Monday night’s edition of ABC World News delivered a double dose of
advocacy as Diane Sawyer and her team essentially served as a mouthpiece
for President Obama’s position on the government shutdown and his
health care law.
Sawyer led the broadcast with the government shutdown,
which was then only a few hours away. She stated President Obama’s
perspective on the matter: “The President expressed outrage that
one faction in one house of Congress is ready to bring the entire
federal government to a halt.” But rather than follow that up
with a Republican viewpoint, Sawyer threw to chief White House
correspondent Jonathan Karl for a report on the shutdown. He began his
package by playing a clip of Obama warning us all about the economic
impact of a shutdown. [MP3 audio here [1].]
Karl then made sure to parrot the president’s position, just as Sawyer had done: “[President Obama] placed the blame entirely on conservative Republicans in the House who are demanding an end to Obamacare.” This was followed by the Obama sound bite that Sawyer had alluded to earlier.
At this point, there was still no mention of a Republican perspective.
Karl summed up the bickering like this: “It's Washington dysfunction at
its absolute worst: unreasonable demands, no negotiating, and lots of
name calling.” At that point, Karl played a succession of three brief
snippets of Democratic accusations against Republicans, while failing to
show any Republicans accusing Democrats of anything.
Karl gave one nod to the Republican viewpoint near the end of his
report, but it was far from flattering: “House Republicans, who have
already voted 46 times to repeal all or parts of Obamacare, are still
insisting that they won't fund the government, even temporarily, without
at least some change to the law.” He at least played a sound bite from
John Boehner, the only GOP sound bite in the report.
Minutes later, Sawyer introduced a segment on the president’s “historic” health care law: “[T]he
president says he will not stop that other historic event about to take
place tonight at midnight -- Obamacare. For the first time in the
country, every American expected to have health insurance, 50 million
uninsured will be able to start shopping tomorrow.”
This was followed by a report from Paula Faris that featured several
candid clips of ordinary Americans who were supposedly eager for
ObamaCare’s arrival. These ordinary people all had questions and/or
concerns, and Faris was there to play sales representative on the
government’s behalf:
"Starting at midnight you can go on this website, Healthcare.gov, where you'll be able to shop around, compare plans and buy. Everyone regardless of age, gender, income or pre-existing condition will be able to get insurance."
Faris promised that ABC News would be there for all the people who had questions or concerns about ObamaCare:
"[T]omorrow we'll be tracking the process for these folks, walking them through it. Diane will be telling them exactly what questions they should be asking and just really helping them understand who they can trust throughout this process."