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COMMENTARY
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BY JOHN OLESKY (BJ 1969-96)
Chris VanDeHoef has resigned his position as executive director of the Connecticut Daily Newspapers Association after starting up a SuperPAC to benefit Democrat Christopher Murphy’s U.S. Senate race.
VanDeHoef sent the association’s board a memo Tuesday announcing his temporary resignation until Nov. 9 when he will resume his post.
Newspaper people who continually cross over from covering a candidate to being paid to work for that candidate destroy the credibility of what is written in political stories in newspapers.
Is the article written with an eye to future hiring by the subject?
The media constantly decries the tie-ins between politicians and their staffs and the lobbyists who help them write the laws. If they look to make big bucks from the lobbyists’ companies later, how can they be objective about the laws the lobbyists propose or oppose?
“60 Minutes” had a segment on lobbyist Jack Abramoff who spent millions to “own” members of Congress and the Senate of both parties and their staffs. It’s disturbingly easy, he told Lesley Stahl.
Abramoff served more than three years in prison for his crimes, but giving congressmen and senators gifts, junkets to the world's great destinations and superb tickets to sporting events and hiring their staff members at exhorbitant salaries continues.
And democracy pays the price.
Click on the next line for the article on VanDeHoef going from newsman to paid political campaign hire.
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