This week, NewsBusters is presenting the Media Research Center’s “Best Notable Quotables of 2015,” our annual awards for the year’s worst journalism. Today, the “What Difference Does It Make?” Award for denying Hillary’s scandals. Winner: ABC chief anchor and longtime Clinton operative George Stephanopoulos, who treated author Peter Schweizer as a hostile witness during an interview about Schweizer’s book revealing potential conflicts of interest between contributions to the Clinton Foundation and Hillary’s work as Secretary of State.
This Week
By Rich Noyes | December 23, 2015 | 9:06 AM EST
This week, NewsBusters is presenting the Media Research Center’s “Best Notable Quotables of 2015,” our annual awards for the year’s worst journalism. Today, the “Pantsuit Patrol Award,” for boosting Hillary Clinton. Winning this category was Mark Halperin, a veteran of ABC News and Time magazine, who gushed over Hillary: “The two words she needs are ‘fun’ and ‘new.’ And part of why yesterday was so successful is she looks like she’s having fun and she’s doing, for her, new stuff. We’ve never seen her get a burrito before. Fun and new.”
By Curtis Houck | December 20, 2015 | 2:36 PM EST
Hours after praising socialist Senator Bernie Sanders prior to ABC’s Democratic presidential debate on Saturday night, ABC News political analyst Cokie Roberts completely reversed course on Sunday’s This Week and brushed off Sanders as unelectable and having shot at the nomination even if he wins both the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary in February 2016.
By Brent Bozell | and By Tim Graham | December 16, 2015 | 6:29 AM EST
Our news media are so overwhelmingly obsequious with the Democrats that Hillary Clinton can imply the relatives of the Americans killed in Benghazi are liars on national TV, and no one in the press blinks an eye or finds it newsworthy.
ABC is about to host another one of those hide-and-seek Saturday night Democrat debates. There is something very ironic here: It was on this network where she made that outrageous statement.
By Melissa Mullins | December 15, 2015 | 5:01 PM EST
On Sunday's This Week, they concluded the show with a feminist tribute. ABC’s Cokie Roberts sat down with feminist legend Gloria Steinem for what should’ve been an interview on her first book in over 20 years, My Life on the Road. Instead, it was a celebration of her life. George Stephanopoulos gushed that Steinem “sat down with our own pathbreaker, Cokie Roberts, for a look back at 50 years of change in feminism and journalism.”
Roberts began by suggesting today’s young women don’t appreciate the Old Guard enough:” “Gloria Steinem, loved and hated by millions, grew up in a world modern Americans wouldn't recognize. Women were legally denied jobs and credit and shut out of prominent positions. But instead of accepting that world, she led a movement to change it.”
By Curtis Houck | December 13, 2015 | 3:49 PM EST
Reporting on Sunday’s This Week about foreign reaction to Donald Trump’s candidacy and proposal to ban all Muslims from entering the U.S., ABC News chief foreign correspondent Terry Moran compared Trump to U.K. Independence Party (U.K.I.P.) leader Nigel Farage despite his firm denouncement of Trump. Moran cheered new leftist Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as providing “sharp relief” to Trump as he publicly “greeted a plane load Syrian refugees” on Friday.
By Brad Wilmouth | November 29, 2015 | 11:25 PM EST
On all three broadcast network Sunday talk shows, hosts pressed some of their GOP guests by forwarding a quote from Planned Parenthood complaining that "hateful rhetoric" from abortion opponents had contributed to the shooting attack on Planned Parenthood Rocky Mountain in Colorado.
NBC's Chuck Todd on Meet the Press notably managed to utter the words "hateful rhetoric" three times and "heated rhetoric" once as he repeatedly brought up Planned Parenthood's complaints about being criticized by the pro-life movement for selling baby parts.
By Curtis Houck | November 29, 2015 | 3:51 PM EST
Viewers tuning into Sunday’s edition of ABC’s This Week witnessed matters getting awkward towards the tail end of Republican presidential candidate John Kasich’s interview with co-host Martha Raddatz as Kasich attempted to flatter her by insisting that she condemn Donald Trump and half-heartedly telling her he wished “you were in the race” for President because he’d support her.
By Brad Wilmouth | November 22, 2015 | 11:52 PM EST
On Sunday's This Week, host George Stephanopoulos repeatedly brought up the debate over whether to bar guns from people on the federal terror watch list or the no-fly list without delving into any of the arguments against doing so.
The ABC host brought up the issue with both guests Donald Trump and Dr. Ben Carson, and raised the issue again during the Roundtable segment, but never noted either the specific criticisms that the list gets from both the left and the right, or the argument against tipping off suspects under secret investigation which barring them from purchasing guns would cause.
By Jeffrey Meyer | November 8, 2015 | 11:35 AM EST
During an appearance on ABC’s This Week, National Review editor Rich Lowry dismissed the media obsession with Ben Carson’s personal biography and stressed that the constant attacks on the GOP presidential candidate will only serve to bolster his campaign. Lowry stressed that the media critiquing Carson is “going to help him” and pointed out that “in this Republican race that media coverage is extremely important and a negative coverage of a certain type is like gold for these candidates.”
By Jeffrey Meyer | October 4, 2015 | 11:35 AM EDT
On Sunday’s This Week, ABC’s George Stephanopoulos repeatedly hit GOP presidential frontrunner from the left over his tax plan, chastising Trump for his plan which Stephanopoulos claimed would mainly benefit the rich. Stephanopoulos demanded the Republican candidate explain why taxes should be cut at all and zeroed in on how the plan would personally benefit Trump: “Bottom line, you do accept that you're going to make out well under your tax plan?”
By Jeffrey Meyer | September 27, 2015 | 11:17 AM EDT
On Sunday’s This Week, ABC’s Matthew Dowd used Speaker of the House John Boehner’s resignation as the perfect opportunity to attack Republican voters who were unhappy with his tenure. The so-called conservative proclaimed that Republicans are “really upset” that “America has changed...America is now less white, less married, less churched, less conservative, and that is a difficult prospect for them to face in the course of this.”