ABC's Claire Shipman isn't just another pro-Obama journalist. She's also married to Jay Carney, the President's press secretary. If that wasn't enough of a conflict, Jeffrey Lord of the American Spectator recently revealed that Shipman has served on a White House panel in her official capacity as a journalist.
A series of 2010 videotapes shows Shipman's role in the "Council on Women and Girls" and its "Conversation on Workplace Flexibility." Lord explained, "On the stage where Ms. Jarrett was speaking was ABC senior correspondent Claire Shipman, who was about to serve that day as the moderator of the event’s initial panel." The event was closed to White House reporters.
There is reporter Shipman sitting there in the flesh on stage at an official White House event, sharing the stage literally with Valerie Jarrett and First Lady Michelle Obama, then taking the controls to moderate an official White House event. Then she goes and participates in "Breakout Session 2," where she is yet again a participant in an official panel run by Obama GSA Administrator Johnson, sitting just down and across from the Obama Secretary of Labor. Then she heads back for the final session, sitting in the front row when the President himself comes in to conclude the forum.
But it wasn't just Shipman. Cokie Roberts, an ABC journalist and panelist on This Week, also participated:
But Shipman’s behavior pales with that of Roberts. Singled out by Jarrett at the beginning of the forum, Roberts says nothing until she appears in "Breakout Session 1." At which time, incredibly, the ABC News/NPR journalist says this, bold emphasis mine:
"In recent days I actually sort of showed up on Valerie Jarrett’s doorstep and said ‘We need to talk about this Council on Women and Girls and get it going and move it along. I feel very strongly that these issues are all about productivity and competition for the United States of America….’"
Lord marveld, "Here is a veteran Washington journalist for ABC and NPR saying flat-out that she, Cokie Roberts, 'showed up' on the doorstep of the senior advisor to the President of the United States and demanded that they 'talk about this Council on Women and Girls and get it going and move it along…'"
Even before her husband became Obama's chief spokesman, Shipman gushed over Obama. On October 31, 2008, the journalist wondered how the Democrat's wife dealt with her husband being "lusted after by all of these women out there." After all, according to Shipman, Obama is a "political rock star."
On January 18, 2007, Shipman gushed over the "fluid poetry" of the candidate.
