Chelsea Clinton earned an annual salary of $600,000 at NBC News before switching to a month-to-month contract earlier this year, sources with knowledge of the agreement told POLITICO.
Clinton, who joined NBC News as a special correspondent in November 2011, was up for renewal or nonrenewal this year. Instead, the sources said, the network decided to keep her on the payroll on a month-to-month basis so the two parties could sever ties if Clinton’s mother, Hillary Clinton, runs for president.
As special correspondent, Clinton worked on service-related feature assignments for NBC’s “Rock Center with Brian Williams” until the show’s cancellation in June 2013. Clinton has since worked on packages for NBC Nightly News. In that time, Clinton’s principal occupation has been the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, where she has been a major force in steering her parents’ charitable work in the final years of her mother’s tenure at the State Department, and since.
This April, she announced that she is pregnant. Clinton is due to deliver her first child in the fall, and it’s unclear whether she will resume work with NBC after that.
When Clinton joined NBC, many media critics chafed at the network’s decision to employ a former first daughter with no experience in journalism. The New York Post referred to Clinton as “just another spoiled, aimless child of rich, successful parents chauffeured through adulthood by Mommy and Daddy’s connections.”
Yet Clinton’s appointment did not mark the first time NBC Universal had hired children of high-ranking politicians. In 2009, it hired George W. Bush’s daughter Jenna Bush Hager to serve as a correspondent on the “Today” show. In 2011, it hired Sen. John McCain’s daughter Meghan McCain as a contributor on MSNBC. The details of Clinton’s deal with NBC have been closely held since she joined the network.