On Friday morning, ABC’s Good Morning America aired a news brief that described state voter identification laws struck down in Texas and Wisconsin as “restrictive” and passed on the opinion of the judge who put Texas’s law on hold as being “a poll tax designed to keep minorities from voting.”
During the 7:00 a.m. hour, newsreader Amy Robach offered the following news brief: "Back in this country, restrictive new voter ID laws are on hold in Wisconsin and Texas this morning, just weeks before Election Day. A federal judge overturned it the Texas Law, comparing it to a poll tax designed to keep minorities from voting and overnight, the Supreme Court delayed implementation of Wisconsin’s voter I.D. law." [MP3 audio here [1]; Video below]
Mark this off as another rare example of ABC reporting on anything related to the upcoming midterm elections. When they have covering politics, however, the network has spent no time talking about Republican chances of winning [2] Senate control, how more Americans trust Republicans over Democrats [3] on the economy and ISIS, or President Obama’s unpopularity on the campaign trail [4].
Instead, ABC has recently resorted to promoting [5] former American Idol star Clay Aiken’s long-shot bid for a Congressional seat in North Carolina (as a Democrat) or reporting on Virginia’s congressional map was ruled unconstitutional because of a African-American majority in the Third District (despite being ordered [6] to be created as such by a Justice Department order in 1992, as The Washington Post noted [6]).
If the roles were reversed, with Democrats poised to seize control of Congress with a Republican president (as was the case in 2006), one would be hard pressed to say ABC would not be having stories about the elections on both their morning and evening newscasts.
The full transcript of the news brief that aired on ABC’s Good Morning America on October 10 can be found below.
ABC’s Good Morning America
October 10, 2014
7:08 a.m. Eastern
[ON-SCREEN HEADLINE CAPTION: Voter ID Laws]
AMY ROBACH: Back in this country, restrictive new voter I.D. laws are on hold in Wisconsin and Texas this morning, just weeks before Election Day.
[ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: Breaking Overnight: Voter ID Laws Rejected; Courts Strike Down Texas, Wisconsin Laws]
A federal judge overturned it the Texas Law, comparing it to a poll tax designed to keep minorities from voting and overnight, the Supreme Court delayed implementation of Wisconsin’s voter I.D. law.
— Curtis Houck is News Analyst at the Media Research Center. Follow Curtis Houck on Twitter. [7]