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The Spectacle Blog

Newsweek's Obama Correspondent Joins Administration

By Philip Klein on 7.27.09 @ 7:20PM

Daren Briscoe, a Newsweek correspondent who was embedded with Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign, has taken a job with the Obama administration, according to an email sent to a listserv of his classmates at the Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism.

The email, written by Time reporter and fellow Columbia grad Jay Newton-Small, said Briscoe would be serving as deputy associate director of public affairs for the Office of National Drug Control Policy as of Monday.

"Despite his multiple basketball games with our commander-in-chief, he always brought a skeptical eye to his work and in conversations about the candidate," Newton-Small wrote the email.

Briscoe's campaign reporting helped provide the basis for Newsweek's book on the campaign, A Long Time Coming.

I received the email because Briscoe graduated Columbia's journalism school in 2001, the same year as I did.

View all comments (9) | Leave a comment

Bob NT| 7.27.09 @ 8:10PM

Well it adds a bit of honesty anyhow..... It would be nice if the entire thong of slobbering sycophants pretending to be journalists would be so honest and take a job in the Whitehouse. They would be no less objective, and at least their name tags would honestly identify them as Obama employees.

wmm| 7.27.09 @ 8:18PM

So the only change is the signature on his paycheck?

Missy| 7.27.09 @ 10:32PM

All of MSNBC is already on Obama's payroll. Olbermann gets the biggest brown-noser bonuses.

Stevan| 7.28.09 @ 10:21AM

Is there anyone that played basketball with Obama that doesn't have a position in the administration yet?

ohionobama| 7.28.09 @ 11:18AM

Go figure

Tim| 7.28.09 @ 1:47PM

Here I thought you J-school types eschewed the blogs.

StewartIII| 7.28.09 @ 8:35PM

Newsweek's Embedded Obama Campaign Reporter Joins Obama Administration
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tim-graham/2009/07/28/newsweeks-embedded-obama-campaign-reporter-joins-obama-administration

Redford Givens| 7.29.09 @ 11:13AM

I wonder if Newsweek correspondent , Daren Briscoe, realizes that his position with the ONDCP will require LYING about marijuana and other drugs.

Since Mother Jones (July 2009) exposed the legal requirement that the Drug Czar must always lie about legalizing any Schedule I drugs like marijuana, it becomes clear that no one should expect a single word of truth from the ONDCP about marijuana or any other prohibited drug. For example, the Drug Czar's office is required by law to oppose any effort to legalize marijuana for medical use.

In the last 10 years, the ONDCP has spent $1.4 billion on youth anti-pot ads. It also spent $43 million to study their effectiveness. When the science found that kids who've seen the ads are more likely to smoke pot, the ONDCP buried the evidence, choosing to spend hundreds of millions more on the counterproductive ads. Obviously truth is not on the ONDCP menu. Will Briscoe be used to write more counterproductive drug ads?

According to Title VII Office of National Drug Control Policy Reauthorization Act of 1998: H11225: "The Director-- [...] (12) shall ensure that no Federal funds appropriated to the Office of National Drug Control Policy shall be expended for any study or contract relating to the legalization (for a medical use or any other use) of a substance listed in schedule I of section 202 of the Controlled Substances Act (21 U.S.C. 812) and take such actions as necessary to oppose any attempt to legalize the use of a substance (in any form)"

America's drug crusade is a racist fiction based policy.