Revolving Door
In what appeared to be a shot across the bow of their parent network CNN on Tuesday, the panel on HLN’s S.E. Cupp Unfiltered slammed media outlets who discredited President Trump’s new White House hires because they spent time on cable news. “So is the media smearing the President's pick just to beat up on Trump or are these TV talking heads actually dangerous,” conservative host S.E. Cupp wondered.
The depths of CNN’s righteous indignation and hypocrisy showed no bounds Thursday night, as AC 360 host Anderson Cooper and reporter Randi “Kush” Kaye extensively bemoaned how Trump was bringing friendly journalist into his administration. “It's a presidency that was essentially born on reality TV, and now the lines between reality and TV may be blurring even further,” Cooper opined regarding the hire of Larry Kudlow as national economic adviser. But what about Obama’s legion of journalist staff?
CBS Evening News aired complaints about a “revolving door” of government employees going to industry roles under the Obama administration on Oct. 20. But CBS quickly seized the opportunity to attack the Trump administration.
Apparently not content with just having all of its hosts and correspondents relentlessly attack the Trump administration and the Republican Party, NBC News decided to hire Barack Obama’s former White House press secretary Josh Earnest as a “political analyst” to join in the network’s savaging of the GOP.
Longtime Democratic operative Donna Brazile being named interim head of the Democratic National Committee on Sunday following the ouster of chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz amid the DNC e-mail scandal created some awkward moments for CNN and ABC. Hosts on both networks had to explain that Brazile was stepping down as a political analyst as she took over the new partisan position.
Sometimes, you can just look at a story as it unspools and know, instinctively, that the corrupt establishment media is going to find a way to embarrass itself. Univision is no different, the latest proof of that coming via the network's brazen material misrepresentation of its former relationship with the RNC's new Director of Hispanic Media, Helen Aguirre-Ferré.
Politico’s Glenn Thrush – the liberal reporter who confessed to President Obama that he had “candidate envy” in 2008, since he was stuck on the Hillary Clinton bus – carried Hillary’s water in a new interview with Jill Abramson, the recently deposed Executive Editor of the New York Times. Abramson agreed Clinton suffers from media bias and “does get more scrutiny” than other candidates, especially male candidates. On the scandal over Mrs. Clinton’s private e-mail server, Abramson wondered: “Why is that a big deal?”
Michael Simon, who headed the 2008 Obama presidential campaign’s targeting and analytics team, has joined CBS Radio, the Tom Taylor Now radio industry e-mail newsletter reported last week. Taylor relayed how “Simon worked on the Obama campaign and later in the administration itself. He also started the ‘data science consultancy’ named HaystaqDNA.” Tagline on HaystaqDNA’s Web site: “We pioneered the predictive analytics that helped the Obama campaign make history.”
David Axelrod is jumping ship to CNN. After serving as a senior political analyst for MSNBC and NBC since 2013, Axelrod will make the move to CNN as a senior political commentator.
Prior to his work at the Lean Forward network, Axelrod was best known for his role as a senior advisor to Obama during the president’s first term, and playing an important role in getting Obama elected twice.
“CBS News contributor Jane Pauley will fill in for Scott Pelley on tonight’s CBS Evening News,” TV Newser reported Wednesday afternoon.” Brian Flood noted “Pauley has previously filled in as a co-host on CBS This Morning, but this is her first time anchoring the Evening News.” In a 2008 interview with WISH-TV in Indianapolis, Indiana, about her campaigning for Barack Obama, she declared: “I want to see the cool, steady hand of Barack Obama on that Bible on Inauguration Day.”
In a column at ForeignPolicy.com, a former Obama administration defense official who "served as a counselor to the U.S. defense undersecretary for policy from 2009 to 2011" has asked: "Can Gay Marriage Defeat the Islamic State?"
Rosa Brooks, who "is a law professor at Georgetown University," is serious. Her earnestness and deep ignorance are especially troubling, because it's clear that there are many people who "think" just like her who are still in the Obama administration and at the State Department (See: John Kerry's slow-motion sellout in Iranian negotiations).
The revolving door between Democratic administrations, campaigns, and the news media swung once again on Tuesday. A producer on MSNBC’s The Ed Show is leaving the program at the end of the week to join the 2016 Democratic presidential campaign of self-described socialist Bernie Sanders. According to TVNewser, Arianna Jones will “be deputy communications manager for the campaign.”