On Saturday, ABC's Devin Dwyer reported [1] how President Obama gave "a rousing speech to 600 donors in Chicago and closed it with an intimate appeal before 40 'friends' that included...Oprah Winfrey....Oprah was flanked at her table by...longtime friend and companion Gayle King [and] Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett." However, Dwyer failed to mention that King is co-anchor of CBS This Morning.
Though it isn't currently known whether the CBS on-air personality donated to the Obama reelection campaign at this event, she donated $35,800 to the Obama Victory Fund [2] during the third quarter of 2011 - before she started working at CBS - and $30,800 to the Democratic National Committee during the same time period.
Dwyer, ABC News's White House digital reporter and producer, noted how the President "addressed
guests seated around five candle-lit tables adorned with bouquets of
red roses inside the cavernous Chateau-style home of actor/producer
Tyler Perry....The event at Perry's home – Obama's 107th fundraiser of the election cycle — was estimated to bring in at least $1.4 million for Obama and Democrats for the 2012 campaign."
It
should be pointed out that not even two weeks after her start at the
CBS morning show, King made it clear that she is in the tank for the
Obama campaign when she conducted an extended softball interview [3] with Michelle Obama on January 12, 2012, specifically vouching that the First Lady is "passionate" and that she is "looking forward to returning for another four years. They're going to work very hard to make that happen."
More recently, Charlie Rose, King's co-anchor on the morning show,
attended the state dinner in honor of British Prime Minister David
Cameron at the White House. Though the March 15, 2012 edition of CBS This Morning [4] did report that "many of the guests [at the state dinner] included some of the President's top fundraisers,"
Rose and senior White House correspondent Bill Plante, spent more time
talking about the wines served at the function. He also gushingly told
co-anchors King and Erica Hill, "The First Lady said, say hello to both of you." Both enthusiastically replied to that anecdote.
The veteran journalist has also consistently been tougher on Republican
guests than Democrats since his January 2012 start on CBS. On February
28, Rose lobbed a series of questions from the left [5] at Rep. Paul Ryan, while tossing softballs [6] at Obama campaign senior advisers Robert Gibbs just five days earlier. On March 13, he sympathized with President Obama [7] on the issue of high gas prices, shamelessly claiming that "the President has a point...There's little that he can do...in the short term to affect gas prices, and gas prices hurts his political chances."
CBS might want to consider renaming the morning newscast to "The Obama Campaign This Morning."