The early Wednesday morning edition of ABC’s Nightline provided the first look at the network reaction to Tuesday night’s Republican presidential debate and featured correspondent David Wright ripping it as a “bloody” affair with help from liberal comedians and scolding Chris Christie for remarks about Los Angeles mothers placing their children on school buses only to have classes canceled due to a terror threat.
David Wright
Without a hint of irony, the most superficial network news show in ABC’s Nightline mocked Tuesday’s Fox Business Network Republican debate on their early Wednesday morning installment as nothing more than a “reality show” along the lines of The Bachelor and Survivor “where the stakes couldn’t be higher.”
Following a Hillary Clinton campaign rally on Saturday that featured singer Katy Perry and former President Bill Clinton, NBC and ABC were beside themselves in gushing over the event. On Saturday’s NBC Nightly News, correspondent Kelly O’Donnell proclaimed: “Hillary Clinton's team is going all in on star power....husband Bill Clinton's first campaign stop here in Iowa....superstar hit maker [Katy Perry], whose song is Clinton’s campaign theme.... After a tough slide this summer, Clinton has hit a high note.”
What’s going on here? Good Morning America, somehow, aired a shockingly positive portrayal of Ben Carson on Wednesday, promoting the Republican as “amazing” and having a “resume like no other candidate.” This is quite a change from ABC’s previous attacks on Carson.
All three networks on Monday prominently covered the "scathing" report on Rolling Stone's retraction of a brutal rape allegation at the University of Virginia. But, ABC, NBC and CBS skimped on the fact that no one at the magazine will be fired. Today, CBS This Morning and Good Morning America offered 10 minutes and nine seconds to the "blistering report" by Columbia University, but a scant 32 seconds of that time was devoted to the total lack of responsibility being imposed.
NBC became the first network to move on from the scandal involving Democratic Senator Robert Menendez (N.J.) on Thursday as NBC Nightly News made zero mention of the story and that entered a plea of not guilty in a Newark, New Jersey federal courtroom. As fellow networks ABC and CBS, ABC’s World News Tonight aired a one-minute-and-25-second segment on Menendez while the CBS Evening News devoted a 19-second news brief to his not guilty plea. However, between the two reports, Menendez was labeled a Democrat only twice.
In a stark departure from the usual routine, the networks on Wednesday night and Thursday morning repeatedly identified scandal-plagued Senator Robert Menendez as a Democrat, mentioning his affiliation nine times in just six stories. NBC spotlighted Menendez's party four times. ABC highlighted it three times and CBS twice.
While all three of the major broadcast networks covered the indictment of Democratic Senator Robert Menendez (N.J.) on Wednesday night, the CBS Evening News chose to largely downplay the news by spending just 22 seconds on the story and hailed Menendez as someone “who often seems to relish a fight.” Additionally, the “big three” of ABC, CBS, and NBC all made sure to mention that Menendez is a Democrat, but stopped there and declined to label him a liberal or progressive.

Friday's ABC World News Tonight touted how the FBI is opening an investigation into departing Congressman Aaron Schock. David Wright devoted a full one minute, 39-second report to Schock allegedly "padding the mileage on his personal car by some 90,000 miles," as well as "misusing campaign funds and...taking improper donations." By contrast, ABC set aside just 30 seconds of air time to a congressional committee subpoenaing Hillary Clinton's e-mail server.

On Sunday, George Stephanopoulos appeared on ABC’s Good Morning America to discuss the 2016 presidential election and what impact Hillary Clinton’s use of private emails might have on the race. Stephanopoulos did his best to cast doubt on the importance of the Clinton emails and argued that “it’s not going bring down her campaign and I think it does raise questions about a pattern of kind of hunkering down in the Clinton world. We'll also see if her critics overreact on this one."

On Sunday, ABC’s This Week promoted Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and his recent trip to Iowa as he considers a potential 2016 presidential run.In a pre-taped segment, reporter David Wright touted how Sanders is “as unabashedly progressive as Ben & Jerry's…Sanders rails against the corrupting influence of money in politics. He stands for economic justice.”

ABC on Friday finally woke up to the scandal engulfing NBC competitor Brian Williams. Good Morning America's David Wright covered the story and gravely intoned, "This controversy threatens to tarnish the reputation of America's number one news anchor."
