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Alexandria, VA - Kerry Smith, ABC's "Senior Vice President for Editorial Quality," has in an open letter responded to MRC President Brent Bozell's call to publicly address and resolve the apparent breach of ethics of its Chief White House Correspondent George Stephanopoulos. But while Ms. Smith succeeds in delivering distortions and hurling false allegations at Bozell and the MRC, she fails to at all address the journalistic problems reported in the original Politico story.
On January 27th, the Politico reported that Mr. Stephanopoulos participates in daily strategy phone calls with now White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel as well as with key Democratic strategists James Carville and Paul Begala. And has been doing so for seventeen years. Nowhere in her letter does Ms. Smith deny any of these facts.
Ms. Smith does charge Mr. Bozell with a "willful and knowing distortion" of the facts without offering any evidence to back it up. She also falsely claims that ABC repeatedly reached out to Mr. Bozell to set the record straight. But in fact, when offered the opportunity to speak with Bozell Jeffrey Schneider, ABC's Senior Vice President of Corporate Communications, said "the last thing I want to do is get up in Brent Bozell's hornet's nest about this."
Read Brent Bozell response to ABC's Smith here. [2]
Links to previous Press Releases regarding ABC and Stephanopoulos.
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February 04, 2009 [3]
Bozell to ABC President: You Must Publicly Address Stephanopoulos' Apparent Conflict of Interest - Brent Bozell's Letter to ABC News President David Westin [4]
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January 29, 2009 [5]
Bozell: ABC's Stephanopolous Must Recuse Himself From Any Reporting Involving The Obama Administration
To schedule an interview with MRC President Brent Bozell or another MRC spokesperson, please contact Tim Scheiderer (x. 126) or Colleen O'Boyle (x. 122) at (703) 683-5004.