Stephanopoulos Hosting Town Hall for Hillary on ABC

http://liberalvaluesblog.com/?p=3223

Stephanopoulos Remains a Loyal Clintonista

May 1st, 2008 by Ron Chusid

ABC apparently does not care about journalistic integrity anymore. The C in ABC must stand for Clinton, and unfortunately it doesn’t mean Anyone But Clinton. After hosting what was very likely the worst debate of all time in Pennsylvania, George Stephanopoulos has found an even more blatant way to whore for Hillary. He’s hosting a Town Hall for Clinton on This Week. Having Stephanopoulos hosting might even save Clinton the trouble of having to plant questions for this one, although she might not want to break from standard operating procedure.

he just can't seem to remain neutral or unbiased. He is a poor choice for anyone to watch on Sunday's any longer.

The following update was added to the post

Update: The Clinton apologists are claiming that there’s no problem here because Obama was invited to attend. First of all, such a last minute invitation is not very helpful as Obama’s schedule is undoubtedly pretty tight at this point making it difficult if not impossible to add on such an event if he wanted to.

More seriously, this totally misses the point. The problem is that there is a conflict of interest with George Stephanopoulos hosting such an event. It becomes more a televised Clinton campaign event than a legitimate news show. ABC should not allow this to air. This would be like Tony Snow hosting a Town Hall for John McCain a few days before the election, and then extending the Democratic nominee a last minute invitation. (The analogy would be even better if Bush was the Republican nominee but fortunately that cannot happen again.)

Hillary Clinton has already demonstrated that she prefers Bush-style manipulation of the news as opposed to answering real questions, including the use of planted questions. Having Stephanopoulos as host for such an event takes the sham to an even higher level. Clinton has also concentrated her campaign on poorly educated, low-information voters. She utilizes Rove-style attacks rather than campaigning on substance. When she does make an act of speaking on issues she resorts to ridiculous proposals which attract the interest of her uninformed supporters but which do not hold up to scrutiny such as with her support of the gas tax holiday and her proposals for the mortgage crisis. After Stephanopoulos' conduct in the Pennsylvania debate, I bet he will only act to facilitate such strategies.