The Chicago Tribune, the hometown newspaper of Oprah Winfrey, has criticized her for allowing her company to accept a $1 million payment from the Kamala Harris presidential campaign.
The Washington Examiner reported earlier this month how Harris’s campaign had blown through a $1 billion budget.
Among its expenses were two payments of $500,000 each to Harpo Productions, dated Oct. 15, 2024, per Federal Election Commission filings. Winfrey is the chairwoman and CEO of the company. Harris was interviewed by Winfrey during a star-studded event the previous month.
When initially confronted about the payment by celebrity news outlet TMZ, Winfrey deflected, saying she personally was never paid $1 million.
“Not true,” she said. “I was paid nothing. Ever.”
The Washington Examiner never reported that Winfrey received a personal fee.
In a subsequent Instagram post via the comment section of the Shade Room, she followed up to say her company received the payment.
“Usually I am reluctant to respond to rumors in general, but these days I realize that if you don’t stop a lie, it just gets bigger,” she said. “I was not paid a dime.”
She continued: “My time and energy was my way of supporting the campaign. For the live-streaming event in September, my production company Harpo was asked to bring in set design, lights, cameras, microphones, crew, producers and every other item necessary (including the benches and chairs we sat on) to put on a live production. I did not take any personal fee. However the people who worked on that production needed to be paid. And were. End of story.”
The furor caused by the story, as well as Winfrey’s initial deflection, has now prompted the Chicago Tribune’s editorial board to weigh in.
“Having someone with a large following simply stand next to a candidate at a podium and say a few words, solo, is one thing; doing a whole livestreamed event with, say, Oprah Winfrey, is another,” the board wrote.
The Chicago Tribune said Winfrey’s interview with Harris amounted to a “starry infomercial” and argued that even if Winfrey herself wasn’t paid, such is her personal fortune that she should have been the one to foot the bill when it came to paying production workers.
“It’s true that production workers need to be paid and that’s fair enough; they’re not donors. And, frankly, $1 million is not all that much to Winfrey and so we very much doubt that she was seeking any kind of personal payday from her chosen candidate. But she does own Harpo and serves as its chairwoman and CEO. The production fees should have been a campaign donation.”
Winfrey has a net worth of $3 billion, according to Forbes.
Political commentator Bill O’Reilly accused Winfrey of “doing a little two-step here, and she finally had to admit it.”
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Megyn Kelly described the payment as “grossly unethical.”
“This is highly irregular. The subject of the interview does not pay for the set/production costs (the interviewer does) & even more shocking when said costs are $1Mil. Esp shady when it’s a presidential candidate.”