Media critic David Zurawik: MSNBC spewing propaganda by hiring ex-Obama aide

TV critic David Zurawik of the Baltimore Sun slammed MSNBC on Sunday for hiring former top Obama aide David Axelrod as a senior political analyst.

"There is an advantage to having people who are in the room at key moments on this high level on your cable channel," he said on CNN's Reliable Sources. "That's important. But, you know, I saw Axelrod with [MSNBC host] Andrea Mitchell this week and it was really interesting how hard he was pushing the President's line.

"He actually interrupted her. She was going onto the next question and he said, 'wait, I just want to say this, Andrea. There is a belief among some Republicans in Congress that maybe the sequester is a good thing, maybe this is a good way of shrinking government in a dramatic way,' and then he said, 'that's a dangerous idea, of course.' And then she said, 'no doubt.'"

"That's not a discussion about politics, that is propaganda," Zurawik continued. "'Republicans in Congress are dangerous,' and then Mitchell says, 'no doubt.' That really troubled me about how these guys are working the White House line on a cable channel."

Both Axelrod and former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs have joined NBC News and MSNBC. Zurawik said both men were far too sympathetic to the President to make good analysts.

Zurawik has been a vocal critic of Fox News, describing the channel as an "outlaw, rogue organization." Last year, he said a segment of Fox & Friends that featured an anti-Obama video "resembled propaganda films from 1930's Europe more than it did responsible TV politics of today."

Watch video, uploaded to YouTube by CNN, below: