You know you're in trouble if you're a liberal TV host and a reporter with the far-left Huffington Post demands you receive the same punishment as NBC News anchor Brian Williams: suspension “for six months without pay and his future cast in doubt.”
That's what Denny Dressman called for in an article entitled “The Stephanopoulos Verdict: Nothing Less Than Williams Got.”
Dressman began his article by stating: “Today's question before the court (of public opinion) involves network news anchors Brian Williams and George Stephanopoulos. Is one's crime against media credibility and public trust worse than the other's?”
He continued:
Williams embellished (many would say lied about) the extent of his personal involvement in the coverage of major news events, most notably combat in Iraq.
His actions seriously damaged media credibility at a time when the decline of daily newspapers adds greatly to the importance of network and cable television serving the public reliably. It's about trust.
“Now comes Stephanopoulos, his unreported support of the Clinton Foundation (and participation in numerous Clinton Global Initiative programs) and his partisan grilling of Peter Schweizer, author of the book Clinton Cash,” Dressman stated. “Stephanopoulos so far has been allowed to apologize but remain on the air at ABC.”
“Is his damage to media credibility at this critical time somehow less?” the Huffington Post reporter asked. “Is trust any less an issue here?”
“The focus in the Stephanopoulos case has been on his $75,000 in contributions to the Clinton Foundation,” Dressman stated. “While a mistake, as he has conceded in his apologies, that's not the real issue.
“His blatantly partisan questioning when he interviewed Schweizer on ABC's Sunday morning news program bore a striking resemblance to the content of the attack on Schweizer and his book launched by John Podesta, chairman of the 2016 Hillary Clinton for President Campaign, a few weeks earlier,” he added before declaring:
With the looming presidential race and the subject of the interview relating so directly to a declared candidate, it was incumbent upon Stephanopoulos to conduct an objective interview. Instead, he chose to carry water for his close friend.
“Anyone who reads Clinton Cash will see -- in the first seven pages -- that Schweizer acknowledges he cannot offer hard evidence of criminal wrongdoing,” Dressman noted.
He cited the introduction of Schweizer's book, which reads:
Using publicly available sources, including financial records, tax records, government documents and more, my research team and I have uncovered a repeated pattern of financial transactions coinciding with official actions favorable to Clinton contributors that is troubling enough to warrant (in my opinion) further investigation by law enforcement officers.
“For Stephanopolous to hammer away at the question of evidence as Podesta and other Clinton apologists had been doing since pre-publication promotion began -- without even acknowledging Schweizer's disclaimer in the beginning of his book -- is transparently disingenuous,” Dressman stated.
“He would have viewers believe that his questions were those of a hard-hitting investigative journalist,” the Huffington Post writer noted, but “Schweizer's disclaimers at the outset of his book expose that as a shallow facade.”
Dressman added:
A metro daily newspaper journalist myself for 43 years, I refused to sign even neighborhood petitions because I didn't want to compromise my appearance of objectivity and impartiality.
If Stephanopoulos didn't learn that journalistic principle as he transitioned from Clinton confidant to newsman, I can excuse his contributions.
“But there's no way I can forgive him for using his position at ABC to echo the defense points that have constituted the response from Hillary Clinton loyalists,” the reporter declared, “not when a reading of the book provides so much material for a serious, probing interview.”
Dressman concluded by stating: "If Brian Williams gets a six-month sentence for misrepresenting his reporting role over and over, George Stephanopoulos deserves nothing less for masquerading as an objective journalist asking ostensibly tough questions.”
As NewsBusters previously reported, the man with the $105 million contract at ABC News keeps getting hit from all sides.
Not only have his former colleagues accused him of being “very foolish” and not “a real journalist,” but a new poll has indicated that a plurality of 46 percent of likely voters said they wanted him out of any coverage of the 2016 presidential campaign.
However, one thing in the ABC news anchor's favor is that unlike NBC -- which quickly gave weekend anchor Lester Holt the main chair on its evening newscast after Williams was suspended -- ABC put all their efforts into keeping Stephanopoulos through 2021 with virtually no one in their “back bench” to replace him.
As a result, ABC News is caught between money and ethics, and so far, the money's been doing all the talking. Even the Huffington Post acknowledges that.
