ABC News Should Be Ashamed

The underhanded way ABC rolled out a controversial news story about one of its anchors today is disgraceful.

As Michael Walsh reported this morning, ABC News chief anchor George Stephanopoulos gave $50,000 in undisclosed charitable contributions to the Clinton Foundation in recent years. While the contributions were publicly available information, the host had not disclosed the conflict of interest to ABC viewers — until he was caught by Andrew Stiles of the Washington Free Beacon.

Stiles asked ABC for a comment, and while they were waiting for a reply, ABC leaked the story to Dylan Byers of Politico, who titled his story “George Stephanopoulos discloses $50,000 contribution to Clinton Foundation” (as if the idea to disclose was all Stephanopoulos’s).

WFB reported:

Stephanopoulos, a former aide to President Bill Clinton, confirmed the donation to POLITICO’s Dylan Byers after the Free Beacon contacted ABC News for comment. The host, who acknowledged making two donations of $25,000 between 2013 and 2014, issued a statement of apology for failing to disclose his contributions.

A half an hour after Politico’s story ran, ABC News sent a statement  to the Washington Free Beacon.

Tweets via Twitchy:

.@AndrewStilesUSA spotted the donation yesterday. I told him to ask @ABC for comment. They said they’d give a statement—to @DylanByers!

— Matthew Continetti (@continetti) May 14, 2015

.@GStephanopoulos office leaked this to Politico after I asked them for comment. https://t.co/jBEZVxpT06

— Andrew Stiles (@AndrewStilesUSA) May 14, 2015

By “discloses” you mean “was busted by Free Beacon and tried to get ahead of the scandal,” right? https://t.co/PUQipVNoLj

— Instapundit.com (@instapundit) May 14, 2015

Here is the story that would have broken the George Stephanopolous donation if @ABC had any sense of decency: http://t.co/S8zDBhfVXL

— Matthew Continetti (@continetti) May 14, 2015

Disgraceful, but unfortunately par-for-the-course behavior from the media these days. If you were wondering what MSM coverage of Hillary Rodham Clinton will look like in 2016 (if she gets that far) this little episode should give you a pretty good idea.