, has criticized her for allowing her company to accept a $1 million payment from the Kamala Harris presidential campaign. never reported that Winfrey received a personal fee.
Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris joins Oprah Winfrey at Oprah’s Unite for America Live Streaming event on Thursday, Sept. 19, 2024, in Farmington Hills, Michigan. “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 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.
“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.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 as 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.”“This is highly irregular.