Journalists: If You Can't Beat Them,
Buy Them
We can speculate about The Fourth
Estate's motives and loyalties and our conclusions can be dismissed
as partisanship but two facts scream bias. 1. The Obama
Administration has hired a record number of mainstream reporters to
work for them. 2. The Obama Administration has employed at least four
relatives of high level news people.
Let's examine the second statement
first. David Rhoades is the president of CBS News. His brother, Ben
Rhoades is a White House national security battle.
Virginia Mosely is a CNN Vice President
and Washington Bureau Chief. She is married to Tom Nides, a Deputy
Secretary of State in the Obama Administration.
Former White House Press Secretary, Jay
Carney, is married to ABC News senior national correspondent, Claire
Shipman.
Another president of a network news
division, Ben Sherwood of ABC News, is the brother of special adviser
to Barack Obama, Dr. Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall.
In the old days, we would call this
graft. This behavior might be legal but it is highly unethical.
Whatever credibility the Fourth Estate might have had left in its
account, it has squandered it in the Obama Administration.
Not quite as egregious is the Obama
Administration practice of hiring journalists on a scale never before
seen. That practice has a long tradition and I am not of the opinion
that reporters should be blackballed but the Obama Administration
exceeds with excess.
On May 5, 2009 Ed O'Keefe of 'TheWashington Post” wrote an article on the bumper crop of
administration jobs awarded to news people. Eleven lucky recipients
not counting David Axelrod, who is a former reporter at “Chicago
Tribune.” One of the mentioned was a Bush Administration holdover,
Geoff Morrell.
Warren Bass: Former deputy editor of
The Post's Sunday Outlook now serves as an adviser and speechwriter
for U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice.
Rosa Brooks: The former Los Angeles
Times op-ed columnist now advises Michelle Fluornoy at the Defense
Department.
The aforementioned Jay Carney: The
former TIME Magazine Moscow bureau chief and campaign chronicler (and
husband of ABC's Claire Shipman) now serves as communications
director for Vice President Biden.
Linda Douglass: Former Congressional
correspondent for CBS and ABC and writer/editor at “National
Journal” left journalism last year to serve as traveling press
secretary for the Obama campaign. She'll help guide the
administration's communications efforts during this summer's battle
over health care reform, working out of the Department of Health and
Human Services and the White House.
Peter Gosselin: The former “Los
Angeles Times” reporter now writes speeches for Treasury Secretary
Timothy Geithner.
David Hoff: The “Education Week”
reporter and blogger started yesterday on the communications staff at
the Education Department.
Beverley Lumpkin: A former Justice
Department reporter/producer for ABC and CBS, she left journalism,
worked for the Project on Government Oversight and joined DOJ last
month as press secretary, turning sources into colleagues.
Geoff Morrell: A holdover from the Bush
administration, the former ABC newsman became spokesman for Defense
Secretary Robert Gates in 2007.
Rick Weiss: Former Washington Post
science reporter left for the Center for American Progress and now
serves as communications director and senior policy strategist for
the White House Office of Science and Technology.
Jill Zuckman: The former Washington
correspondent for “Chicago Tribune” works with Ray LaHood as
communications director at the Department of Transportation.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta: The CNN/CBS reporter
and Atlanta-based neurosurgeon threw his hat into the ring for the
surgeon general job, but eventually withdrew because of the "timing."
The previously mentioned David
Axelrod: President Obama's senior adviser once worked as a Chicago
Tribune reporter.
On February 17, 2012 Paul Bedard of the“Washington Examiner” listed 19 reporters and news executives who
had gone to work for the Administration. Bedard reported that to be a
record number of news people hired by an administration.
Records are made to be broken. On
September 12, 2013, Elspeth Reeve reported at The Wire that the
Obama Administration had hired its 24th journalist, former “Time”
managing editor, Rick Stengel.
The following list is from Reeve's
column. We will omit Hoff, Zuckman, Weiss and Douglas.
Douglas Frantz, decades-long media hack
at “New York Times” and “Los Angeles Times” went to work for
the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2009. In May, 2012 he went
to work as “Washington Post” national security editor. In
September, 2013 he was employed by the State Department.
In January 2013 “Boston Globe”
online politics editor Glen Johnson went to work for Secretary of
State John Kerry as a senior adviser.
Former “The Washington Post”
Federal Diary columnist Stephen Barr went to work for the Labor
Department as senior managing director of the Office of Public
Affairs in February 2012.
Shailagh Murray of“The Washington
Post” became the Vice President's communications director in March
2011.
Rosa Brooks of “Los Angeles Times”
was counselor to undersecretary of defense Michele Flournoy from
April 2009 to July 2011.
Former “The Washington Post” film
critic Desson Thomson went to work as a speechwriter for the U.S.
Ambassador to UK, Louis Susman.
Roberts Baskin, TV journalist and
Cneter for Public Policy administrator went to work at HHS in August
2009 as a senior communications adviser.
Washington Post Outlook section deputy
editor Warren Bass was hired by then-UN ambassador Susan Rice as
director of speechwriting in 2009.
Former CNN senior political producer
Sasha Johnson became a spokesman for Department of Transportation in
May 2009. she later became chief of staff for Federal Aviation
Administration.
“New York Times” reporter Eric Dash
went to work for The Treasury Department's public affairs office in
2012.
MSNBC producer Anthony Reyes also went
to work at The Treasury Department's public affairs office in 2012.
Aneesh Raman left CNN to work for
Obama's campaign in 2008. He would later be employed as an Obama
speechwriter.
CNN national security correpondent Jim
Sciutto went to work for U. S. Ambassador to China Gary Locke as
chief of staff from 2011 to 2013.
“San Francisco Chronicle” reporter
Kelly Zito went to work for the EPA's public affairs office in August
2011.
Samantha Power went from reporter to
working for Senator Obama to working for president Obama to
ambassador to the United Nations.
Not mentioned in any of the articles
listed above are the graduates who went to work in media. Robert
Gibbs was hired at MSNBC before founding The Incite Agency. His
successor, Jay Carney ended up at CNN. Peter Gosselin went from “Los
Angeles Times” to speechwriter for Timothy Geithner to Senior
Healthcare Analyst for “Bloomberg Government.”
The miasma of Ted Baxters serving the
Obama Administration was rationalized by a poor economy and
mainstream media's vanishing audience in both print and electronic
media as well as the opportunity to participate in the highly noble
mission of creating the most transparent administration in US History
(insert laugh track here.) But it does seem in the examples of Gibbs,
Gosselin and Carney, that old media has plenty of opportunity for
Obama loyalists.
