by WorldTribune Staff, April 12, 2017

“Members of the media can profess all they want …  pretend independence and ‘no affiliation’ all they want … In the end, actions speak louder than bumper stickers,” Cheryl K. Chumley wrote for The Washington Times on April 11.

“One need only look at the dollars and donations, skim through the connections, marriages and Democratic Party-mainstream media ties, and it’s clear: the left-leaning press is alive, well and kicking in modern day America,” she added.

Meet just a representative sample of the press:

1) George Stephanopolous, former White House adviser to ex-president Bill Clinton, went on from his administration position to become an ABC News anchor. In April 2016, Stephanopolous interviewed Hillary Clinton but made no mention of his donation of $75,000 to the Clinton Foundation. Sort of interesting, right? But then, so’s this: Ali Wentworth, Stephanoplolous’ wife, told the Hollywood Reporter back in November, when the election was supposed to go Clinton’s way: “If Trump wins, we’ll start looking at real estate in Sydney, Australia. No crime, no guns.”

2) Christiane Amanpour, the chief international correspondent for CNN and an anchor for one of the network’s flagship foreign affairs broadcasts, has been married to James Rubin since 1998 — the same James Rubin who served as the Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs in the Clinton White House for three years. In 2008, he served on Hillary Clinton’s campaign for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination – and then as Clinton’s senior media adviser for national security affairs in 2016. Amanpour in a December 2016 statement warned about “Trump’s rhetoric against the press” — that it was creating a “very dangerous” climate for journalists. She also decried the use of one candidate’s social media accounts to do “a savvy end run around us” in the press, and called for Facebook to “step up” and censor the fake, i.e. pro-conservative, pro-Trump, reports. She also penned this in the same piece, again without naming names: “So yes, like so many around the world, I was shocked — very few ever imagined that so many Americans conducting their sacred duty in the sanctity of the voting booth, with their secret ballot, would be angry enough to ignore the wholesale vulgarity of language, the sexual predatory behavior, the deep misogyny, the bigoted and insulting views.”

3) Chuck Todd, of NBC, is married to Democratic operative Kristian Denny Todd. In 2007, Denny Todd created Maverick Strategies & Mail, an organization that helps progressives achieve their political and policy goals. Newsbusters reported: “Maverick Mail & Strategies, the firm Mrs. Todd founded in 2007 with fellow James Webb aides Steve Jarding and Jessica Vanden Berg, did heavy lifting for openly socialist Bernie Sanders for president.” Between January and April of 2016, the organization donated $1.99 million to “Bernie 2016” in 10 separate payments, according to Open Secrets, the financial watchdog project of the Center for Responsive Politics. And as Newsbusters reported: Todd, during 11 interviews with Sanders in 2016, “never disclosed this business relationship” to viewers.

4) Laura Jarrett, daughter of Obama family friend and confidante, Valerie Jarrett, was hired by CNN to cover the Justice Department under President Donald Trump. An excerpt from her bio on the CNN site: “Prior to joining CNN, Jarrett worked as a litigation attorney in Chicago. In private practice, Jarrett focused on defending companies and individuals in government investigations brought by the Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission, as well as complex commercial litigation.” Jarrett has jumped aboard some of the largest stories coming out of the Donald Trump administration – from immigration to the White House travel ban. In one tweet, she wrote: “‘undocumented’ doesn’t = criminal,” and included a link to her story that was titled, “Are undocumented immigrants committing a crime? Not necessarily.” Jarrett – both Laura and mom Valerie – couldn’t be closer to the Obamas. Not only has Valerie moved into the Obama family home in Washington, D.C. But the whole Obama family – Barack, Michelle, Sasha and Malia – attended Laura’s wedding at mom Valerie’s house in Chicago in 2012.

5) Chelsea Clinton was hired by NBC News in November 2011 to serve as a special correspondent. In 2014, her contract was up for renewal – and that’s when it was revealed her annual salary for the previous years’ service had been $600,000. She helped with NBC reports on diabetes, on a fatal limousine accident, on a New Jersey wreck, on a General Motors safety matter, on Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, on people who flash laser beams at airplanes and don’t forget her riveting interview with the Geico gecko. But why would NBC pay such a high salary for such a no-experience individual? Access – and accommodation. Give Chelsea the big bucks, accommodate her elitist lifestyle, and NBC gets just as good in return from the Clinton family. It’s an investment made in liberal matchmaking heaven. After all, NBC has to compete with CBS and ABC.

