ABC Gives More Time to Clinton Health Conspiracy and Trump Than Charity Scandal

Nicholas Fondacaro | August 23, 2016
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News broke Tuesday via the Associated Press that, “At least 85 of 154 people from private interests who met or had phone conversations scheduled with Clinton while she led the State Department donated to her family charity or pledged commitments to its international programs.” But that didn’t seem important enough for ABC who only gave the story a total of one minute, 44 seconds between two segments, while giving the conspiracy theory about Clinton’s health two minutes, 43 seconds that same evening.

ABC correspondent Jon Karl discussed the Clinton Foundation scandal during his report, but it was talked about as a new line of attack for her rival Donald Trump. “Opening up a sharp new line of attack, Donald Trump is now calling for a special prosecutor to investigate Hillary Clinton's dealings with Clinton Foundation donors while she was Secretary of State,” Karl led off, “She met with 85 donors who gave a combined $156 million to the foundation.”

In comparison, ABC’s David Wright’s report played along with Clinton and made light of the talk about her health. “On Jimmy Kimmel, Hillary Clinton laughs off Donald Trump's attacks on her health,” Wright reported while playing clips from Jimmy Kimmel Live, “Clinton dismisses it all as conspiracy theories.” Although, he did dive into a little bit of Clinton’s known medical history:

It notes that in 2012, Clinton did suffer a concussion after fainting. Weeks later, she claimed to have fully recovered but reporters noticed she wore special glasses. Her aides then explained they were for “lingers issues stemming from the concussion.”

Also in Karl’s report was a one minute 38 second bit on Donald Trump’s flip-flop on immigration. “But now Trump is fielding tough questions on whether he is softening his hard line stance on immigration,” Karl stated, “And backing away from his pledge to deport all of the undocumented immigrants living in the United States.”

The network seemed to be doing everything in their power to talk about other things in the political arena that had little to do with the Clinton Foundation. This is something Media Research Center has noted I the past about coverage of CLinton. For instance when CBS’s Nancy Cordes admitted that Trump made it easy for the media to talk about other things besides Clinton’s many scandals. 

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