This is an April fool, right? Oh.

Probably not, as it turns out. In yet another example of how US big media is being firmly hoisted on the petard of its own insistence on impartiality, an ABC News producer has been suspended for expressing his private thoughts in an email.

ABC News suspended the executive producer of the weekend edition of “Good Morning America” yesterday over a pair of leaked e-mails in which he used inflammatory language to slam President Bush and Madeleine Albright.

John Green, whose unpaid suspension will last one month, apologized to the White House in a call to communications director Nicolle Wallace, while two ABC executives called the former secretary of state to apologize.

And if you want to see how, exactly, the impartiality thing is nothing more than a big stick the media is handing to its critics, just after it’s taped a “hit me” sign to its back, do read this… um… analysis from rightwinged.com.

“This is a top ABC News Producer, using an ABC BlackBerry device, using his ABC email address, and sending it to others at ABC like it’s something they do everyday, because it probably is. Do you get what’s wrong with this?! The larger picture!? For anyone who works in an office, you know it’s not okay to be sending this sort of thing around, and you could get in trouble for it. But the liberalism at ABC News is so widespread, they think nothing of sending Bush hate emails. It’s what they talk about around the water cooler anyway!

But anyway, this is supposed to be a leading organization where we get unbiased news from top journalism professionals, but this email reveals they’re like a bunch of whiny Fahrenheit 911 watching KOS kids. Why should anyone trust them?! I won’t be surprised if he’s not, but to save face ABC should fire him immediately.

I’m assuming this kind of thing couldn’t happen in Britain - certainly, at any newspaper I’m sure the reaction to a rude email about Blair or Bush would be a “so what?”. Broadcasters are different, of course… come to think of it, there may be some BBC producers and managers who might feel their send mail file contains a bomb or two too. Or maybe, post Hutton, they’re all wise to the dangers of email. But, even there, would we see a reaction like this to a similar story?

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Non-headline of the week #23423: “Paxman email calls politician a lying sod.”

Ben Hammersley thought this on Apr 01 06 at 11:03 pm

The thing that gets me about the American right is the way they have - with some degree of success - given liberalism a bad name, and forced liberals to become apologists for their beliefs. It never ceases to me amaze me that a liberal viewpoint equals bad in so much of the states. And they could be nice such a nice people with a cool country if they weren’t so damned uptight and conservative.

I know it’s a bit of tangent, but shouldn’t we start a campaign to change the popular stereotype of Brits as being uptight… surely, by comparison with your average high-fiving, God-fearing, SUV-driving, Bush supporting, Janet Jackson abhorring Sepo we must be a very laid back people?

Perhaps that could be the starting point for the liberal fight back? Maybe liberalism needs rebranding to pull the rug out from under the neo-Cons. Neil, I think you’re the man for the job with your MBA, your Clyde-side heart and your access to the Guardian brand on the global stage..

Muz thought this on Apr 03 06 at 3:47 am

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