ABC's Good Morning America devoted 13 minutes and 40 seconds on Wednesday to breathlessly promoting Disney's advertising upfront presentation — complete with celebrity interviews and movie trailers — while spending exactly zero seconds on the approximately ten Disney Cruise Line employees arrested on child pornography charges. Priorities.
But hey, did you hear Conan O'Brien is hosting the Oscars again? Isn't that exciting? Surely that's more newsworthy than child predators operating on Disney's own ships.
Let's set the scene. GMA co-host Robin Roberts kicked off the coverage with the subtlety of a used car commercial: "Oh yeah. You better believe a lot of Disney excitement as we head into Wednesday," she gushed, before describing the segment as "celebrating all of the exciting shows and movies coming to ABC and Disney." Celebrating. Not reporting. Not covering. Celebrating. Because that's what journalism is now — a 13-minute infomercial for your parent company.
Correspondent Will Ganz was even worse, delivering lines that would make a Disney PR intern blush: "And holy headlines Batman...All those stars can only align in one spot." As NewsBusters Managing Editor Curtis Houck documented, this wasn't news coverage. It was a corporate commercial that aired during what's supposed to be a morning news program watched by millions of Americans.
The upfronts presentation featured Disney's president and chief creative officer Dana Walden and new Disney CEO Josh D'Amaro touting the company's content empire. GMA correspondents Ginger Zee and Will Ganz dutifully walked viewers through trailers for Zootopia 2, updates on Dancing with the Stars, American Horror Story casting news, and even an Air Bud revival. They interviewed actress Brie Larson. They chatted with ESPN college football analyst Kirk Herbstreit. They breathlessly reported that Disney content has been watched for 51 billion hours across platforms.
51 billion hours. They found time to work that statistic into the broadcast. But approximately ten Disney Cruise workers getting arrested for child pornography? Apparently that number wasn't worth mentioning.
This is what happens when a news network is owned by an entertainment conglomerate. ABC is Disney. Disney is ABC. And when Disney has a scandal involving child predators on its cruise ships, the "news" division simply pretends it doesn't exist while simultaneously running what amounts to a commercial for Disney+ and ESPN.
Robin Roberts didn't ask Dana Walden about the cruise ship arrests. Nobody asked Josh D'Amaro how the company plans to protect children on its ships. Instead, they talked about Bluey and Paradise and a Savannah Bananas player named Jackson Olson who's apparently going to be on Dancing with the Stars. Riveting stuff while pedophiles were operating on the company's boats.
This is corporate media in its purest, most undiluted form. Not bias by omission — bias by design. The same network that will lecture you about "threats to democracy" and the importance of a "free press" just ran a 13-minute-and-40-second advertisement for its owner during prime morning news hours while actively burying a child exploitation scandal connected to that same owner.
We don't have a free press. We have a marketing department with a news desk set. And they just proved it on national television.
