While a report on ABC's Good Morning America on Tuesday referenced 2007 comments from then-Senator Barack Obama against a president taking military action without congressional approval, CBS and NBC both failed to point out President Obama contradicting those earlier statements by failing to seek congressional approval before committing U.S. forces in Libya.
As NewsBusters' Scott Whitlock earlier reported, ABC correspondent Jake Tapper noted during the Tuesday GMA report: "There was a conference call over the weekend in which one Democrat, one liberal Democrat, read a quote from candidate Obama about the need to seek congressional approval before taking military action and the member of Congress said, 'I agree with candidate Obama.'"
A Tuesday New York Times article similarly noted Obama's reversal: "'The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation,' Mr. Obama told the Boston Globe in 2007."
Between Tapper's mention and it being featured in the pages of the New York Times, CBS and NBC had no excuse not to include Obama's flip-flop in their reporting.
In addition, as the Media Research Center's Rich Noyes pointed out, the networks demanded the Bush administration get congressional approval before going to war in Iraq in 2003, but have been largely silent on the issue when it came to Obama's use of military force in Libya.
