Considering that ABC's World News Tonight failed to cover the midterm elections from September 1 to October 26, one might think the network isn't interested in a possible Republican wave. ABC journalists are reinforcing that belief by promoting election night coverage: Seven hours of coverage. But six of those hours will be online only.
Despite this, George Stephanopoulos hyped on Monday's Good Morning America: "We're covering this election more deeply than ever before." [MP3 audio here [1].] He spun, "We have something new tomorrow night for election night. Our whole team's gonna be here for seven hours of breaking news across all our platforms, including a primetime special at 10 p.m. right here on ABC."
On Sunday's World News Cecila Vega similarly touted, "ABC News's election night coverage begins at 7pm on Tuesday with seven hours of live streaming on ABCNews.com and a one hour special, Your Voice, Your Vote broadcast at 10pm eastern."
In other words, six hours that almost no one will see and one hour on the actual network.
On October 27 [2], after almost two months of ignoring the midterms, World News anchor David Muir noticed them and reminded: "The countdown is on, this evening, to the midterm elections tonight. Your voice, your vote. Just eight days to go before this election. The stakes? Enormous."
ABC's response to numerous embarrassments for the Democrats and Obama has been to simply ignore them. On June 19, 2014 Nightline reached 400 days [3] since the program covered the IRS scandal. As of April 3, 2014, it had been 140 days [4] since the show reported on ObamaCare.
On May 20, 2014 [5], rather than report on the latest in the Veterans Affairs scandal, GMA devoted 12 minutes to strippers, models and TV shows.
If Republicans have a good night on Tuesday, interested Americans should either plan on sitting in front of their computer for six of seven hours or they should find another network.
— Scott Whitlock is Senior News Analyst at the Media Research Center. Follow Scott Whitlock on Twitter. [6]