Friend of Bill and Hillary Clinton Takes Over CBS's Early Show

Shelley Ross, Executive Producer of The Early Show, has left the position and, the AP's David Bauder reported Thursday afternoon, Rick Kaplan, a long-time Friend of Bill, “will temporarily take over for Ross” while remaining Executive Producer of the CBS Evening News.

Kaplan, a former Executive Producer of ABC's World News Tonight and Nightline who later ran both CNN and MSNBC, has had a long record of friendly relations with former President Bill Clinton, advising Clinton on how to respond to the Gennifer Flowers scandal in 1992 and blocking anti-Clinton stories from appearing on Nightline. Kaplan has also been hostile to conservatives and once even declared that disgraced CBS anchor Dan Rather's “legacy” was “the gold standard journalists today have struggled to live up to.”

For a detailed rundown of Kaplan's political and media blocking for Bill and Hillary Clinton, with two video clips, check the March 8, 2007 MRC CyberAlert item posted when he took over the CBS Evening News.

Update 17:05 | Matthew Sheffield. This is just the latest example of what political observers call the "revolving door." And as you might expect, the door going from politics to journalism spins almost exclusively to the left. Click here to see past NB posts on the subject.