Nope, No Bias Here: ABC News Department

Watching This Week on ABC today, they had a short segment from Ted Koppel on his tenure at Nightline that caught my ear. (Go to this page, then click on the Koppel-head to watch.)

Koppel was talking about his most memorable political interviews. All three were with Democrats. Thousands of interviews over the years with people from around the world and across the political spectrum and his three most memorable were with Democratic politicians. Sheesh.

Then, to compound the eye-rolling, he as much as admits that an interview with presidential candidate Michael Dukakis was purely an opportunity for a badly losing candidate to make up ground. He also admits to trying to serve up softballs for Dukakis to smack out of the park.

Mike Dukakis, of course, was at the very end of his presidential campaign this [other memorable political interview] was two weeks away from Election Day. He was way behind in the polls. And this was an opportunity to, if not turn things around entirely, at least close the gap. It ended up being a total disaster for the Dukakis campaign....

I was saying to him, "Governor, you know, here's a chance to get a network audience for one hour in which you are being asked questions," and he kept saying the same things he had been saying in the campaign throughout. I didn't mean it to be rude, but it came out that way. And he missed that opportunity, too.

Nope, no bias here.