Nothing to See Here: ABC Totally Skips Any Mention of Obamacare's Bad Day in Court
The Obama administration suffered another bad day
in the Supreme Court, Wednesday, leading many to wonder if all of the
President's health care law will be entirely scrapped. ABC's Good Morning America on Thursday responded to this with silence, totally ignoring the story.
GMA co-host George Stephanopoulos on Wednesday referred to the case as "historic," but apparently lost interest a day later.
The other two morning shows, Today and CBS This Morning, each offered one report. In total, over eight hours of possible broadcast time, the three networks allowed a scant four minutes and 19 seconds. GMA, however, still managed to squeeze in a piece on an elderly Texas grandmother who is mad at Justin Bieber.
On
CBS, Jan Crawford conceded that those who, at the beginning of the
week, saw the law as safe, were just engaging in "wishful thinking."
She bluntly explained, "...It does appear, right now anyway, that there
is a majority who's going to strike down not only that requirement that
we all buy health insurance, but, perhaps, the entire law."
Crawford actually used ideological labels, adding, "Liberal justices,
like Ruth Bader Ginsburg, pushed to save the rest of the massive health
care law."
Today reporter Pete Williams sounded a similarly gloomy note
for liberals: "The future of that health care law is in doubt this
morning. Judging by their comments, a bare majority of the justices seem
to think that most of it should be struck down, including its central
requirement that all Americans get health insurance."
NBC and CBS at least acknowledged reality (unlike ABC's morning show):
Obamacare is in serious trouble and could be doomed.
It's striking that
such a "historic" court case– and a potential massive defeat for Obama–
would only warrant four minutes of coverage.
A transcript of the March 29 CBS This Morning segment, which aired at 7:08am EDT, follows:
JAN
CRAWFORD: Well, good morning, Erica. It does appear at the end of this
historic three days of arguments that the justices are inclined to
strike down the key part of this law, the requirement that all Americans
buy health insurance. And yesterday in that courtroom, justice Stephen
Breyer showed just what that could mean. And he did just as he held up
this section that says, this is the section that requires us to buy
health insurance. And this is the rest of this massive law. If we strike
down this, what are we going to do about the rest of it? The arguments
Wednesday showed what was at stake, not just the requirement to buy
health care but the entire health care law. The conservatives and
moderate swing justice Anthony Kennedy suggested if the mandate was
gone, the whole thing should be scrapped.
