The Daily Beast reports that former Washington Post reporter Laura Blumenfeld joined the Obama administration on Monday. She will coordinate media strategy in the US State Department’s Middle East office.
A speaker of Arabic and Hebrew, Blumenfeld will now be in charge of strategic communications in the State Department’s office handling negotiations for Secretary of State John Kerry’s Middle East Peace Process. Kerry has tapped former Ambassador to Israel and Brookings Institution scholar Martin Indyk to lead that effort inside the Obama administration.
“Laura Blumenfeld started today in Martin Indyk’s office,” an Obama administration official told The Daily Beast. “Her job will be to coordinate all outreach – press, Hill, think tank, and people to people. Laura brings decades of journalism experience to her new job and will be an integral part of our effort to achieve Middle East peace.”
For those keeping score at home, that’s 16 journalists who have officially become absorbed into the Obama administration. Countless others, such as CNN’s Candy Crowley and everyone at MSNBC, have been unofficial members of Team O for years.
If the mainstream media and the Obama administration had a relationship status on Facebook, it would be “It’s complicated.” The Obama administration has built up a record of being the most secretive, least media-friendly administration in generations. It has prosecuted more leaks — journalists’ bread and butter — than any previous administration in American history. The Obama administration even wiretapped the Associated Press and accused reporter James Rosen of a crime.
And yet the mainstream media continue to protect Obama and his administration from its own misdeeds and scandals.
The Obama administration has abused the mainstream media, but the MSM just keep coming back for more.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member