Jane Pauley, who, while campaigning for Barack Obama in 2008, declared “I want to see the cool, steady hand of Barack Obama on that Bible on Inauguration Day,” has joined CBS News as a contributor to CBS News Sunday Morning. She also gushed back in 2008: “Not only could Barack Obama be a good President, he’d be an exceptional one. And I so look forward to it.”
Pauley, who worked for the Indiana Democratic State Central Committee in 1972, co-hosted NBC’s Today show from 1976 to 1989 and has been a contributor again to NBC’s morning show since 2010.
Using her husband’s last name, Jane Trudeau, she maxed out to the Obama campaign in 2008 with a donation of $2,300, per OpenSecrets.org [1].
(TVNewser [2] item and USA Today [3] post on her network switch.)
Pauley’s yearning for Obama, quoted above, came in interviews with WISH-TV and WTIU-TV in Indianapolis after an Obama campaign rally in September of 2008. (See the video for clips from those TV stories.)
WTHR.com reported [4] at the time:
Former Today Show and Dateline co-host Jane Pauley returned to Indiana Sunday in support of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.
Pauley started her day speaking to supporters at Southside Park.
The Warren Central graduate will lead a door-to-door campaign in Central Indiana...
After her first Today stint, Pauley co-hosted Dateline from 1992 to 2003. The MRC reviewed Pauley’s later years at NBC with a Media Reality Check in 2003, “Jane Pauley’s ‘Unusual Empathy' for Liberals [5],” which recalled how she once cued up Hillary Clinton: “What don’t you do perfectly?”
Pauley is amongst 30 “media-Obama revolving door” names listed in a February Media Reality Check [6]I complied. (Excerpt posted on NewsBusters [7])
— Brent Baker is the Steven P.J. Wood Senior Fellow and Vice President for Research and Publications at the Media Research Center. Follow Brent Baker on Twitter. [8]