ABC News denies Kucinich campaign's bias complaint
Dennis Kucinich's presidential campaign blasted ABC News Thursday for what he said was unfair treatment during a Democratic presidential debate this week, and his supporters accused the network of hiding online poll results that reflected favorably on the Ohio Democrat.
However, the network claims it treated him fairly.
In a post on Kucinich's Web site, his campaign claimed the Ohio congressman was deliberately cropped from a photo of debate participants on ABC News' "Politics Page." The post also implied ABC was trying to bury results of an online poll that showed a plurality of respondents believed Kucinich had "won" the debate.
The campaign also noted that moderator George Stephanopoulos did not ask Kucinich a question until 28 minutes into the debate last Sunday in Des Moines, Iowa.
Kucinich's campaign was simply passing along complaints it heard from supporters after the debate; ABC News's response to the campaign was expected to be posted online Friday.
"We appreciate the fact that they responded. ... We're not going to pursue this further," campaign spokesman Andy Juniewicz told RAW STORY.
ABC News Executive Director Andrea M. Jones told the campaign via e-mail that ABC did not crop Kucinich from the photo, which was taken by an Associated Press photographer, and she pointed out that Kucinich appears in several other photos on the site, according to a copy of her comments obtained by RAW STORY.
The campaign says Kucinich took a "commanding lead" in the online poll asking, "Who won the Democratic debate?" sometime Monday afternoon before ABC replaced it with another poll later that day. Kucinich again took a lead in that poll and it was removed from ABC's Web site, the campaign said.
A link to the poll is still available within ABC's report on the debate, but it's results are not prominently displayed. As of early Friday, Kucinich had received more than 15,100 votes in the unscientific poll, giving him a wide margin over Barack Obama who was running second with about 9,200 votes.
Jones also said ABC did not attempt to hide the poll, but she did not address the fact that it had been removed from ABC News's front page. Its results were not reported because the poll is unscientific, she said.
Supporters also claimed Kucinich was ignored for much of the debate, and a statistical analysis released Friday shows Kucinich spoke less than any other candidate except former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel, who registers virtually no support in opinion polls. For the first half of the debate, Kucinich said only 204 words -- about 3.4 percent of the speech up to that point, according to the USA Election Polls analysis.
Although Kucinich did not field a question until nearly a half-hour into the debate, ABC News did get his own segment with Stephanopoulos on This Week, two weeks in a row, Jones said, pointing to where the appearance is posted online.
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