CNN’s Reliable Sources was in a celebrating mood about the Supreme Court’s gay marriage mandate on Sunday. Host Brian Stelter began with former ABC weatherman Sam Champion, who spoke to the power of liberal bias on television: “TV always eases the path for change” and “leads the way for acceptance.”
Stelter noted part of that “leading the way for acceptance” was ABC’s celebratory coverage of Champion’s wedding to artist Rubem Robierb on Good Morning America.
In an interview With The Huffington Post, Thursday, former ABC weatherman Sam Champion, without naming his old network directly, blasted it as superficial. He also promoted the global warming agenda and declared he was on the side of "science." Champion sneered, "Let’s just say, on any given day if you’re watching a network morning show...I’m going to find a Dancing star, I’m going to find a musical concert."
The Los Angeles Times reports that the Comcast-owned Weather Channel is starting to play hardball over demanding higher fees to air on the DirecTV satellite TV system.
Everyone needs their weather news to stay safe, they argue, so DirecTV is threatening public safety by not knuckling under. They're even pressing DirecTV viewers to write Congress and insure Comcast gets more profits for this "critical public safety resource," like your local TV station doesn't cover the weather:
ABC announced on Monday that weatherman and global warming alarmist Sam Champion will be leaving the network for the Weather Channel. Champion has developed a long history of the most hyperbolic predictions about climate change. Additionally, the ABC personality has promoted bizarre environmentalists such as No Impact Man, an activist who shunned toilet paper.
On February 8, 2008, Champion ridiculously asked Good Morning America viewers, "Could global warming one day force us into space to live?" On June 25, 2007, the weatherman promoted Colin Beavan, the anti-toilet paper No Impact Man. When his ABC colleagues expressed skepticism, Champion reassured Chris Cuomo that the host could keep "your toilet paper," but didn't mention the rest of the country. Here are the top five most obnoxious examples of Sam Champion's environmental extremism:
The personalities hosting Good Morning America made little effort to hide their joy over the Supreme Court's gay marriage ruling, Wednesday. During live coverage of the case on the west coast version of the program, news anchor George Stephanopoulos tossed the story to the openly gay Sam Champion, hyping his same-sex nuptials: "You and Rubem [Robierb] married in December. I can only imagine what this day feels like to you."
Champion marveled at the result: "My heart is pounding, like really thumping in my chest." He then lectured, "It's very easy to discount this into a legal brief or to say that they are theories. But this is about people's lives." The weatherman told viewers that "people all over this country" want "to know that they're equal and that their feelings for someone that they love can be legitimized and is just as right as their neighbors."
Good Morning America hasn't made time to cover a possible prostitution scandal involving Hillary Clinton's State Department, but the show's hosts gushed over the politician's debut on Twitter. News reader Josh Elliott thrilled, "Hillary Clinton has arrived on Twitter. And, boy, does she have people talking because in part of her description of herself."
After reading the description of Clinton's bio, the GMA anchors raved over the former Secretary of State's skill at social media. Robin Roberts lauded, "She's so good at that!" Entertainment reporter Lara Spencer agreed. Sam Champion bragged, "I tweeted her yesterday. I saw it early on! I'm, like, hey is this real?" After co-anchor George Stephanopoulos inquired as to whether he got a response, a dejected Champion admitted, "No." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]
In years past, Good Morning America weatherman Sam Champion would aggressively hype odd environmental protests, such as a man who decided to live in his own filth for a year or another individual who opted to forgo toilet paper. But, as a Democratic president settled into office and the ABC morning show surged in the ratings, the program subsequently lost interest in climate change and other green issues.
On Monday, Earth Day, Champion was reduced to celebrating the holiday by interviewing cook Mario Batali. He blandly asked, "What are you doing to celebrate Earth Day in your restaurants?" On Earth Day 2011, Champion toiled for his corporate bosses and hyped a Disney movie: "DisneyNature is marking the opening day of its newest film, 'African Cats' here on Earth Day." This is a far cry from the Bush years. Back then, every day was Earth Day. On January 31, 2007, he anchored a segment on climate change with an on-screen graphic that read, "Will Billions Die from Global Warming? New Details on Thirst and Hunger."
Apparently, objectivity just isn't needed on some issues. On March 16th, Good Morning America's Josh Elliott, Sam Champion and Lara Spencer will co-host the 24th annual Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) awards. The event will honor another journalist, Anderson Cooper, for being "an advocate for the LGBT community."
This isn't the first time Elliott, supposedly a neutral journalist, has appeared at the GLAAD event. On March 24, 2012, the anchor accepted a media award and declared of ABC: "I'm proud to work at a place that believes in advocacy journalism!" Elliott fawned over the group, saying "I will never be in a braver room than this!" (As if it's tough to be in a place where everyone has the exact same opinion as you.)
Minutes before being crowned Miss America on Saturday night, Miss New York, Mallory Hytes Hagan, matched the attitude toward guns espoused by her very liberal Governor, Andrew Cuomo. Asked by judge Sam Champion, the weather-reader for ABC’s Good Morning America, about putting armed guards in schools, Hagen condemned the concept, insisting: “The answer is not to fight violence with violence.”
As if law enforcement officers carrying guns fuels violence.
ABC News repeatedly celebrated weatherman Sam Champion's gay "marriage" to Rubem Robierb from Friday through Monday. On Monday's "Good Morning America," entertainment reporter Lara Spencer relayed: "We have so many stories to tell you this morning, including the surprising story of this woman. She is accused of being, we're not making this up, too sexy for her job. Her boss said she was too distracting and was actually threatening his marriage. But that's where the outrage begins -- because she's the one who lost her job, not him."
Then she turned to Champion: "Yeah, it's controversial, indeed, but this isn't. We have such great news to share with everybody, the best news of all. Sam Champion, everybody, getting married over the weekend." No one in America opposes gay marriage, apparently.
On Tuesday night, all three network evening newscasts ran with stories on a newly released government report blaming man-made climate change for recent extreme weather. ABC's World News led the charge, as anchor Diane Sawyer sounded the alarm: "Hot planet. The world is heating up. And for the first time, a U.S. Government-backed report ties that searing heat, those epic storms, to man-made global warming."
Sawyer cited a report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration as a "major alert about the speed of climate change on this planet" and wondered if the study represented "a tipping point" on the issue. Turning to weather editor Sam Champion, Sawyer hoped there was "still time to do something." Champion proclaimed: "I would say is, now is the time we start limiting man-made greenhouse gases if we're starting to see that that is exactly what other studies are showing."
A tale of two disasters: On ABC’s Good Morning America this morning, weatherman Sam Champion’s piece included reaction from several residents of Florida, Alabama and Louisiana to President Obama’s oil spill speech, and found three outright critics and no defenders of the administration’s handling of the disaster. One woman exclaimed: “What I would have liked to heard from him – that he actually had a plan.”
The kindest review came from a man in Alabama who merely hoped the federal response would improve: “I think we're seeing a change in how he's handling the situation. And I hope it's for the better.”