"The White House bureaucracy devoted to managing public imagery has been growing since President Richard Nixon created the first office devoted to broad communications strategy in 1969.
Obama's White House message machine employs more than 60 people directly, at a cost to taxpayers of at least at least $4.3 million a year.
Those totals, however, don't include many more messengers who aren't in the annual report on the White House office staff that's submitted to Congress, including photographers and the communications staffs of Vice President Joe Biden and the National Security Council, all of whom are paid from different accounts.
They also don't include hundreds of political appointees scattered across cabinet departments and agencies who were hired with approval from the Obama White House and who work with the White House to present a coordinated message.
In all, about 350 people work on the president's message, according to Martha Joynt Kumar, an expert on the White House communications machinery and a professor at Towson State University in Maryland." [McClatchy]
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