ABC World News anchor Diane Sawyer admitted to watching Fox News and managed to evade veteran reporter Marvin Kalb’s attempts to get her to criticize the top ranked cable news channel.

The program, “Diane Sawyer: A Life in News,” kicked off  the International Conference of Women Media Leaders, a week-long gathering that was being sponsored by the  George Washington University Global Media Institute and the International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF).

Kalb, who spent 3o years reporting for NBC News and CBS News, now hosts The Kalb Report which is sponsored by the Shorenstein Center and George Washington University, and with the Sawyer interview wrapped up its 17th season.

The interview, which covered a wide range of topics, eventually got around to one of Kalb’s pet peeves which is mixing opinion and news. He tried to goad Sawyer into criticizing one of his favorite targets, Fox News, but she refused to bite:

MARVIN KALB: Oh, it’s fascinating. In this whole new world of communication, there is Fox News. I was just wondering what you thought of Fox News?

DIANE SAWYER: You know, I watch Fox News. I watch Fox News, I watch MSNBC, too, I watch CNN. I am going to be in rehab for serial news watching some day. I’ll have to go to some Betty Ford wing someday and cure myself. But I think that, again, I think you can learn so much from the excitement of the people on Fox News, about what they’re telling you and about what they are bringing to every story. And I think the American people are enormously smart and they are enormously collectively so discerning about making their own judgments as they move from MSNBC, as they move to Fox News as well.

And I just don’t think ideas can be labeled with the people who hold them on any spectrum. I think people can make their mind up about ideas. And I do think that people who hear something are surrounded by a lot of information and can check it in a lot of ways we couldn’t even check things before.

MARVIN KALB: Diane, that’s the–

DIANE SAWYER: So I am not going to– I am a full– I’m not kidding. I am a universal watcher and I learn. I learn.

MARVIN KALB: It is a noble sentiment on your part, and I applaud it completely

DIANE SAWYER: Do you not watch?

MARVIN KALB: I watch it all the time. I get up in the morning, go to bed, I’m constantly– I’m in Fox. No, I’m just kidding. What I’m getting at is not really so much Fox News as it is opinion in the world of news and that you have a stunningly upbeat–

DIANE SAWYER: But don’t you think people know when they’re getting opinion in the world of news?

MARVIN KALB: And getting news and they get the distinction between the two?

DIANE SAWYER: I think they know, I think they know. And I think people like to be challenged. And just as you like to be challenged by someone at a dinner table who has a contrary opinion, you like to say, “I couldn’t disagree with you more. I can’t believe you said that.” And that’s also, as Socrates might have said, that’s how we learn, too.

Thank you Diane Sawyer for educating Kalb.

Kalb like most liberals thinks that the public is too stupid to be able to tell the difference between news and opinion but Sawyer thinks differently.

If anything the public is now smarter after decades of the mainstream media reporting opinion as news and that’s what drives liberals like Kalb crazy. Because now that the public isn’t swallowing everything the liberal media is telling them, hook, line and sinker, they have lost their ability to mold public opinion in their image.

Score this one Public 1, Liberals 0.

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About the author

Don Irvine
Don Irvine is Chairman of Accuracy in Media. He is active on Facebook and Twitter. You can follow him @donirvine to read his latest thoughts.

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13 Comments for Diane Sawyer Evades Kalb’s Fox News Trap

Gerry C

People seem to forget that Diane Sawyer got her start as a “Republican Press Aide” for President Richard Nixon and helped him write his memoirs. While no doubt that she is part of the RINO world, she at least has the sense to know that her politics are in the minority. And that she needs to keep in touch with the what is going on in the real world.

JayMagoo

Diane Sawyers work history has nothing to do with her answer. She is a classy lady, true, but she also is undoubtedly aware of the capacity of serial and incorrigible liars like those who inhabit almost every shadowy corner of Fox News to slander and smear anyone who challenges them. The lies on Fox News are constant and pervasive. Diane Sawyer wants to continue with her rather admirable career, Nixon notwithstanding, and her not taking Kalb’s bait was probably predictable. Mr. Irvine’s comment, attempting to position this as a loss for liberals, is laughable in it’s heavy-handed irrelevancy, almost like we’d expect from Fox News. If anything, it shows that Diane Sawyer understands the wisdom of the advice against getting into a knock-down, drag-out with the likes of Fox News. You won’t win and you might get some of it on you.

Ghost Rider

@JayMagoo, I couldn’t disagree with you more…and I can’t believe you said that.

Weegordy

Such dribble. I can’t believe you people get paid to write this garbage. Have you ever had a real job?

"gunner"

@ “jay magoo”,
i’m amused that you chose a remarkedly near sighted cartoon character as your screen name/alias, it quite fits you.

JayMagoo

It appears that mindless Republican trolls like Gunner and Ghost Rider (likely the same troll) inhabit this comment board, too. Their style and lack of content give them away.

ejlawyer

JayMagoo – you talk about opinion and then ramble on and on, never giving any examples (like “she also is undoubtedly aware of the capacity of serial and incorrigible liars like those who inhabit almost every shadowy corner of Fox News to slander and smear anyone who challenges them.”).
By all prospects you might just be Marvin Kalb.

CTR

Watch what you want, but if you want anyone to take your opinion seriously, skip the name-calling. Spouting a lot of visceral hatred (perhaps as a way of out of your system), or expressing pet peeves, or perhaps feeling an obligation to express party-line left- or right-wing propaganda are not legitimate forms of argumentation. It’s surprising how much time we waste looking for something which will either add to our knowledge or make us rethink a subject. It’s apparently hard for many people to watch or hear contrary opinions, opinions with which they disagree. I think that is Ms Sawyer’s point–obviously lost on all of the above commenters.

lucy

Why is this story even relevant or interesting? Who cares? She sidestepped an answer as any diplomatic, smart journalist would do – especially someone of Sawyer’s caliber and distinction. Such triviality.

Fraudcop

Jay Magoo is really Ed Schultz

The Major

They both live in ‘ivory tower’ neighborhoods,& could care less about what happens to the average Joe & Jane on the streets.

So why are all of you name calling ,,over 2 pundits that have outlived their usefulness,,,especially Kalb & his equally useless brother Bernard.Obamacare will turn the Kalb bros. into Soylent Green sooner than they would like it

C. Roy

Hardly trivial, Lucy. The article is a textbook demonstration of the anti-conservative bias of the leftist media, who are in absolute denial as to their own nature.

It is surprising that you couldn’t see this.

Mermaid

Don’t you just love the hissing from lefties like Magoo, like a snake poked by a stick, when anyone defends conservatives? They can’t take it!
If you asked this particular lefty to state precise lies Fox tells, he can’t do it, unless he lies about it.