HAVE YOU BEEN LIED TO?™
THE LIE:
ABC News is being fair in its coverage of the impeachment.
WRONG!
This afternoon, ABC News crossed over the line of fairness in their coverage of the impeachment trial of President William Jefferson Clinton. We call on the President of ABC News Mr. David Westin to apologize to the American people and U.S. Senators and
pledge that he will not do it again.
This afternoon, Mr. Charles Ruff began the White House’s defense in the impeachment trial. At the end of the first hour, Mr. Ruff rather abruptly stopped his presentation and motioned to Senator Lott that he had stopped.
The three networks came back after about a fifteen minute break by televising Mr. Ruff’s remarks again. Then, CBS, and NBC went back to their normal daytime programming before Mr. Ruff completed his remarks to the U.S. Senate.
Frankly I, as other Americans, was disturbed last week that the commercial television networks decided to leave their broadcasting of the impeachment trial in the U.S. Senate shortly after the opening remarks of Chairman Hyde. I along with other
Americans believed that the commercial television networks would definitely want to cover this historic event gavel to gavel. Instead they chose not to broadcast the trial gavel to gavel.
However, this afternoon CBS, and NBC discontinued their broadcasting of the impeachment trial the same as they had done while covering the House Managers presentation. That seemed like a fair thing to do.
But, ABC, the American Broadcasting Company owned by Michael Eisner’s Disney did not discontinue their broadcasting of the trial. In fact they went on through the entire opening day presentation of the defense of the President. I believed this to be
unfair at the very least since they only had broadcast about one hour of the House Managers’ opening day presentation.
I called the President of ABC News. I found him in his New York City offices at the phone number of (212)456-7777, I could not acquire an e-mail address. I asked to speak to him and his personal assistant Marina told me that he is in a meeting and that I
could pass along the message to her for him. I communicated my disappointment with Mr. David Westin’s unfair decision to broadcast the entire opening day presentation by the defense while not doing so for the prosecution.
It would appear that they had already had some calls about this issue because she had a prepared statement, Marina immediately told me that they were being fair because they had given both sides their opening remarks. They had given Mr. Ruff his opening
remarks.
Is ABC saying then that the House Managers would have been covered better or at least longer if they had chosen to just have one manager speak all day, the first day? This is ludicrous given that the President’s defense team is small in number compared
to the House Managers team. It would not have been unexpected the Mr. Ruff would have spoken in more than one segment and it is not reasonable to believe that the whole day was his opening remarks. This is especially true when you listen to Mr. Ruff’s
own description of what was going to be discussed that day.
Does ABC take the American public for fools? I guess so, unless we say to them, “We will not be treated this way.”
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© copyright 1999 Citizens For A Better America ® (CFABA.org)
Publisher of the Have You Been Lied To? ™ Flyer
Robert Colaco, National Chairman, Founder.
F.E.C. ID #C00278333
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