosen touted the Beacon's claims, stating: “The Romney campaign, in turn, circulated a report in the Washington Free Beacon” which Rosen uncritically said “found the Obama-Biden campaign has paid companies headquartered in Canada and the Philippines more than $80,000 for telemarketing services.”

However, ABC reporter Devin Dwyer pointed out that “the Beacon's claims are not fully substantiated” after looking at the actual facts. Dwyer first explained that Pacific East is based in Canada but has a division headquarters in Oregon. He went on to explain that the FEC filings provided no indication as to which Pacific East call centers were used by the Obama campaign or where they may have been based:

Closer examination of the facts, however, finds the Beacon's claims are not fully substantiated.

First, Pacific East, while based in Canada, has a division headquartered Beaverton, Ore., to oversee U.S. business operations. There is also no indication from FEC filings of where Pacific East call centers possibly employed by Obama's campaign may have been based. The Beacon does not cite any evidence.

Dwyer then said that the Beacon “points to expenditures in the Obama campaign's most recent Federal Election Commission filing that showed” money spent on telemarketing services from “the Los Angeles-based Donor Services Group (DSG).” Dwyer found that the Beacon's reporting on DSG also lacks convincing evidence:

As for DSG, the picture is much the same. The U.S.-based company specializes in call centers and donor outreach, according to its website. However, there is no mention of foreign operations there, or in FEC filings.

So where does “Manila” come from?

The bit appears in a 2009 services contract between DSG and a Maryland charity (Foundation Fighting Blindness, Inc.) that was obtained and posted by the Weekly Standard. The document outlines four different types of DSG call centers -- one of which was based in Manila “to make inexpensive calls designed to reinstate older lapsed donors more affordably.”

It's unclear whether those call centers still exist or whether the Obama campaign benefited from their services. The FEC filing, again, shows no direct evidence to support the Beacon's claim that Team Obama “paid a call center in Manila.”