In writing about how “Fox News has given a reporting gig to Doug McKelway, a former ABC anchor for the network’s D.C. affiliate,” Lachlan Markay asserts in a Dec. 1 NewsBusters post that McKelway “took heat from higher-ups after accurately reporting on President Obama’s ties to oil giant BP,” insisting that McKelway was “reporting the truth” when he stated that “the one man who has more campaign contributions from BP than anybody else in history is now sitting in the Oval Office, President Barack Obama.”
In fact, McKelway got it wrong. As Media Matters details, Obama received only $1,000 from BP’s PAC in 2004, less than what 21 other Senate candidates received from the BP PAC that year. The figure McKelway used in his report was the amount of money Obama received from employees of the company, which is not the same thing as receiving it from the company, unless McKelway was claiming that BP was directing its employees to make political contributions, which we think is illegal.
Anyway, McKelway seems to have found the right place to be — his former colleagues say it’s a “perfect fit” due to his penchant for co-mingling news and opinion.