-By Warner Todd Huston
Despite that Chelsea Clinton has been an advocate for gay marriage for some time, during the 2012 election campaign NBC refused to allow her to appear in advocacy videos made by a Washington State-based gay marriage advocacy group that was trying to get a gay marriage referendum placed on the ballot there.
Clinton, an employee of NBC News, was hired in 2011 to do feels good-type stories that aren’t political in nature and due to her contract the network refused to give the gay advocacy group the go ahead to run the ads either on TV or the web.
Clinton had already filmed the advocacy ads before NBC rendered its decision.
People who saw the video said that Chelsea talked of her feeling that everyone had a right to marry and claimed that a yes vote in Washington State would send a message to the rest of the country to get on the gay marriage bandwagon.
Washington State did approve of referendum 74, though, without the assistance of the Clinton ads.
Via Tim Graham, the gay website Queerty criticized NBC’s decision saying, “We understand a news outlet wanting to keep its on-air talent away from big public stances on the issues of the day. But Clinton has already appeared at various LGBT fundraisers and been outspoken in her support—as have out newsfolk like Don Lemon and Thomas Roberts. Maybe we should just accept that the days of opinion-free journalists are over.”
When she debuted on NBC in 2011, the former first daughter was called “one of the most boring people of her era,” but despite dour reviews her contract was renewed the following year.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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