Author Topic: Former ABC Colleagues: Stephanopoulos 'Very Foolish,' 'Really Isn't a Journalist'  (Read 830 times)

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rangerrebew

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Former ABC Colleagues: Stephanopoulos 'Very Foolish,' 'Really Isn't a Journalist'
 
By Randy Hall | May 18, 2015 | 6:20 PM EDT
 
 

The fallout from the revelation that ABC's George Stephanopoulos -- the co-anchor of Good Morning America and host of the Sunday morning This Week program -- donated $75,000 to the foundation run by Hillary Clinton and her family intensified on May 17, when two of his former co-workers hammered him while they were guests on CNN's Reliable Sources show.

The strongest criticism came from Carol Simpson, who indicated that after Stephanopoulos was the communications director for Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign, he served as White House communication director until 1996:


There is a coziness that George cannot escape.

While he did try to separate himself from his political background to become a journalist, he really isn’t a journalist.

Simpson, who anchored the weekend edition of World News Tonight from 1988 to 2003 before leaving ABC News in 2006 to teach journalism at Emerson College in Boston, challenged Stephanopoulos’s claims of impartiality as the 2016 presidential campaign gets underway, including Hillary Clinton’s status as the front runner for the Democratic nomination.

Like Reliable Sources host Brian Smelter and another former ABC News colleague -- Jeff Greenfield -- Simpson said she was “dumbfounded” by the fact that Stephanopoulos failed to disclose his donations even though he conducted a confrontational April 26 interview with Clinton Foundation critic and author of the Clinton Cash book, Peter Schweizer.

Referring to Stephanopoulos, Simpson noted: “I wanted to just take him by the neck and say, ‘George, what were you thinking?’ Clearly, he was not thinking. I thought it was outrageous. And I am sorry that again the public trust in the media is being challenged and frayed because of the actions of some of the top people in the business.”



Simpson added that despite the host's lack of journalistic experience, “ABC has made him the face of ABC News, the chief anchor, and I think they’re really caught in a quandary here.”

“While ABC says this was ‘an honest mistake,’ they don’t feel that way,” she asserted. “Secretly, they are hopping mad, I am sure.”

Despite ABC's official statement of support asserting that the people in the news division “stand behind” Stephanopoulos and he won’t face suspension or other disciplinary action, “George may be in some hot water within ABC,” Simpson said.

Greenfield, another person who moved into journalism from politics after serving as a speechwriter for senator Robert F. Kennedy, also came out swinging.

He speculated that Stephanopoulos might have donated to the Clinton Foundation to repair a frayed relationship with his former employers -- who felt betrayed by his best-selling White House memoir, All Too Human, and by his early prediction on ABC that the Monica Lewinsky scandal could lead to impeachment.

Greenfield added that ABC News might be forced into the decision that Stephanopoulos must recuse himself from covering the 2016 campaign at all.

The ABC News anchor's self-made mess, Greenfield said, is “an indication that very smart people are sometimes very foolish.”

However, facing a rising chorus of criticism for his lapse in judgment, Stephanopoulos dug in his heels and on Sunday repeated word-for-word the same apology as he did on Friday’s edition of Good Morning America, where he is the co-host with Robin Roberts.

Also commenting on the Clinton controversy was Sean Hannity, host of his own weeknight program on the Fox News Channel, who declared: “Once a Clinton liberal hack, always a Clinton liberal hack.”
 
 

In addition, John Nolte, editor-at-large at the Breitbart.com website, asked: “When it comes to the Clintons and money, the question is always the same: What’s the quid pro quo?”

He then asserted:


The idea that George Stephanopoulos, the face of ABC News, donated $75,000 and much of his time to the Clinton Foundation for altruistic reasons is, of course, preposterous.

While Stephanopoulos probably does care about the causes he laid out in his dual apologies on Friday’s Good Morning America and Sunday’s This Week, only a fool would believe the Clinton Foundation was the best way to serve those causes.

“George Stephanopoulos is many things, but he is no fool,” Nolte stated.

“Other than effectively pushing a left-wing, big government agenda, the currency of the D.C. media elite is information and scoops,” he continued.

“That all comes from access,” Nolte added, “and what better way for Stephanopoulos to slither back into the good graces of a likely future president than by doing so through the slush fund of her Foundation?”

The ABC anchor “has always been tainted; now he is exposed,” Nolte concluded.

The dispute is unlikely to go away anytime soon, especially since Schweizer has challenged Stephanopolous to “do another interview on the Sunday morning show so we actually get a chance for viewers to hear what is in the book.”

 


Source URL: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/randy-hall/2015/05/18/former-abc-colleagues-stephanopoulos-very-foolish-really-isnt-journalist
« Last Edit: May 19, 2015, 12:13:56 pm by rangerrebew »

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http://pagesix.com/2015/05/18/george-stephanopoulos-future-and-105m-contract-in-danger/

ABC’s ‘secret’ $105M gamble on Stephanopoulos

By Emily Smith

May 18, 2015 | 9:47pm

ABC has plenty of reasons to be freaking out over the George Stephanopoulos scandal — 105 million, to be exact.

The “Good Morning America” and “This Week” anchor renewed his contract last year for $105 million, TV industry sources told The Post Monday.

The seven-year deal — which dwarfs the five-year, $50 million contract scored by since-suspended NBC rival Brian Williams — was supposed to keep Stephanopoulos in front of ABC’s cameras through 2021.

But now his credibility, and future, have been called into question since he admitted Friday that he had donated $75,000 to the Clinton Foundation since 2011, just as the presidential race gears up with Hillary Rodham Clinton the leading Democrat.

In a mea culpa delivered Sunday on “This Week,” Stephanopoulos, who was also a top aide in President Bill Clinton’s White House, said the gifts “were a matter of public record, but I should have made additional disclosures on air when we covered the foundation.”

It was his second on-air apology in less than a week.

Sources have said ABC News execs were blindsided by Stephanopoulos’ largesse, and one TV insider noted Monday that “ABC really has all their money on Stephanopoulos.”

“ABC was desperate to lock him down after Josh Elliott left,” the source said.

“But network execs didn’t announce the figure because they didn’t want George to get the kind of backlash that Matt Lauer got over his huge NBC contract,” which pays him $20 million a year to host the “Today” show.

“If [Stephanopoulos] stumbles, so does the network,” the source added.

When Stephanopoulos signed his contract extension in April 2014, an ABC spokesman said, “George is vital to the success of the news division and will continue to be a leader here at ABC News. We expect him to remain with us for many, many years.”

Republicans have already said that Stephanopoulos’ donations disqualified him from moderating a GOP primary debate, and a spokesman for one candidate, US Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), went even further on Monday.

“Senator Paul believes that Stephanopoulos’ ties to the Clintons makes it impossible for him to be a fair reporter,” spokesman Sergio Gor said.

“He has avoided being on his program for over a year and will continue to do so.”

Democrats, meanwhile, were going easy on the hobbled host and his cash connections to Hillary Clinton.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who is Hillary Clinton’s only declared primary opponent, told CNN that Stephanopoulos “should have made [his donations] public,” but added that the scandal wasn’t “the biggest deal in the world.”

A spokeswoman for former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, who is flirting with a presidential run, said, “We’ve always found him to be fair.”
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Offline Politics4us

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After his ridiculous question about banning contraceptives in the Republican debate of 2012, shouldn't this have been investigated or shouldn't he have been reprimanded for his bias?

Offline GourmetDan

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Simpson, who anchored the weekend edition of World News Tonight from 1988 to 2003...

Yeah, there's a real fount of journalism and impartiality...

"The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left." - Ecclesiastes 10:2

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