ABC's Anti Bush Correspondents Did It

Wednesday California Yankee posted "There Is No Depth To Which They Won't Stoop" about ABC's morbid solicitation of "military funerals for Iraq war casualties scheduled for Thursday, Jan. 20," to be used in ABC's coverage of President Bush's inauguration.

I assumed that ABC had pulled the solicitation because the blogosphere had discovered the despicable solicitation and some grown up at ABC realized the solicitation exceeded all bounds of decency. I was wrong.

Powerline's Hindrocket reports that ABC pulled its solicitation not because of some shameful realization that the funeral solicitation was in such poor taste, but because ABC found a funeral and had the audacity to show about 30 seconds of tape of it during World News Tonight on Thursday. The video was shown after a segment about inaugural protesters and after a segment in which correspondents Terry Moran, Fareed Zakaria, and George Stephanopoulos did a hatchet job on President Bush's great inaugural adress:

Funeral for Marine Reservist

PETER JENNINGS: And in Rockport, Texas, today – just about the time the president was speaking – there was a funeral for a young Marine reservist. Twenty-one-year-old Matthew Holloway was killed in Iraq last week by a roadside bomb.

His brother told a local paper that as much as Matthew wanted to be home, he was very proud of what he was doing in Iraq. And it is something you hear from so many people in the services, including the 10,000 who have already been wounded.

Mudville Gazette has posted a transcript of the broadcast.

This is the most vile, disgusting and unbelievable example of biased media I have ever seen. ABC didn't report the news they reported the views of Anti Bush Correspondents.

There is indeed no depth to which ABC won't stoop. ABC's blatant bias against President Bush makes the network about as reliable a source for news as CBS after Rathergate. Perhaps ABC News is only after the anti-Bush audience. If so, I wonder if ABC's sponsors understand that.

UPDATE: Blogosphere Reaction:

Pajama Hadin posts we can still call this for what it is and spread the word that ABC in this act has engaged in shameless and sinister exploitation.

At Sasha Castel, Alan K. Henderson posts that if he were in charge of ABC's news division, he would have sent film crews to cemeteries to get live footage of the tombstones of people who voted for Christine Gregoire as she is sworn in.

Isaac Schrödinger posts that ABC's coverage the inauguration was sleazy.

Carpe Bonum posts that ABC completely ignored the Society of Professional Jounalists Code of Ethics in its disgusting search for and use of a service member's funeral as a counterpoint to President Bush's inaugural.

At Notes & Musings, Jeff posts that ABC's coverage of the funeral was in poor taste, no matter how you voted in November.

Strange Women Lying in Ponds posts that ABC took a page right out of the Michael Moore playbook, creating news by clever juxtaposition.

At Summa Minutiae, Bill White calls ABC's so-called reporting a curious blend of pablum and dim-witted propaganda.

Victory Soap posts that the media keeps getting slapped in the face with the fact that their viewing audience's appetite for being emotionally manipulated in the cheapest, crassest way is not exactly bottomless, but they don't seem to ever learn.

Comments

[Fred Kelly]

Bush is an ignorant, egotistical, wealthy, spoiled, murdering dictator. Why would anyone vote for this asshole if they weren't one of the fat cats?
May he burn in Hell for eternity.
Yeah, let's all listen to Fox because we're too stupid to recognize the truth.
You redneck assholes make me want to vomit.

[Willow]

Boycot all the Networks but Fox. Murdoch's the man!!!!

[Maggie]

OK folks, it's ABC time ... Jennings is the next biased dinosaur that needs to go!