Furious over the portrayal of Rome in Tuesday’s national broadcast of "Good Morning America," Mayor James F. Brown said he’ll never watch ABC — the television show’s network — again.
Cast and crew of the news program were at the Rome railroad station on Monday afternoon as part of a 50-state Whistle Stop ‘08 tour. More than 500 people turned out to meet the train and greet television personalities Robin Roberts, Diane Sawyer and Cris Cuomo.
Though the show’s under 2-minute segment on Rome began with praise of the city’s enthusiastic welcome, it went on to call Rome the "snow capital of the east," remind viewers that Griffiss Air Force Base closed 13 years ago and comment on a tough housing market, all with pre-shot video to match.
A pre-shot video to match the pre-conceived script of economic hardship to suit the Democrat agenda:
Mayor Brown, who is on vacation with is wife in Florida to celebrate their anniversary, called the Daily Sentinel late Tuesday to blast the segment. Before he even saw the Tuesday show, he said, he was getting calls and e-mails from people expressing total disappointment with what ABC ‘Good Morning America’ did for our area."
Brown said the negative portrayal of Rome was a calculated attack. "They had an agenda to come up here and do a negative-type story on upstate economics, on gas prices. The top management, I know their viewpoints," he said. "Their mission is to get Barack Obama elected. They focused on all the issues he’s focused on." First-term Illinois Sen. Barack Obama is the Democratic nominee for president. Brown is a Republican and has been mayor for five years.
The mayor of Rome is right on target here. A mission from GMA to get Obama elected. A portrayal of small town America showing economic progress just would not suit ABC's liberal agenda:
Brown said producers approached the city about a profile as a stop on the train trip across the northeast. He said it was pitched as a profile of a city with a renovated train station. So his chief of staff, Tammy Burkhart, welcomed show crew to town, showing them what Rome had to offer. Instead, he said, they brought an all together different objective.
But of course. You think the GMA producers would actually be upfront with their real agenda? So they pretend to pitch a happy face profile of Rome, only to undermine the town later with their gloom and doom report:
"All along they knew what they wanted to do. The plan from Day One was to come up here and take a look at the economic situation and focus on the negatives and not the positives." He continued, "Instead of being proactive and doing positive things, they focus on the negatives and the past," Brown said.
The segment noted how Rome was once known as the Copper City, with its wealth of wire production jobs, but that most of that industry is gone.
It said the base closed, but that, said the mayor, is old news that Rome has been working to overcome for over a decade.
Brown likened the portrayal of Rome to viewers nationwide to the damage done to Upstate New York when then-Gov. Eliot Spitzer compared its economy to that of Appalachia’s in early 2006.
So, Mayor Brown said he will avoid support and cooperation with what he called the "liberal media" that goes out of its way to support Obama. And ABC won’t get any more business from him, he said. "They couldn’t pay me to turn on ABC," he declared.
The Chamber of Commerce president echoed the mayor's sentiments about GMA:
Rome Area Chamber of Commerce President William K. Guglielmo said that what started as the city’s excitement to show itself off to the country turned into a misrepresentation of Rome on national television.
"We wanted to do our best to promote Rome in a positive light. I’m sure that was everybody’s intention." But after the afternoon of filming, "‘Good Morning America’ seemed to accentuate the negative and eliminate the positive, and there’s so much positive going on in our community. What was portrayed was so incomplete. It really turned me off."
Let this story serve as a warning for the other GMA train stops. ABC will burn you just like they burned Rome in order to fulfill their liberal agenda to portray economic disaster in small town America.
