GMA Highlights Hillary's Call for Gonzales Resignation, Buries Clinton History of Firings

If ABC was going to provide a platform for presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to express her moral outrage over the firings of the eight US Attorneys and call for AG Gonzales' resignation, didn't the network have an obligation to let viewers know that her husband's administration had itself peremptorily fired more than ten times that many US attorneys -- and that a close personal associate of Hillary's was intimately involved?

Senior national correspondent Jake Tapper scored the exclusive with Hillary. In the excerpts aired, Hillary in high dudgeon declared that "the Attorney General, who still seems to confuse his prior role as the president's personal attorney with his duty to the system of justice and to the entire country, should resign."

Continued Hillary: "There's evidence of political interference and pressure being put on them to engage in partisan political activities."

Demanded Hillary: "The president needs to be very forthcoming. What did he say, what did he know, what did he ask people to do? Karl Rove is clearly in the middle of this. I think he owes the Congress and the country an explanation."

In an immediately following interview, former Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos grilled AG Gonzales, confronting him with Hillary's call for his resignation and offering his personal opinion that "it really does appear here at least that you were singling out prosecutors who weren't with the program."

But at no time during either of the segments were viewers told that when the Clinton administration took over in 1993, it fired all 93 sitting US attorneys. Tapper did raise the issue during the course of his interview with Hillary. But that portion of the interview was not aired. It was relegated instead to the ABC News website, where it would be viewed by a tiny fraction of the millions who watched Good Morning America.

Here is the exchange as appearing on the website:
But as the Wall Street Journal had documented in an editorial this morning, The Hubbell Standard, it is simply untrue that "everybody did it" as Hillary suggests. Writes the WSJ:



That Hillary's hike to the moral high ground is very much a part of her presidential campaign is evidenced by the mass email she circulated within hours of the airing of her GMA interview inviting people to sign her petition calling on AG Gonzales to resign . . . and also soliciting contributions.

ABC could, and should, have given viewers the full picture.

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Mark Finkelstein
Mark Finkelstein is a contributing editor for NewsBusters.