MSNBC announced Friday that Rachel Racusen, currently a White House communications director, will join the left-leaning network as vice president of communications.
“I’m thrilled to add Rachel to our senior team,” MSNBC President Phil Griffin said in a press release. “She has great experience, she’s creative, strategic and passionate about our brand. She’ll be a tremendous asset to the network.”
Racusen will serve as the network’s chief spokeswoman and will be responsible for setting the communications and media strategy.
The change comes after a series of reports on MSNBC’s falling ratings and the midterm elections, which saw big gains for Republicans. Even so, PR Newser, a public relations industry blog, reported just after the midterms that MSNBC was looking to hire someone with “White House connections.”
Picking someone from the Obama administration to handle communications might also seem an odd choice since President Obama has often been criticized for his White House’s messaging operation.
After the midterms, David Corn at the liberal Mother Jones, said the administration has only offered “mixed messaging” and has been a “failure” in communicating Democratic policies. Back in August, Politico wrote that Obama’s “got one hell of a messaging problem.”
A veteran of the broadcast industry told the Washington Examiner that MSNBC’s decision to hire Racusen might be in anticipation of the 2016 presidential race.
And given MSNBC’s editorial decision to craft its organization as an almost entirely pro-Obama network since the 2008 election — a move that had paid off with a bump in ratings — the source said MSNBC may be trying to replicate that.
“This indicates to me that they are going to trash [potential Democratic 2016 candidate Hillary] Clinton because that’s what they did last time,” said the source. “Their audience is even more left-wing now than it was then.”
Brad Phillips, a public relations and media expert, told the Washington Examiner, however, that Racusen “appears to have a solid communications background and seems well qualified for the job.”
Before working in the White House, Racusen did communications for FEMA. She begins her job at MSNBC on Dec. 8.
