The scandals that derailed the career of NBC News anchor Brian Williams are of the pathetic and pathological kind. Obviously, Williams is not to be trusted. Nevertheless, other than the Katrina fairytales that were obviously meant to damage President Bush, all of his lies were self-aggrandizing resume-enhancers. What ABC News and their chief political correspondent George Stephanopoulos are guilty of makes Williams and NBC News look like freshly-scrubbed Eagle Scouts.
With his $50,000 donation to the Clinton Foundation, and the decision not to reveal that donation to their viewers while reporting on various Clinton Foundation scandals, George Stephanopoulos and ABC News not only have a very personal conflict-of-interest with what is now the biggest story in the 2016 presidential race, they actively covered it up.
Without once informing its viewers that their anchorman’s personal $50,000 investment in the Clinton Foundation, ABC News serially-trotted Stephanopoulos out as an objective, unbiased reporter and analyst on the subject.
Worse still…
And after being caught, just like a sleazy and corrupt politician, ABC News ran to the left-wing Politico to dishonestly make it look as though they were being pro-active. Despite Politico agreeing to play along with dishonest headlines like this, ABC News and Stephanopoulos did not come forward to “disclose” his contribution. He and ABC News were caught by the Washington Free Beacon, and only then ran to a Politico that was obviously willing to play along. .
There is just no question that if Stephanopoulos and ABC News had taken a few seconds to disclose the donation, this would have undercut the effectiveness of their anchor man’s vigorous defense of the Clinton Foundation — which came off as bizarre, desperate, and biased late last month, even before we knew about the $50,000 donation.
How deep in bed is ABC with the Clintons? ABC is the same network that not only edited its own “Path to 9/11” miniseries to protect the Clintons; ABC has since memory-holed the miniseries. Rather than make money with a DVD release or a re-broadcast, ABC decided instead to protect the Clintons by deep-sixing a miniseries critical of Bill Clinton.
How are we supposed to begin to trust an anchorman and news outlet that would cover up such a massive conflict of interest until they were caught — and then engage in Clintonian spin after being caught?
For all its sins, at the very least NBC News stood up and took the appropriate action with Brian Williams.
John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC
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