Prominent media critic David Zurawik writes in the Daily Download on MSNBC’s recent hiring of former Obama administration officials David Axelrod and Robert Gibbs.

In his column Zurawik takes aim at Axelrod’s debut as an official contributor on Andrea Mitchell Reports ​last week:

As Mitchell starts to pivot to another issue with a new question, Axelrod interrupts her with, “One more thing, Andrea. There is a belief among some Republicans in Congress that maybe this sequester’s all right. Maybe this is another way of shrinking government in a dramatic way. That’s a dangerous idea, but it’s not uncommon in some quarters on Capitol Hill.”“No doubt,” Mitchell says, placing a cherry atop this propaganda sundae. …

What is this if not exactly the spin Team Obama seemed to be working on all week? …

Now the message can go forth from the president’s mouth straight to our ears–via Axelrod, the so-called analyst, and MSNBC, the so-called news channel.

The question has been raised whether MSNBC, already a left-leaning network, has gone too far in hiring former officials of the Obama White House. Of course, Fox News, the competition, employs contributors who once worked in the Bush (43) administration (Dana Perino, Karl Rove)…​

But a real difference is that these guys at Fox weren’t hired while Bush was still in office. They were hired to provide expertise on the inner-workings of the White House, if from a critical perspective of President Obama. At MSNBC, Gibbs and Axelrod, who were surrogates for Obama’s reelection campaign, are (by nature of the timing of their hiring) serving as reinforcement for the current administration’s message.