abc memo

[kenwoodallpromos]

This is the same Mark Halperin earlier R.E. Dean:
"We failed twice with Dean," Mark Halperin, political director of ABC News, said of the news media. "Dean was able to rise in standing without being held to a high enough standard of scrutiny for months."
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I guess he wants to smash any Kerry competition.

[kenwoodallpromos]

the parties are not on equal footing for a variety of historical and cultural reasons on national security.

I think the question is: Is it an automatic advantage that George Bush has and will take into this election--it may not determine the outcome--but that he will have, or can the Democratic nominee, [Senator] John Edwards [of North Carolina] or [Senator] John Kerry [of Massachusetts], actually undo that advantage, despite 9/11, despite the president's bond with the American people on it? And I think it'll be hard to do. Bill Clinton was able to do it, because the Cold War had ended. And I think the conditions that exist do not permeate society as much as the Cold War did. There is no question in my mind about that. And if you live in Washington or New York, I think it's hard to understand how much less--how much differently and to some extent less--people in the rest of the country think about 9/11 and think about the responsibilities of the commander in chief. So it's not exactly the same as the Cold War, but it certainly is an advantage that the president continues to enjoy, and I'm skeptical that the Democrats can undermine.

[kenwoodallpromos]

Halperin is the libs' buddy:
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ABC’s Helpful Democratic Event

by L. Brent Bozell III
May 6, 2003

George Stephanopoulos and Mark Halperin are soulmates. In 1992, according to Tom Rosenstiel’s inside-ABC book "Strange Bedfellows," it was ABC producer Halperin who helpfully handed Stephanopoulos a copy of Bill Clinton’s old thanks-for-saving-me-from-the-draft letter. ABC then stayed quiet until the Clinton team could prepare a defense against a potentially very damaging story.

Now these two men are major powers in the ABC Political Unit, with Halperin in charge and Stephanopoulos as the top on-air political analyst. When Stephanopoulos appeared on C-SPAN to promote the first televised Democratic debate from South Carolina, he credited Halperin as ABC’s inspiration for sponsoring the event. "We tried to make the best bid we possibly could, because we wanted to get this first debate."

Come again: why suddenly was ABC so hot to negotiate around CNN and other news outlets to acquire the rights to the first Democratic debate? Why would they nudge about half of the ABC affiliates to carry the debate, if only after the late local news? Why build a whole hour of "This Week" around debate excerpts? Where was the market demand that called for all this network activity?

To put this in its proper perspective, let’s ask: Would ABC have fought for the rights to televise and promote Republican debates?

A quick look at 1999 suggests an answer: no. ABC’s record covering presidential debates illustrates the network’s selective attitude. When liberal Democrats want the exposure, ABC is there. When conservative Republicans gather to promote their agenda, ABC is elsewhere.