After a lifetime of guarding her privacy, Chelsea Clinton made her debut as a reporter on US national television with a feature about a non-profit organization dedicated to poor children in Arkansas.
Clinton, 31, appeared poised as she reported the feel-good segment on Annette Dove, a volunteer who takes troubled youngsters in the poverty-struck city of Pine Bluff under her wing.
“Hi Chelsea, we’re so glad to have you!” Dove exclaims on camera in the pre-recorded report, which aired on NBC’s “Rock Center with Brian Williams” show. At one point, Clinton and Dove discuss hearing gunshots in the rundown neighborhood.
After, Clinton appears in the NBC studio and tells the presenter: “I’m really grateful to be here with you.”
Saying that she “did deliberately lead a private life” until now, she explains she was “cajoled” by her recently deceased grandmother to become more public and said “I hope I will make her proud.”
The daughter of former president Bill Clinton and current Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has lived nearly entirely out of the public eye. Her marriage last year to a little-known hedge fund employee caused a rare media frenzy.
The decision to accept such a high-profile media job has prompted speculation that Clinton may wish to follow her parents into politics. Some have criticized the way she was able to get a job without ever having worked in journalism.
In addition to starting to report for “Rock Center with Brian Williams,” Clinton is set Wednesday to host PBS’s live broadcast of “The Nutcracker” ballet being staged at the Lincoln Center in New York.
