Let’s start by going through the Post’s article to create a list of journalists married to or closely related to officials within the Obama administration. The size and scope of this is bad enough. But what is most troubling is how high up this incest occurs in the worlds of both the media and the Obama administration:
- ABC News President Ben Sherwood, who is the brother of Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, a top national-security adviser to President Obama.
- His counterpart at CBS, news division president David Rhodes, is the brother of Benjamin Rhodes, a key foreign-policy specialist.
- CNN’s deputy Washington bureau chief, Virginia Moseley, is married to Tom Nides, who until earlier this year was deputy secretary of state under Hillary Rodham Clinton.
- White House press secretary Jay Carney’s wife is Claire Shipman, a veteran reporter for ABC.
- NPR’s White House correspondent, Ari Shapiro, is married to a lawyer, Michael Gottlieb, who joined the White House counsel’s office in April.
- The Post‘s Justice Department reporter, Sari Horwitz, is married to William B. Schultz, the general counsel of the Department of Human Services.
- [VP] Biden’s current communications director, Shailagh Murray (a former Post congressional reporter), is married to Neil King, one of the Wall Street Journal‘s top political reporters.
This list doesn’t even include those dating and sleeping together. And if you’ve seen “House of Cards,” you know it’s Caligula up there.
Naturally, the Post, and those in media interviewed for the article, all claim that none of this in any way affects their coverage of the Obama administration.
And you know what — I believe them.
As someone who has been watching the media closely for twenty-years, I can tell you that even without all this incest, the media would still be guarding Obama’s palace just as aggressively as it does now. Family relations have nothing to do with it.
Our media would be just as corrupt, just as unwilling to dig into scandals, just as obsessed with The War On The WomanParts and gay marriage; just as dishonest, partisan, and lazy were no one in any way related to top officials within the Obama administration.
These relations are not the cause of the media’s corruption; they are a symptom of it.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC