Hurt feelings in the MSM

Awww....the New York Times story about how Ben Rhodes totally played the media in pursuit of Obama's Iran deal has ruffled some feathers.  Weekly Standard: "The Ben Rhodes Blow-Up."

And now, the echo chamber is mad—but not at Ben Rhodes for what he said. They're mad at Samuels for getting the story they didn't—or didn't even see was there, and they're mad at him for what he reported. The Washington Post has published three different pieces on Samuels, none favorable, including one by the editor of the book section. The Post is mad of course because the Samuels piece publicly shamed the paper—after all, its main brief is to cover the local industry—the workings of the government of the United States. And yet as the article makes plain, Post reporters and especially columnists got spun and conned about the Iran deal. But much worse than that is that the Post got scooped on the story explaining how gullible they are. Scooped by the New York Times, in their own backyard on the biggest foreign policy story of the past four years! That's embarrassing.

And Jeffrey Goldberg is hopping mad, too. The Atlantic just posted his long and seething rejoinder to Samuels, who wrote in his Rhodes piece that, "handpicked Beltway insiders like Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic and Laura Rozen of Al-Monitor helped retail the administration's narrative."

That's why Obama keeps coming back to Steve Kroft for softball interviews: the White House knows which "Democrats with bylines" (as Instapundit calls it) will get their message out with no fuss.