The RNC's new war on MSNBC (Update)

AP Photo/Charles Dharapak

The Republican National Committee seems to have declared war on MSNBC, not unlike what became known during the early years of President Obama's first term as the administration's "war on Fox News."

RNC spokesman Raffi Williams didn't deny the comparison when we asked him if there is one.

"Surely when Phil Griffin took over MSNBC, his goal wasn't to oversee a network that consistently insults and demeans Americans," Williams told TheBlaze Blog in an email. "That is why we have called on him to apologize and take internal corrective actions that will halt the escalating trend of insulting rhetoric coming from his network."

Update: Griffin has since released a statement apologizing to Priebus.

We've requested comment from MSNBC.

RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said in an open letter to MSNBC Thursday that he was banning all of his staff from appearing on the network, lest Griffin apologize to the RNC and "all right-of-center Americans" on behalf of MSNBC. The letter was in response to a tweet by msnbc.com Wednesday night that suggested "the rightwing" would be offended by seeing an interracial family in a new Cheerios cereal commercial.

Preibus also said in his letter that he was discouraging all Republican officials from appearing on MSNBC.

On the other side of things, since it swept into Washington in 2009, the Obama administration has had its own ongoing conflict with Fox News.

In October of that year, then-Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said that Fox is "not a news organization so much as it has a perspective." Around the same time, then-White House adviser David Axelrod said Fox "is really not news ... We're not going to treat them that way." And in a recent interview, Obama said Fox News distorts his positions and image into a "caricature."