TJ Walker (The Habit Influencer) discusses the controversy over ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos donating $75,000 to the Clinton Foundation, summarizes contextual facts (many people and organizations across the political spectrum give to the foundation), analyzes the political backlash from conservative groups, and offers a tentative prediction (about 55% chance Stephanopoulos keeps his job).
Chapters
George Stephanopoulos facing the crisis of his career. Revelations that ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos donated $75,000 to the Clinton foundation has some people a bit miffed. They feel like he should have revealed this. This shows bias. Members of the conservative political establishment feel like this is once again an egregious example of liberal media bias, where liberals leave government and campaigns go right into the big media to promote the same causes and be unfair towards Republicans. And some, such as Senator Rand Paul, have said, this is why I don't do interviews with George Stephanopoulos. Will he be able to survive this? Now, here are the facts. An awful lot of people give to the Clinton Foundation. Not just liberals, not just Democrats, but Rupert Murdoch's company. You know, the guy who owns Fox News, he gives to the Clinton Foundation. Also Newsmax, very right wing organization. In fact, you'd be hard pressed to find anybody who's ever appeared on Charlie Rose or met Charlie Rose who hasn't given to the Clinton initiative. Say this whatever you will about the Clintons. They're great at fundraising and they're great at charming people. Now, a couple of other things you need to know about Stephanopoulos. I mean, he's in the company of a lot of conservatives who've given money to the Clinton Foundation. There's all the criticism that, well, he's a news anchor. And people seem to forget that Diane Sawyer was a PR person and a media person for Richard Nixon. Pete Williams was the chief spokesperson for George H.W. bush's Pentagon and went on to be a network reporter for NBC and still is. So this isn't exactly unprecedented, I think, by the facts, especially when you look at how Stephanopoulos is reported. There's not a lot of bias there. Now, I'm not a huge George Stephanopoulos fan. I'm not really bothered by anything I've ever heard him say. I've never heard him say anything particularly interesting or ideological. And that's why I would say based on the facts, he's likely not to lose his job. However, these things are not based on the facts. There's a political context and overlay to all this. And here's the politics of it. A lot of conservative Republicans, as I mentioned, hate the media. They think the media is biased in favor of liberals and against Republicans. That's number one. Number two, a lot of conservatives are energized by the fact that they just got Brian Williams scalp. They were able to get rid of some prominent multimillion dollar figure in the media. The liberal media establishment in their view, and I think that's emboldened them. Number three, there are scores and scores of nonprofit organizations on the conservative side where their entire premise that allows them to raise hundreds of millions of dollars collectively is about going after liberal media bias. So this is a perfect case for them to justify their existence to their funders. So I think Stephanopoulos is about to undergo an extreme, extreme couple of months of scrutiny. Everything he's ever said, if someone finds out he gave even a $10 donation to some Democratic City council person running for office in some small town in West Virginia, that could be all that it takes to push George Stephanopoulos out of ABC News. Now, I'm not going so far as to predict that yet. If you put a gun to my head and said you've got to make a prediction, I would say 55% he gets to keep his job, 45% he's gone. Now, that's obviously not the most courageous prognostication. I think it really comes down to what else is discovered. Here's the thing. I know an awful lot of conservatives who complain about liberal media bias in reporting very specifically for the last 25 years. I've never actually heard one pick apart something Stephanopoulos has said. Stephanopoulos has been very careful, crafty, clever to work his way up the media hierarchy. And I think he does it by realizing there's three main rules to success in television broadcast news. Number one, don't offend anybody. Number two, show up with great hair every day. Number three, show up on time and smile. He's done those three things. Well, I don't mean to sound like I'm just horribly trashing him, but that's so much of what network news is about. He's done that. Well. Will he still have that job two months from now? As I say, I'm putting it about 55, 45. What do you think? Post your comments.
