Misinformer of the year
Media Matters has named ABC Misinformer of the Year.
Can't think of any obvious choices; it's not like any Washington state media outlet actively donated to right-wing campaigns or engaged in blatantly biased coverage of any race. Editorial boards in this state are beyond reproach.
It's hard to write good editorials that contradict everything you ever wrote in the past, and it's doubly hard to get away with being biased "moderators" of debates in front of all those television cameras. It's triple-doubly hard to ignore the fact that your chosen candidate refused to answer a question on your own pet issue. Somehow, though, it was done, and anyone who brings it up is just engaging in "sour grapes." So I'm not bringing it up, that wouldn't be nice during the holidays.
OK, scratch the state/local version of this award idea. It's no contest.
This year saw ABC air The Path to 9/11, a two-part miniseries that placed the blame for the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the Clinton administration and whitewashed some of the Bush administration's failures leading up to the attacks. Additionally, the network's news coverage frequently reported Republican spin as fact, passed on falsehoods propagated by conservatives, and missed numerous opportunities to challenge or question the administration's actions during solo interviews with Bush and key members of his administration.Maybe we need a state/local version of this award?
These examples, and many more, earned ABC the distinction of being named Media Matters' Misinformer of the Year for 2006. The selection of an entire network for the honor represents a change from previous years, when individual media figures -- Fox News' Bill O'Reilly in 2004 and MSNBC's Chris Matthews in 2005 -- received the award. But a look at some of its most flagrant examples of conservative misinformation confirms that ABC won the Misinformer of the Year the old-fashioned way: The network earned it.
Can't think of any obvious choices; it's not like any Washington state media outlet actively donated to right-wing campaigns or engaged in blatantly biased coverage of any race. Editorial boards in this state are beyond reproach.
It's hard to write good editorials that contradict everything you ever wrote in the past, and it's doubly hard to get away with being biased "moderators" of debates in front of all those television cameras. It's triple-doubly hard to ignore the fact that your chosen candidate refused to answer a question on your own pet issue. Somehow, though, it was done, and anyone who brings it up is just engaging in "sour grapes." So I'm not bringing it up, that wouldn't be nice during the holidays.
OK, scratch the state/local version of this award idea. It's no contest.
