Chelsea Clinton Goes From Not Talking to the News Media, to Becoming One of Them

By Chris Ariens 

This was bound to happen. She’s hardly settled in at NBC News and already Chelsea Clinton’s hire at NBC News is the subject of a fair amount of derision from other corners of the fourth estate. HuffPo’s Michael Calderone writes up the flurry of Tweets from the press who covered Hillary Clinton‘s campaign for president:

“The supreme irony of Chelsea Clinton becoming an NBC reporter: I’m pretty sure she’s never granted an interview,” tweeted The New York Times’ Jodi Kantor. The New York Times’ Amy Chozick, who covered the 2008 election for the Wall Street Journal, responded that not only did Clinton refuse to give interviews, but “seemed to absolutely hate us on [Clinton’s campaign] plane.” Politico’s Ken Vogel tweeted that Clinton gave reporters the “total cold shoulder” during the previous election cycle. And Glenn Thrush echoed his Politico colleague’s experience on Twitter: “In ’08, Chelsea Clinton (in NH) told me ‘Sorry, I don’t talk to the media.’ I said, ‘But you are all grown up now.’ Now she IS the media.”

ForbesJohn McQuaid:

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Whenever a network TV news division pulls one of these nepotistic no-brainers, it saps a bit of American journalism’s life force.

Jezebel’s Anna North:

Chelsea has always seemed like a smart lady, and no doubt she’ll work hard at her new job. Still, wouldn’t it be nice if when you weren’t sure what to do with your life, the president of NBC News just called you up and asked you what type of job you felt like having?

Salon’s Glenn Greenwald:

We all owe our gratitude to NBC News for single-handedly correcting the shameful, long-standing exclusion from our media discourse of the views of young, journalistically accomplished heirs and heiresses to political power and great fortune.

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