6) And speaking of CBS, take a look at Ben Rhodes, Obama’s national security adviser who sold a deception to the American people in order to secure a nuke deal with Iran for his boss. Rhodes not only deceived – he bragged about it, crowing how media outlets no longer have on-ground outfits in overseas’ locations, so have to rely on people like him to tell what’s happening. CBS News, headed by network president David Rhodes, brother of Ben. One of the network’s first major stories, post-presidential election, was to warn of the dangers of a Trump move to moot the nuke deal. On November 11, 2016, CBS came out the gate with this: “Iran nuclear deal endangered if Donald Trump seeks to renegotiate its terms.”

7) Claire Shipman, wife of Jay Carney, former press secretary for Barack Obama, is a contributor on “Good Morning America” and other ABC News broadcasts. She’s also a former overseas’ correspondent for CNN, and spent five years reporting from Moscow. As Newsbusters noted in an April 2014 report, news hosts outright failed to mention Shipman’s familial ties to the Obama administration about 75 percent of the time. From the report: “Perhaps the most egregious omission of Shipman’s marriage to Carney came on April 21 when she appeared on MSNBC’s ‘The Cycle.’ Co-host Abby Huntsman laughably mentioned, ‘Claire, full disclosure – I used to be an intern at ‘Good Morning America’ and I admired you so much.’ Yet [Huntsman] couldn’t bother to find time to give ‘full disclosure’ to Shipman’s connection to the Obama White House.”

8) Ben Sherwood, co-chairman of Disney Media Networks and president of the Disney-ABC Television Group. His sister, Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall served as deputy secretary at the U.S. Department of Energy, under Obama, between October 2014 and January 2017 – her last day was the 19th, one day before Donald Trump was inaugurated. In a June 2013 report entitled, “Media, administration deal with conflicts,” the Washington Post wrote, “‘There is zero evidence, zero, that [Sherwood’s relationship] has had any impact on our coverage,’ says Jeffrey Schneider, ABC News’s chief spokesman.” ABC also specified that Sherwood, at the time, stepped back from getting involved in arms control stories, his sister’s area of expertise. But that’s not to say others at ABC didn’t avail themselves of Sherwood-Randall’s expertise – or that of those she recommended.

9) Virginia Moseley, who’s served since 2012 as a vice president at CNN and as its Washington deputy bureau chief, along with her husband, Tom Nides, who was deputy secretary of state under Hillary Clinton. As a WikiLeaks document dump in November 2016 revealed, an email from Nides to then-Clinton campaign chair John Podesta read: “Good CNN poll coming.” The reference was to a September survey that painted Clinton in a good light. And Podesta quickly responded: “I’ll look forward to how that is spun.” Nides at the time was talked about as a possible high-ranking administration official in a Clinton White House. And while it’s not clear if Nides was handed that particular poll data from his wife, it is clear he did in fact obtain other bits and pieces of survey info from her during key moments in the campaign – and that he in turn sent along that data to Podesta. That’s all according to released WikiLeaks emails from Podesta’s Gmail account.

10) Matthew Jaffe, a reporter for ABC News and Univision who covered the 2012 presidential campaign, married in July 2012 a woman with tight Obama ties – Katie Hogan. Hogan served at the time as Obama’s deputy press secretary. As Mike Allen of Politico reported the wedding: “ObamaWorld attendees included Grant Campbell, Ben Finkenbinder, Caroline Hughes, Kate Kochman, Ben LaBolt, Katie Lillie, Katie McCormick Lelyveld and Tim Skoczek. Media types included ABC’s Jon D. Garcia Rick Klein, Ben Krolowitz, John Parkinson, Emily Stanitz and Karen Travers, plus Mike Memoli of the L.A. Times/Chicago Tribune.” The ties that bind? A more unbiased media outlet would’ve removed Jaffe from all-things-political, instead of pretending his election-related and national affairs’ coverage wasn’t going to slant left, skew pro-Obama.

According to the Center for Public Integrity, of those who identified in federal campaign finance reports as journalists, anchors, reporters or editors, 430 donated a collective $382,000 to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. Only about 50 gave a combined $14,000 to Donald Trump.

  Democrats and the media, Meet the liberal press (they are everywhere), WorldTribune.com