Friday, May 15, 2015

Forgetting to disclose

Kudos to the Washington Free Beacon for doing the research to uncover the $75,000 donation made by ABC anchor George Stephanopolis to the Foundation for the Clintons.

Andrew Stiles writes in the Free Beacon,
Conservative commentators, meanwhile, complained about Stephanopoulos’s “aggressively” dismissive questioning, and took issue with a former Clinton operative asking Schweizer, a former speechwriter for George W. Bush, about his “partisan interest” in writing Clinton Cash. Jonathan H. Adler at the Washington Post argued that while there was nothing wrong with Stephanopoulos making note of Schweizer’s ties to Republicans, ABC News viewers should have also been reminded of the host’s connection to the Clintons, the politicians at the center of the discussion.

“If Schweizer’s former funders and employers are relevant to ABC News, George Stephanopoulos’s should be as well,” Adler wrote. “Simple disclosure in the context of a news segment is not too much to ask.”

Stephanopoulos was hit with accusations of bias back in 2012 when, while moderating a Republican primary debate, he somewhat randomly asked Mitt Romney about a decades-old Supreme Court case concerning a state’s right to ban contraception. ABC News is one of several networks chosen to host a Republican primary debate in the 2016 cycle.

Speaking of 2016, kudos also to Utah Senator Mike Lee, who announced that he won’t appear on ABC until Stephanopoulos recuses himself from all 2016 coverage. Here's Alahpundit at Hot Air:
Exit question via Andrew Stiles, who broke this story: What did Stephanopoulos mean when he acknowledged recently that donors to the Clinton Foundation typically expect something in return for their donations? Has Steph, perchance, heard from anyone at Team Hillary about a White House job if and when she’s elected? He must have a good reason to have risked whatever credibility he’d earned over the years as an “impartial” political reporter by insisting on grilling Peter Schweizer himself rather than farming out that assignment to someone who didn’t have a conflict of interest.

Actually, here’s a better exit question: How many other members of the media have donated to the Slush Fund Foundation and “forgotten” to disclose?

Oh, by the way: Turns out Stephanopoulos gave $75,000 to the Clinton Foundation, not $50,000 as was earlier reported, and his donations stretch back three years. That’s a long time to “forget” disclosure.

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