Why did NBC reportedly pay Chelsea Clinton $600,000 a year?

NBC's hiring of Chelsea Clinton as a "special correspondent" in its news division was widely recognized as an exercise in corporate cynicism when it was announced in November 2011.

Now a price tag has been hung on that scandal, with Politico's reporting that Clinton has been paid a salary of $600,000. The network hasn't confirmed the figure, but it hasn't denied it either, and responded to Politico's questions by asserting that it "continues to enjoy a wonderful working relationship with Chelsea, and we are proud of her work."

It's that last part that's particularly head-scratching, for as a news correspondent for NBC, Clinton hasn't done anything to be proud of. Quite the contrary. The disclosure raises the obvious question of NBC's goal in giving a person without any measurable journalistic or broadcasting experience or any particular public following a high-profile job and apparently paying her a top-echelon salary.

The answer is equally obvious. Plainly, it was done to curry favor with the Clinton family.

This was not NBC's first effort to kiss up to a powerful family, or the last. In 2009, the network hired George W. Bush's daughter Jenna as a correspondent for the "Today" show. Subsequently Meghan McCain, daughter of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Abby Huntsman, daughter of one-time GOP presidential hopeful Jon Huntsman, had gigs as political commentators on MSNBC.

Clinton's hiring was announced with an extra helping of PR malarkey, however. To hear the words of then-NBC News President Steve Capus, Clinton represented the second coming of Nellie Bly. "Given her vast experiences, it's as though Chelsea has been preparing for this opportunity her entire life," he said.

Clinton's hiring only underscored the stunting of network news. Talented and experienced journalists have been laid off by the cartload. Precious airtime, especially on the morning shows, has been turned over to celebrity reporting and in-house promotions thinly disguised as news. Original reporting is turned over to freelancers (no benefits necessary, don't you know) or to local affiliates. What's happened to the money saved? It's gone to fatten the bottom line and to finance stunt hiring like Clinton's.

And how has that worked out? If journalism is defined as publishing information that the subjects of your reporting don't wish to be made public, then it's hard to find any journalism in Clinton's oeuvre whatsoever. Every piece we reviewed appeared to be painstakingly engineered to give no offense to anyone. Even the most rabid anti-Clinton conservatives looking for an objectionable or contrary moment of reporting in Chelsea Clinton's portfolio would come up empty-handed.

Clinton's debut piece about a child welfare nonprofit in Arkansas run by an energetic woman named Annette Dove raised issues about the role of society and government in consigning these children to the wayside, but those were buried deeply beneath its syrupy focus on the personal struggles of Dove's clients and herself. It sounded like an advertisement for George H.W. Bush's "thousand points of light" dodge – who needs government social policy when people like Annette Dove are willing to bankrupt themselves to fill in the gaps?

That initial appearance ended inauspiciously, devolving into a companionable chat between Clinton and "Rock Center" host Brian Williams about her difficult upbringing. Williams: "Tell us how you got from your life as it was, say, yesterday, to a life here with us and doing this." (One would think her life had followed the downward trajectory of the heroine of "Orange Is the New Black.")

Matters went downhill from there. Clinton did a couple more uplifting pieces about people "making a difference," then suddenly, like water finding its own level, she was down to fawning celebrity profiles.

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https://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-why-did-nbc-pay-chelsea-clinton-20140616-column.html