ABC’s Diane Sawyer spent a solid four minutes of her interview with President Barack Obama, as excerpted at the top of Wednesday’s World News, channeling liberal angst over Obama’s debate performance – and that’s before she allocated more than a minute to cuing up Obama to denounce a Mitt Romney comment on abortion. She prompted Obama with a harsh assessment of Romney: “Is it a lie?”
“Libya” was not even uttered in the Sawyer-Obama segment. Viewers had to wait until the next story, by Jake Tapper, on the House hearing which laid out the administration’s dissembling on what happened in Libya when Ambassador Chris Stevens was murdered. Then viewers got 20 seconds -- more than half of that consumed by Obama’s defense and assurance he’ll “fix” anything that wasn’t done properly.
Tapper: “Diane Sawyer asked the President about the White House’s initial claims that the incident began with a protest against that anti-Muslim video.”
Obama replied: “As information came in, information was put out. The information may have not have always been right the first time. [edit jump] Look, Diane, these are people I know. And if there’s something to be fixed, it’ll get fixed.”
20 seconds versus four minutes means ABC devoted 12 times more time to fretting about how Obama did at the debate than Obama administration efforts to suppress how the attack in Libya was by terrorists and not over-enthused protesters upset about a YouTube video.
More in the cross-post on the MRC's NewsBusters blog.