Ari Fleischer, a prominent TV pundit, has a financial connection that Fox News hasnt mentioned -

Ari Fleischer, President George W. Bush’s press secretary, has carved out a career as a prominent TV talking head, first on CNN and now on Fox News. In his many appearances on Fox, he has criticized mainstream media coverage of President Trump, bashed the president’s political opponents and expressed general support for his agenda.

But there’s one thing neither Fleischer nor Fox have told Fox’s viewers: Fleischer recently worked for the Republican National Committee, creating an undisclosed financial tie between him and the president’s party.

Federal disclosure records filed by the RNC indicate that Fleischer’s public-relations consulting firm, Ari Fleischer Communications, received $30,000 last month for providing RNC employees coaching in handling media interviews.

TV pundits often have connections to political organizations or candidates; indeed, they are invited to comment on the air because of their experience or insider knowledge. But the standard practice among news organizations is to disclose these affiliations on the air.

The goal of such disclosures is transparency: By letting viewers know that a commentator is being paid by a political organization or candidate, it enables viewers to judge whether the commentator is motivated by his financial interests or is speaking independently of them.

During Fleischer’s appearances on Fox News over the past months, Fox’s hosts have accurately described him as a former White House press secretary and a Fox News “contributor,” a term in TV news that means he is paid by the network to give his opinions. But Fox hasn’t mentioned Fleischer’s work for the RNC.

People at the network said they were unaware of Fleischer’s involvement with the RNC until asked about it by a reporter on Tuesday. A spokeswoman, however, said Fox saw no need to disclose Fleischer’s work for the RNC because he hasn’t directly commented on the RNC itself.

“Fox News requires contributors to disclose ties related to any topic he or she discusses on the air in which the contributor may have a financial interest,” the spokeswoman, Caley Cronin, said in a statement. “Ari Fleischer was not brought on to discuss — nor could we find any instance where he did discuss — the RNC on air while his firm was retained by the RNC to provide media training services.”

Disclosure of pundits’ financial connections by TV networks can be irregular and inconsistent. The New York Times won a Pulitzer Prize in 2009 for revealing the undisclosed connections among the Pentagon, defense contractors and former U.S. military officers who appeared regularly on TV news programs offering “analysis” that was favorable to the administration and defense industry. In many cases, the military pundits had financial connections to defense contractors that weren’t disclosed to viewers.

In an interview, Fleischer said the payment from the RNC was for three sessions of media training he conducted with the organization’s employees in the past few months. He said it was the first time he had worked directly for the RNC.

Fleischer said he did not disclose his work for the RNC to Fox because he was not aware any such disclosure was required. In any case, he said, he saw no conflicts and no reason to disclose his financial relationship with the party to the network or to its viewers.

Share this articleShare

“I don’t think it would be a surprise to any viewers,” he said. “They know I support Republican causes, but I’m a pretty independent voice, too ... They know I’m a former press secretary for George Bush and that my views come from 21 years in Washington.”

He drew a distinction between his work for the RNC and that of, say, a pundit who works directly for a candidate or a political action committee that seeks to elect candidates. “It’s not as if I’m a consultant to the RNC,” he said.

Fleischer has made 10 appearances on Fox programs, including on Sean Hannity’s and Laura Ingraham’s prime-time shows, since the RNC’s filing on April 25. During that time, he has made no comments about the RNC itself, although most of his comments have aligned with the RNC’s positions.

During one appearance last week, for example, he told host Shannon Bream that the FBI’s “entire investigations of the president, President Trump, was not merited.” He also told Ingraham that Attorney General William P. Barr “is a seasoned, experienced attorney general, and that’s exactly what we need now to figure out what, if anything, was done improperly when they authorized all these wiretaps and surveillance techniques to be used against Trump.”

Fleischer’s ties to the RNC are at least the third instance in the past two years in which the network didn’t disclose the vested interest of one of its commentators.

Fox repeatedly solicited comments last year from former Justice Department official Robert Driscoll about Mueller’s investigation, but the network only irregularly mentioned on the air that Driscoll was the attorney for Maria Butina, a suspected Russian spy, according to NPR. Butina was convicted in April of failing to register as a foreign agent. Fox said it addressed the disclosure issue with its program producers. It hasn’t invited Driscoll back as a general commentator, according to program transcripts in the Nexis database.

Fox and the Fox Business Network also featured Mark Serrano, a Trump booster, who was a former adviser to President George H.W. Bush, multiple times without mentioning that Serrano’s firm was a paid consultant to Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign.

The networks said they were unaware of Serrano’s involvement with Trump and that his ties should have been disclosed. A representative said in mid-2017 that Serrano wouldn’t be booked on Fox programs “for the foreseeable future” as a result of the nondisclosure of his work for Trump.

Serrano has appeared just once on a Fox program since then, according to Nexis.

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7uK3SoaCnn6Sku7G70q1lnKedZLmqssSsq7KklWTAtcXLnmaaqplis62xyKyaoZ2iYq5uvNGopKKmlaPBbsDVZqeuppSewW60wKxkmmWWnruiusKimKVlk6S7r7HCraCopl2ptaLAjJ%2BmsWWemsS0eceaqqesXaKyr8DIqKWenF9nfXKFjmlsaGppZIR5gpidZ5ybXW1%2Bd4CMamiecV2XsKaDjG1nm2xhZYKng8KaZ5irpKS%2FunrHraSl