Washington Post media reporter Paul Farhi reported hope for George Stephanopoulos over his Clinton ties, oddly suggesting “Stephanopoulos’s image undoubtedly has been helped by the absence of follow-up stories showing further ethically dubious ties to the Clintons.”
Farhi and the Post seemed completely unaware of the USA Today piece by Peter Schweizer that came out Saturday underlining how Stephanopoulos not only regularly moderated panel discussions at the fall Clinton Global Initative meetings (as we noted routinely year after year at NewsBusters), but even worked with Chelsea Clinton in 2013 and 2015 as a contest judge for awards.
Farhi also claimed Sunday’s interview with Sen. Mitch McConnell suggested Stephanopoulos wasn’t “radioactive” for the GOP:
Despite calls from some conservatives for him to resign or recuse himself from political coverage, Stephanopoulos has not missed a beat. He co-hosted “Good Morning America” as usual Friday and took his regular turn moderating “This Week With George Stephanopoulos” on Sunday. Indeed, his primary guest on the public-affairs show was Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), a leading member of the GOP establishment, no less. McConnell’s appearance sent a strong symbolic message: Stephanopoulos is not radioactive for Republicans.
It’s also a little weird that somehow he’s not a news anchor, because GMA is such a party barge full of tabloid junk: “Stephanopoulos is not a daily news anchor like Williams — Stephanopoulos’s principal gig, on GMA, involves light banter and interviews — nor is he a polarizing personality like O’Reilly.”
The Clintons are always polarizing with Republicans, and so is Stephanopoulos for being so closely identified with them.
Then came the liberal-media experts to insist that maybe conservatives want to leave Stephanopoulos precisely where he is:
All told, the Stephanopoulos controversy is unfolding in predictable ways, with professions of “limited contrition and spin of the facts, the hunkering down in the hope the controversy will blow over,” said Mark Feldstein, a professor of broadcast journalism at the University of Maryland.
But it’s still premature to say that the worst is over for Stephanopoulos, said Feldstein, who is writing a book about media scandals.
“It’s a long way between now and the November 2016 election, and if Clinton opponents keep banging the drums about this, it’s going to be hard for Stephanopoulos to lead ABC News’s campaign coverage the way he has in the past,” Feldstein said. “Indeed, Republicans may prefer that Stephanopoulos remain in place during the campaign to serve as a useful punching bag symbolizing what they view as liberal media bias.”
Feldstein, a former investigative reporter for CNN, offers the classic tic of a biased liberal journalist: He can look straight in the face of overt bias – like George hammering Peter Schweizer on the Clinton Foundation’s behalf – and still suggest bias is “what conservatives view as,” as if it’s not self-evident.
Then there’s the truly cynical angle, the Clintonian spin: everyone knew George was a Clinton helper, so what’s new here? This isn’t even a scandal:
Broadcast news analyst Andrew Tyndall takes a somewhat milder view. He frames the question about Stephanopoulos this way: Does the new information about him undercut his established persona among viewers?....
Stephanopoulos’s association with the Clintons has always been part of his persona, said Tyndall, who writes the Tyndall Report, which tracks the evening-news broadcasts. So, too, is the anchorman’s “liberal conscientiousness,” which comports with his donations to a charity working in behalf of HIV prevention and rain-forest preservation, he said.
Tyndall said “the underlying donation itself only has the status of controversy, not scandal.”
This spin is most tiring when the Post drags out the old “working the refs” spin, which suggests conservatives are cynically (and somewhat falsely) complaining about bias to bring favorable coverage.
“Mostly this brouhaha represents standard working-the-refs operating procedure by right-wing activists,” he said. “They are laying down a marker with ABC that Stephanopoulos’s Clinton baggage will be a factor throughout Campaign 2016.”
This is not a “working the refs” situation. This is a case of the “referee” wearing a Clinton sweatshirt, hat, and shaking two pom-poms. This man cannot be recognized as a referee in any way. The Clinton Foundation donations and conference judging and appearances all suggest a contempt for ethics and fairness in journalism.
