Ana Navarro is known best these days as a co-host on ABC’s “The View,” but she isn’t likely to bring up the connection when she hosts an evening of the Democratic National Convention this week.
Although “The View” operates under the aegis of ABC News, Navarro is not held to the same standards as its full-time journalists, because she is an opinion-focused contributor to the program, according to a person familiar with the matter, not a traditional journalist who is expected to avoid any potential appearance of bias. ABC News declined to make executives available for comment, but her role at “The View” is not expected to be referenced publicly.
Her appearance at the convention this week has generated some scrutiny on social media as well as stories by outlets such as Fox News and Entertainment Weekly.
“I can’t tell you how much it means to me,” Navarro said in a video she posted via Instagarm. “I’m a little refugee girl who fled communism, who fled Nicaragua at the age of eight, found freedom, found opportunity, found a home in America, and for me to have the chance to stand on that stage and help my girl, Kamala, make history and become the Democratic nominee, it’s just such a mind-blowing moment.”
Navarro also works for Warner Bros. Discovery’s CNN, where she makes appearances as a contributor.
News outlets can only do so much about the activities of the outside analysts they curate for audiences — even if such operatives often help them strike a connection with viewers. In 2020, for example, Lisa Ling, then the host of one of CNN’s original series, made appearances in an eight-part promotional video series on behalf of Johnson & Johnson, the pharmaceutical giant. CNN at the time was limited in its ability to govern the host’s activities outside the scope of her work for the outlet, because she was not a full-time member of its news staff. Ling joined CBS News as a contributor in May of 2023.
But they can govern the activities of their full-time staffers in rigorous fashion. George Stephanopoulos found in 2015 that he had to apologize to ABC News viewers, for example, after it was discovered he had not disclosed donations he made to the Clinton Foundation. Stephanopoulos was allowed to make donations to charities of his choice under the unit’s ethics guidelines, but erred in not revealing the contributions to viewers when reporting on topics related to the Clintons. In 2010, MSNBC suspended anchor Keith Olbermann for making donations to political candidates without getting approval from superiors, a violation of company policy at the time.
Navarro’s ties to ABC News go back at least a decade. She has been a contributor to “The View” since 2013 and a political commentator at the Disney-backed news outlet since 2014.
Source Agencies
