Bob Beckel

Robert Gilliland "Bob" Beckel (born November 15, 1948) is an American political analyst and pundit, and a former political operative. He is currently an analyst and commentator on CNN. He had been a commentator on the Fox News Channel, where he co-hosted The Five until he was released in 2015 after being absent for several months while recovering from back surgery.

Early life

Beckel was born in New York City and grew up in Lyme, Connecticut. He is the son of Cambridge Graham Beckel, Jr. (author of Workshops for the World: The United Nations Family of Agencies) and Ellen Gilliland Beckel. He is the brother of actor Graham Beckel.

Beckel has a BA from Wagner College in Staten Island. While in college, he played football and worked for Robert F. Kennedy's presidential campaign in 1968.

After college, Beckel served in the Philippines as a Peace Corps volunteer from 1971 to 1972, and later was a graduate school professor of politics at George Washington University.

Career

Government

In 1977, Beckel joined the United States Department of State as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Congressional Relations, becoming the youngest deputy assistant Secretary of State in the Carter administration. In that role, he helped to shepherd the Panama Canal Treaty through Congress to ratification. The following year was appointed Special Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs, working on ratification of Salt II and Mideast treaties.

Fox News Channel

Fox News Channel (FNC), also known as Fox News, is an American basic cable and satellite news television channel that is owned by the Fox Entertainment Group subsidiary of 21st Century Fox. As of February 2015, approximately 94,700,000 American households (81.4% of cable, satellite & telco customers) receive the Fox News Channel. The channel broadcasts primarily from studios at 1211 Avenue of the Americas, New York City, New York. .

The channel was created by Australian-American media mogul Rupert Murdoch, who hired former Republican Party media consultant and NBC executive Roger Ailes as its founding CEO. It launched on October 7, 1996, to 17 million cable subscribers. It grew during the late 1990s and 2000s to become the dominant cable news network in the United States.

Fox News Channel has been accused of biased reporting and promoting the Republican Party. The channel has also been cited as detrimental to the integrity of news overall. Fox News Channel employees have responded that news reporting operates independently of its opinion and entertainment, and have denied bias in news reporting.

The Five

The Five may refer to:

Music

Religion

Film

TV

Construction

Transportation

See also

African Americans

African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans or Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group of Americans (citizens or residents of the United States) with total or partial ancestry from any of the Black racial groups of Africa. The term may also be used to include only those individuals who are descended from enslaved Africans. As a compound adjective the term is usually hyphenated as African-American.

African Americans constitute the third largest racial and ethnic group in the United States (after White Americans and Hispanic and Latino Americans). Most African Americans are of West and Central African descent and are descendants of enslaved blacks within the boundaries of the present United States. On average, African Americans are of 78 percent West African, 19 percent European and 3 percent Native American heritage, with very large variation between individuals. Immigrants from some African, Caribbean, Central American, and South American nations and their descendants may or may not also self-identify with the term.

Dana Perino

Dana Marie Perino (born May 9, 1972) is an American political pundit. She was the 27th White House Press Secretary, serving under President George W. Bush from September 14, 2007 to January 20, 2009. She was the second female White House Press Secretary, after Dee Dee Myers who served during the Clinton Administration. She is currently a political commentator for Fox News, while also serving as a co-host of the network's talk show The Five, and is a book publishing executive at Random House.

Early life and career

Perino was born in Evanston, Wyoming, the daughter of Janice "Jan" and Leo Perino, and grew up in Denver, Colorado. Two of her paternal great-grandparents were Italian immigrants. She attended Ponderosa High School in Parker, Colorado, a suburb of Denver. Perino graduated from Colorado State University-Pueblo (CSU-Pueblo) in 1993 with a bachelor's degree in mass communications and minors in both political science and Spanish. While attending CSU-Pueblo, she was on the forensics team. She also worked at KTSC-TV, the campus-based Rocky Mountain PBS affiliate. While at college, she also worked at KCCY-FM on the 2 a.m. to 6 a.m. shift. Perino went on to obtain a masters degree in public affairs reporting from the University of Illinois Springfield (UIS). During her time at UIS, she also worked for WCIA, a CBS affiliate, as a daily reporter covering the Illinois Capitol.