Following a morning in which CBS and NBC gleefully promoted Hillary Clinton’s latest public appearance, Wednesday’s CBS Evening News built on that with another shameless promotion of Clinton and her “new strategy for winning” ahead of a likely presidential bid in 2016.
Anchor Scott Pelley began the pro-Clinton segment by remarking how “[i]f Hillary Clinton has a shot at becoming the first woman president, she'll need women voters and we're beginning to see how she hopes to do it” with her speech before a group of women involved in the technology field in Silicon Valley.
Correspondent Nancy Cordes picked up from there and gushed that Clinton’s “new tone was not hard to spot” with her taking “the stage to the strains of I'm Every Woman and opened up about sexism, about being a grandmother, and about her own pregnancy in the late '70s.”
Cordes continued by noticing that “[i]t's a big change from her first presidential bid, when Clinton downplayed her gender, until it was too late” when she had concede to now-President Obama in June 2008.
The CBS News congressional correspondent then carried on the Clinton infomercial by touting reports that the former First Lady and “Secretary of State has been working with a marketing team to help refine her public image.”
“Judging by her remarks in California, she's been advised to show her softer side,” Cordes opined.
As the Media Research Center’s Jeffrey Meyer reported, the segments offered by CBS This Morning and NBC’s Today on Wednesday morning touted Clinton’s calls for gender pay equity, but neglected to mention that she paid her female Senate staff members 72 cents for every dollar that her male staffers made.
The relevant portions of the transcript from the CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley on February 25 can be found below.
CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley
February 25, 2015
6:43 p.m. Eastern [TEASE][ON-SCREEN HEADLINE CAPTION: New Strategy]
SCOTT PELLEY: Hillary Clinton has a new strategy for winning.
(....)
6:46 p.m. Eastern
[ON-SCREEN HEADLINE CAPTION: Marketing Clinton]
PELLEY: If Hillary Clinton has a shot at becoming the first woman president, she'll need women voters and we're beginning to see how she hopes to do it. She spoke yesterday to women in technology in Silicon Valley, and we have more now from Nancy Cordes.
HILLARY CLINTON: Hello! Wow. What an amazing crowd.
NANCY CORDES The new tone was not hard to spot. Clinton took the stage to the strains of I'm Every Woman and opened up about sexism, about being a grandmother, and about her own pregnancy in the late '70s.
(....)
CORDES: It's a big change from her first presidential bid, when Clinton downplayed her gender, until it was too late.
CLINTON [in 2008 concession speech]: We weren't able to shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling this time.
(....)
CORDES: The former Secretary of State has reportedly been working with a marketing team to help refine her public image. Judging by her remarks in California, she's been advised to show her softer side.
CLINTON: I'd like to bring people from right, left, red, blue, get them into a nice, warm, purple space where everybody is talking and where we're actually trying to solve problems and, you know, that would be my objective if I decide to do this.
CORDES: When she will decide, Clinton did not divulge, but, Scott, sources tell us given the lack of competition on the Democratic side, she could wait until the summer to announce she's running.
PELLEY: “The purple space.” Nancy Cordes, thanks very much.
