George Stephanopoulos: Media Biased Because McCain 'Not Doing So Well'

Media biased against McCain because his campaign is not doing well. That was George Stephanopoulos’ rationalization on the November 3 edition of "The View." Elisabeth Hasselbeck questioned Stephanopoulos about the media’s pro-Obama bias. With studies out demonstrating the media has been clearly far more pro-Obama in its coverage, Stephanopoulos could not dispute the facts. Instead the former Clinton adviser spun it as a result of the faltering McCain campaign. If they are not doing so well in the polls, they will "get more negative stories."

Earlier in the segment, Barbara Walters posed hypotheticals if Obama were to win and if McCain were to win. The ABC News anchor predicted if Obama were to win "the world will look at us and say a big part of the American dream, the part that says anybody can grow up to be president, is not a myth." This of course is in reference to the historic nature of America’s first African-American president.

However, Stephanopoulos offered no such predictions for a potential McCain victory, no kind words of an historic first woman vice president. Instead, Stephanopoulos predicted "I think people will be wondering what happened" and "there will be a lot of anger."

Relevant pieces of the transcript follows.

BARBARA WALTERS: Let’s do a what if. What would this country be like if Obama wins? What would this country be like if McCain wins?

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Set the politics aside for a second. If Barack Obama wins tomorrow I think the rest of the world will look at us and say, a big part of the American dream, the part that says anybody can grow up to be president, is not a myth. I mean, whatever your politics are, the fact that an African-American gets elected will just be a big, big day in the history of the country, and I think for the world.

WALTERS: Okay, on the other hand then, if McCain wins, does that mean that we would have riots in the streets?

STEPHANOPOULOS: I think people will be wondering what happened. Because, you know, we’ve seen all of these polls over the last several weeks, and they’ve been very, very steady. They’ll be, it will be a lot of surprise. I think there will be a lot of anger. And people would be wondering, you know-

WALTERS: Will it, will it be a racism kind of reaction?

STEPHANOPOULOS: Depending on how it turns out, I think it could. I think it could, but I hope not.

[...]

ELISABETH HASSELBECK: The media coverage, obviously, has been incredibly, some would say biased in terms of the coverage. Would you agree with that? I mean 63 percent of the stories, they weighed it out, have been negative against John McCain and Sarah Palin.

STEPHANOPOULOS: The problem with that is that it, you know, the last couple of months, the campaign hasn’t been doing so well. When you don’t do so well, you get more negative stories.