Tom Shales Mangles Facts As He Whacks ABC's Amanpour Pick

In Tuesday’s Washington Post, TV critic Tom Shales panned ABC’s choice of Christiane Amanpour as the host of This Week (he strangely favored Barbara Walters). Shales even mentioned NewsBusters – in the midst of a series of errors. Let’s hope Shales doesn’t mock Sarah Palin for mispronouncing words or writing on her hand, with his goofs today (or the goofs of bad copy editors at the Post):

She has steadfastly rejected claims about her objectivity, telling Leslie [sic] Stahl last year relative to her coverage of Iran: "I am not part of the current crop of opinion journalists or commentary journalists or feelings journalists. I strongly believe that I have to remain in the realm of fact."

The conservative Media Research Center, on its NewsBuster [sic] blog, claims Amanpour has the "standard liberal outlook on the world," but then there don't seem to be many journalists that conservatives do not consider liberal.

Brent Baker’s review of Amanpour's tilted oeuvre included the Lesley Stahl quote (with Lesley spelled correctly), but Shales omitted what Baker thought was important: Amanpour’s marriage to former Clinton spokesman Jamie Rubin. This is not the first time Shales has ignored that tie.

Shales also suggested Al Franken was a "congressman" now, not a Senator:

ABC News executives apparently see the future as belonging to so-called "backpack journalists" who can lug video equipment around and shoot their own reports -- much like a character once devised and played by Al Franken (now a congressman [sic], of course) on "Saturday Night Live."