ABC News Now Obamacare Spokesman

ABC News has become the Obama Administration’s news organization of record on healthcare reform.  From Drudge’s headline,  ABC TURNS PROGRAMMING OVER TO OBAMA; NEWS TO BE ANCHORED FROM INSIDE WHITE HOUSE

On the night of June 24, the media and government become one, when ABC turns its programming over to President Obama and White House officials to push government run health care — a move that has ignited an ethical firestorm!

Highlights on the agenda:

ABCNEWS anchor Charlie Gibson will deliver WORLD NEWS from the Blue Room of the White House.

The network plans a primetime special — ‘Prescription for America’ — originating from the East Room, exclude opposing voices on the debate.

MORE

Late Monday night, Republican National Committee Chief of Staff Ken McKay fired off a complaint to the head of ABCNEWS:

My emphasis.  From the complaint:

As the national debate on health care reform intensifies, I am deeply concerned and disappointed with ABC’s astonishing decision to exclude opposing voices on this critical issue on June 24, 2009. Next Wednesday, ABC News will air a primetime health care reform “town hall” at the White House with President Barack Obama. In addition, according to an ABC News report, GOOD MORNING AMERICA, WORLD NEWS, NIGHTLINE and ABC’s web news “will all feature special programming on the president’s health care agenda.” This does not include the promotion, over the next 9 days, the president’s health care agenda will receive on ABC News programming.

The rest of the complaint at the link.

Rush Limbaugh has been calling mainstream media “state-controlled” media lately.  Looks like he nailed that one.  What a humiliating descent for a once-credible news organization, from respected journalism to simple purveyors of the party line.

Hire Your Own Journalist

Opportunity knocked, and David Cohn answered the door, proving that creative entrepeneurship still lives in America:  A new paid-journalism model, but it needs work

Would you be willing to kick in $20 to have someone get to the bottom of the murky finances at your kid’s school? How about contributing $30 to find out if your trash haulers really sift recyclables from the garbage, like they claim?

If that sounds intriguing, I give you David Cohn.

Cohn is a skinny young man of abundant enthusiasm who’s primed to pump energy, and cash, into what sometimes feels like the world’s most beleaguered profession: journalism.

He is the founder of Spot.us, a website that allows the public to propose stories and pay for journalists to do investigations “on important and perhaps overlooked stories.”

Interactive journalism:

He embodies the “If You Build It, They Will Come” Generation Web sensibility, blogging as “Digidave” on his view of the democratizing power of the Internet.

Spot.us holds out the promise of engaging an audience before, during (with e-mail updates to donors) and after the reporting process. It’s a conversational approach with obvious advantages over the top-down style of old journalism.

Link to Spot.us here.

What a great idea.  I wish him luck.

Thanks to Media Bistro