i’m an abc news fan. i think it’s a holdover from when they actually were the best in the business. and i have a very dear friend who was a producer at abc news, and she’s told me so many great stories of how they were the best and why, that i still watch them almost exclusively.
post-election, though, i’m taking a break from tv news. i was overdosed, and needed a bit of a break from it. so, news fast time.
but, while watching abc news pre-election, i had started to notice a conservative slant to their reporting. not so much as to compromise integrity, but subtle things. i wondered if ownership had influenced news decision making, or if it was an inevitable product of budget cuts and pooled coverage.
then today i read a story about an upcoming 20/20 story on matthew shepard that, while i haven’t seen it and thus have not finalized my opinion, has the potential to send me over the edge into full-blown rage.
you can read the story for yourself at the link–basically the 20/20 story is going to challenge the clear fact that the matthew shepard killing was a hate crime. the online story says that the 20/20 story will allege that what actually happened was “something more complicated involving methamphetamine and robbery among possible acquaintances.”
in other words, while the murderers allocated to targeting shepard because he was gay, both when they confessed to police and in their plea bargains, abc is now going to blame the victim, at least in part, for the fact that he was strung up on a fence and left to die.
there’s a lovely way to get some ratings in sweeps month. the “de-gaying” of matthew shepard’s murder. how do these people sleep at night?
the murderer’s plea bargains specifically prohibit them from talking to the media, and they are now sitting in prison for life as a result of those plea bargains. instead of getting the death penalty. and now they are breaking those plea bargain agreements, and saying that they lied before and that they didn’t kill him for being gay.
well of course they are saying that. duh. now that they aren’t being put to death for the murder.
the linked article goes to great lengths to say that it’s wrong for this gag order to be imposed on the murderers, and makes it a free speech issue.
maybe the gag order goes too far, but you know what, they signed it. and at some point, these idiots have to take some responsibility for consequences. if they are allowed to talk in public, which i must begrudgingly admit is their right, then they should be restricted to discussing points raised at trial. was any of this methamphetamine crap brought up at trial? no. so they shouldn’t be allowed to talk about it now.
matthew shepard’s family should not have to deal with these clowns getting press and airtime for lying about their victim.
and abc news, which is free in a free country to allege whatever crap they want as long as they have a vaporous rumor trail to back it up, will lose a viewer.
me.
if this all turns out as i’m afraid it will. i hope i’m wrong.