Topic: WorldNetDaily
A Feb. 6 WorldNetDaily article by Drew Zahn uncritically repeats claims by Brent Bozell and the Media Research Center that "ABC's George Stephanopoulos conducts a teleconference each morning with Democratic strategists," but it ignores the bigger scandal: that ABC accused the MRC of burying ABC's response to a MRC subsidiary answering questions about the issue so that Bozell could claim that ABC refused to respond.
While Zahn cited a letter to Bozell by Kerry Smith, senior vice president of editorial quality at ABC News, and provides an opportunity for Bozell to respond to selected claims raised by Smith, there's no mention of the serious claim Smith makes:
Furthermore, last Friday, a reporter from CNS News, which was founded by you and continues to be directly affiliated with the MRC, contacted our media relations staff for a piece he'd been assigned to write on this very topic. We cooperated immediately and provided him an on the record response. We have since learned from your reporter that his story was killed.
As we've noted, this raises the question of whether the CNS story was killed so that Bozell could claim that ABC refused to respond -- an accusation the MRC has failed to acknowledge, let alone respond to, on its website or anywhere else.
Wouldn't Bozell and the MRC want to defend their honor in the face of such an accusation if they felt that it was wrong? Yet it has been silent -- and WND's Zahn allowed them to continue their silence.
Regarding Bozell's original assertion that "ABC News must address this publicly and comprehensively": That now applies to Bozell and the accusation that his organization killed a story in order to perpetuate a false attack.
