By Grace Vuoto
[Editor's Note: George Stephanopoulos parlayed his role as a Clinton White House official and "insider" into a revolving-door, lucrative career at ABC News. Columnist Grace Vuoto suggests he could use a refresher course in what were once high standards for the American Free Press.]
Gone are the days of Sunday talk show hosts pretending to uphold standards of fairness while covering political candidates, regardless of their party affiliation. Evidently, the host of “This Week” is so deeply marinated in his leftist ideology that he does not recognize the magnitude of his professional betrayal. He even seemed proud of himself for crossing the line out of journalism and straight into brazen propaganda.
Stephanopoulos began with a detailed list of Trump’s legal battles, without providing any context.
“Until now no American president had ever faced a criminal trial,” he said.
His tone indicated Trump is not innocent until proven guilty, but guilty just for being indicted in the New York hush-money case currently being tried in court. The host did not mention that Trump — and some legal analysts on both sides of the political spectrum—regard these as embellished charges and as open “election interference.” In other words, this case is not self-evident, but convoluted and mired in controversy.
“No American president had ever faced a federal indictment for retaining and concealing classified documents,” he continued.
However, he did not state that there is a national dispute regarding how President Joe Biden handled classified materials throughout his political career. Biden was nonetheless swiftly exonerated by a biased Department of Justice. Even then, Special Counsel Robert Hur concluded in his Feb. 5 report that Biden, despite his "willful" actions, is a doddering old man with severe cognitive impairment.
Certainly, this is vital information to any discerning audience that truly seeks to evaluate how leaders are to handle the nation’s secrets.
“No American president had ever faced a federal indictment or a state indictment for trying to overturn an election or been named an unindicted co-conspirator in two other states for the same crime,” said Stephanopoulos.
But where is Stephanopoulos’ explanation of the outrage by Trump and his supporters that the 2020 election contained such unprecedented anomalies as to possibly warrant a high level of defiance? It is a newsman’s job to present the countervailing evidence too, not just parrot the talking points of the Democratic Party in their zealous prosecution of Trump.
“No American president ever faced hundreds of millions of dollars in judgments for business fraud, defamation and sexual abuse,” he piled on. But he did not reference the current House impeachment inquiry of Biden, based on mountains of evidence showing the president was involved in bribery and influence peddling.
In addition, the cagey host of “This Week” failed to add in his opening comments that Trump’s poll numbers remain higher than Biden’s, both nationally and in most battleground states, precisely because many voters have concluded that Biden’s policies, such as wide open borders, pose an imminent national security threat. These voters deem this to be a far worse crime against the nation than the dubious legal judgments against Trump.
Without the full context of the country’s woes and of Biden’s glaring personal and policy failures, a viewer watching “This Week” could only conclude that American voters who support Trump are the most immoral and ignorant citizens on earth. This is pure vilification of conservatives rather than accurately reporting the news.
This electoral race is more defined “by the courtroom,” than “the campaign trail,” said Stephanopoulos. Defined by whom? Certainly not by the crowds who flock to Trump’s rallies or swarm him in the streets of New York. The race is “defined by the courtroom” only for those who seek to elevate the current climate of “lawfare” against a former president as having greater weight than key issues such as inflation and illegal immigration — issues plaguing Americans in their daily lives.
“The scale of the abnormality is so staggering that it can actually become numbing,” concluded the pompous Stephanopoulos.
“The bedrock tenets of our democracy are being tested in a way we haven't seen since the Civil War. It's a test for the candidates, for those of us in the media, and for all of us as citizens,” he said.
These final words are chilling. Stephanopoulos presented a one-sided parade of horribles to describe Trump and then urged his fellow journalists to follow his lead into distortions and demonization of political opponents. None of the rules of fair play and thorough reporting need apply. According to ABC News, the media has a key job in 2024: Attack and demolish Trump.
The mainstream media used to do this kind of task with greater subtlety. Its journalists had mastered the art of pretending to be fair but always tilting the news in favor of Democrats. “This Week” has now lifted the curtain to reveal its fighting tactics.
In so doing, it is not Trump they are destroying but their very own decency and credibility. Welcome to Election 2024: The year ABC News openly embraced the tortured patterns of CNN, MSNBC and The New York Times, and fatally undermined its very existence.
Grace Vuoto, Ph.D, is a WorldTribune columnist. She can be heard Wednesday mornings at 9:00 am on The Kuhner Report WRKO-AM 680.
Free Press International
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