Jane Pauley Back on NBC, Yearned for 'Cool, Steady Hand' of 'Exceptional' Obama
In 2008, just four years after leaving NBC News, Jane Pauley gave the
maximum allowed donation to Barack Obama ($2,300) and campaigned for him
in her native Indiana where she proclaimed "I want to see the cool,
steady hand of Barack Obama on that Bible on Inauguration Day" and
predicted Obama will be "an exceptional" President, enthusing: "I so
look forward to it!"
On Tuesday morning (March 9) Pauley
reappeared on the Today show, which she co-hosted from 1976 to 1989
before spending more than a decade with Dateline NBC, as the narrator of
a new monthly segment produced by the liberal AARP, "Your
Life Calling Today," about those 50-plus reinventing themselves.
"We are welcoming back a very, underline 'very' good friend and familiar
face around here, Jane Pauley," Matt Lauer announced, explaining "she's
been working with AARP which has produced and sponsored a new series of
reports for us." Her first report looked at a woman who "left a
lucrative career so she would have more time to knit socks."
Not
exactly hard-hitting political reporting, but it gives me a hook to
share some 2008 video of Pauley praising Obama as she made appearances
on his behalf. "Pauley called the last eight years a mistake and says
America must make the right choice come election day," WISH-TV channel 8
reporter Phil Sanchez related on the Indianapolis CBS affiliate's
Sunday, September 21, 2008 newscast. Just over a month later, following
an event in Bloomington, sporting an Obama button she told Indiana
University's public TV station, WTIU:
I think the 21st century really hasn't started yet for this country. We have not gotten off to a good start and the rest of the world hasn't been waiting. So we, we can not only get it right this time but I kind of agree with Colin Powell that not only Barack Obama will be a good President he'll be an exceptional one and I so look forward to it!
Pauley, who worked for the Indiana State
Democratic Committee in the mid-1970s before jumping to NBC News,
appreciated the freedom to express her political views, as if they never
came through during her NBC years:
Well this is, this is new for me because I was in television news for 30 years and, and you know I would not have been approved of going public with my particular political position. That was between me and the voting booth. But I haven't been with NBC for three-and-a-half years and I am free to make a contribution and I hope I can make a contribution here in Indiana.
The
MRC reviewed Pauley's later years at NBC with a Media Reality Check in
2003, "Jane Pauley's 'Unusual Empathy' for Liberals," which
recalled how she once cued up Hillary Clinton: "What don't you do
perfectly?"
The MRC's Geoff Dickens tracked down the WTIU-TV
channel 30 video on YouTube and Pauley's 2008 campaign donation
to Obama as listed by OpenSecrets.org (as Jane Trudeau) and by Doug
Elfman in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, who provided a lengthy list of
celebrity financial supporters: "The Biggest Stars Donate Gobs of Money to Obama."
My
Obama-Media "Revolving Door" list.
-- Brent Baker is Vice
President for Research and Publications at the Media Research Center. Click here to follow him on
Twitter.
