Media critics are calling on George Stephanopoulos, who anchors ABC News’s “This Week” and “Good Morning America,” to recuse himself from covering the 2016 presidential race, saying that his credibility on the subject is shot.
Stephanopoulos fell under scrutiny Thursday when it was reported that he did not disclose to his viewers that he has donated $75,000 to Hillary and Bill Clinton’s nonprofit Clinton Foundation.
Hillary Clinton is a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, and Stephanopoulos served as a top adviser under Bill Clinton when he was president.
“The donation corrodes much of the journalistic credibility Stephanopoulos has labored so carefully to build since joining ABC News as a correspondent and analyst in December 1996,” wrote longtime media critic Jack Shafer at Politico on Thursday. He said Stephanopoulos “torched the journalism-cred he has acquired in the past two decades.”
At the Washington Post, media blogger Erik Wemple rhetorically asked if Stephanopoulos has the “bona fides” to cover the Clintons any longer. “Nah,” he said.
Veteran media reporter and critic Howard Kurtz, a host on Fox News, said the “blunder” by Stephanopoulos “threatens to undo what he’s accomplished in his 18 years at ABC News.”
The Clinton Foundation recently came under separate fire after the controversial book Clinton Cash suggested that the nonprofit acts as a type of slush fund for the Clintons to increase their wealth and that Hillary, while serving as secretary of state, may have traded favors to foreign entities in return for donations.
Stephanopoulos delivered an on-air apology to viewers on Friday for his donations, saying, “Even though I made them strictly to support work done to stop the spread of AIDS, help children and protect the environment in poor countries, I should have gone the extra mile to avoid even the appearance of a conflict.” He said he now believes the donations were “a mistake.”
He said he would not moderate his network’s Republican presidential primary debate in February but that he would continue covering the race otherwise.
Stephanopoulos’ critics said that would be inappropriate. “Stephanopoulos now has zero credibility on politics,” wrote longtime Baltimore Sun media critic David Zurawik on Friday. “As a TV journalist and political analyst, Stephanopolous is dead to me — worse than dead to me, in fact, for all the years I gave him the benefit on the doubt that he wasn’t a hopeless ideologue and Clinton devotee.”
Brent Bozell, president of the conservative Media Research Center, said Stephanopoulos should pull out of all 2016 campaign coverage. “Stephanopoulos’ contributions to the Clinton Foundation and his close association with the Clintons make him unfit to the play the important role of an impartial, balanced and fair news anchorman on any ABC’s political based programming involving the 2016 election,” he said.
Media Matters for America, the liberal counterpart to Bozell and a regular defender of the Clintons, has not covered the issue.
Some Republicans also have been intensely critical of Stephanopoulos. Conn Carroll, communications director for Republican Utah Sen. Mike Lee, tweeted Thursday that he wouldn’t be placing Lee on ABC News programming until Stephanopoulos recused himself. And Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, a Republican presidential candidate, said on Thursday that he hasn’t done any recent interviews with Stephanopoulos because he’s “too close to the Clintons to really give an objective interview.”
