Going into overdrive on Friday, ABC obsessed over the killing of Cecil the lion for an additional 46 minutes across three programs. This is same network that has virtually ignored the Planned Parenthood scandal. ABC's 20/20 devoted the entire hour to discussing the "uproar" over Cecil. After commercials, 20/20 added 37 minutes and 18 seconds on the lion killing. Nightline offered seven minutes and 30 seconds and GMA managed an additional two minutes and ten seconds.
20/20
By Matthew Balan | August 6, 2015 | 2:21 PM EDT
Planned Parenthood and its defenders have played up that the recent undercover videos were "highly-edited," and that producers are "not journalists," but "violent extremists." However, ABC aired their own segment on biomedical firms possibly breaking the law to obtain organs from unborn babies. In 2000, Chris Wallace, then with ABC, revealed on 20/20 that a "hidden camera investigation has found a thriving industry, in which aborted fetuses women donate to help medical research are being marketed for hundreds – even thousands of dollars."
By Matthew Balan | August 3, 2015 | 3:48 PM EDT
Monday's CBS This Morning and NBC's Today both devoted a minimal amount of coverage to the Sunday bombings of two churches in Las Cruces, New Mexico. The two Big Three morning newscasts devoted 58 seconds to news briefs on the explosions at a Baptist church and a Catholic parish. By contrast, the programs set aide 12 minutes and 22 seconds of air time to segments related to the outcry over the slaying of Cecil the Lion in Zimbabwe.
By Connor Williams | May 28, 2015 | 3:25 PM EDT
In a surprising segment, ABC’s 20/20 highlighted several cases of freeloading by people looking to fraudulently claim disability. While the program did not get to the heart of the matter – just how easy it is to claim disability and the skyrocketing cost of the program – noting a major flaw in an expensive government program is rare for a liberal network like ABC.
By Brent Bozell | and By Tim Graham | May 2, 2015 | 8:00 AM EDT
The last year or so could be described as The Year of Transgender Propaganda. The Hollywood and news-media push on the latest frontier of “gender fluidity” demonstrates the libertine left’s absolute arrogance that the LGBT revolution is an unstoppable juggernaut.
Time placed Laverne Cox on a “Transgender Tipping Point” cover last June, and the aggressive culture-tipping took off. Amazon created a series around a retiree deciding he was a woman in “Transparent,” and won Golden Globes. Fox’s “Glee” had their female football coach grow a beard and be celebrated by a “historic” 200-member transgender choir. The cherry on this vomit is Bruce Jenner.
By Scott Whitlock | February 3, 2014 | 4:40 PM EST
The journalists at ABC News offered yet another high profile experiment to terrify the parents of America into not owning guns. In an hour-long special on Friday night, Diane Sawyer and David Muir hid pink guns at the playground of an elementary school in an effort to see if young girls would play with them. Unsurprisingly, the young children did. The Young Guns program also included the obvious revelation that firearms shouldn't be concealed in backpacks and with candy.
Diane Sawyer narrated, "For more than a decade, there has been a powder pink gun on the market." Referencing the location of where Sawyer and co-host David Muir hid guns in backpacks, she explained, "We decided to head back to that school in Saint Petersburg, Florida, specifically to see how girls would react to colorful rifles." [See video below. MP3 audio here.] As children arrive to find the guns planted by ABC, Sawyer teased, "Watch as the girls come out to play and grab, rattle, giggle and pull the trigger."
By Scott Whitlock | January 31, 2014 | 10:05 AM EST
The journalists at ABC are again going after gun ownership in the most absurd manner possible. Diane Sawyer and David Muir want American parents to know that they shouldn't leave unattended guns around toys, candy and in the backpacks of children. On the Monday and Thursday World News, as well as Friday's Good Morning America, Sawyer and Muir previewed their hour-long Young Guns special and portrayed an epidemic of accidental shootings involving kids.
The ABC program, designed to show how Americans dangerously keep their guns, featured weapons stuffed in ridiculous, staged locations. On Monday, David Muir explained, "Those parents agreeing to take part at an elementary school in St. Petersburg, Florida." As video showed guns being jammed in backpacks and in a box of plastic spiders, Muir narrated, "The teacher running the experiment, telling the children they're there for a memory test and she has to go for a second. But there's candy on the table." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]
By Noel Sheppard | November 30, 2013 | 2:30 AM EST
ABC’s Barbara Walters did another in a series of sycophantic gushing and fawning interviews with the Obamas Friday.
In the wake of the President’s fallacious claim that people could keep their health insurance plans if they liked them, the most preposterous part of the interview was when Michelle Obama said her husband “keeps his promises” without any pushback from Walters (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):
By Matt Philbin | October 7, 2013 | 11:08 AM EDT
Pity ABC correspondent Matt Gutman, trapped in the wrong career. Clearly, he’s a frustrated publicist, or maybe a producer for a sob-sister daytime talk show. That’s the only charitable way to explain his Oct. 4 “20/20” report on Kaitlyn Hunt.
Hunt, of Indian River, Fla., was an 18-year-old woman when she had multiple sexual encounters in a high school restroom with a 14-year-old girl. She was 19 when she violated a court order forbidding contact with that girl, sending her 20,000 texts, including nude and sexually explicit photos and videos and arranging to meet for sex. Video after the jump.
By Matt Philbin | April 9, 2013 | 11:18 AM EDT
The Rutgers basketball story continues to transfix the media, and why shouldn’t it? Mike Rice, the disgraced former Rutgers basketball coach allegedly killed a woman and at least seven viable, born-alive babies “by plunging scissors into their spinal cords” in his filthy, macabre “house of horrors” abortion clinic.
Oh wait, my mistake. Rice was fired last week from Rutgers over video of him shoving, kicking and yelling at his players, throwing basketballs at them and – most damning – using “homophobic slurs.” That’s made Rice the most notorious villain in America. And in one week it earned him 36 network news stories clocking in at 41 minutes, 26 seconds of air time on ABC, CBS and NBC.
By Scott Whitlock | March 11, 2013 | 4:37 PM EDT
Liberal news outlets will sometimes complain about conservative fear-mongering, but ABC sure understands the practice. On Friday night, the announcer for 20/20 teased, "Is there a sinkhole underneath your house?" Referring to a few incidents (and one tragic case in Florida), the program teased, "It's sinkhole season."
In a hyperbolic tone that sounded like parody, the 20/20 announcer hyperventilated, "Everything you need to know to make sure you don't get sunk. When houses that sell turn into houses from hell." It's probably worth remembering that this is the same network that hyped tiny sequester cuts as leading to the "vaporizing" of jobs and a "meat shortage." The subjects are different, but it's the same scary language.
By Scott Whitlock | December 14, 2012 | 12:00 PM EST
Good Morning America on Friday offered a fawning preview of Barbara Walters' exclusive interview with Barack and Michelle Obama. Walters gushed over the "touching," "charming" couple and asked the President softballs such as "What's your favorite app?" [See video below. MP3 audio here.]
The journalist couldn't get over just how adorable the two Democrats are, fawning, "Together, she teases him. He teases her. It's a whole other look." Quite pleased with herself, Walters declared that such moments are what's "charming about this interview."