Fired For A Lousy Donation

In 1985, after fifteen great years, I was fired by ABC News. The official reason for my firing was a non-disclosed $200 donation to a family friend running in a non-partisan mayoral campaign in New Bedford Massachusetts.
The real reason I was fired was because I was estranged at the time from my boss Roone Arledge. I had complained publicly after Roone spiked a colleague's 20/20 story about the Kennedy brothers’ relationship with Marilyn Monroe. The Kennedy story never ran, I alleged, because of Roone’s relationship with the Kennedy family.

1985
The point is ABC treated my undisclosed $200 donation harshly because the network wanted me out for that unrelated reason.

2015
Now ABC is bending over backward to minimize and forgive George Stephanopoulos' $75,000 donation to the Clinton Foundation because he is central to the network's recent success.

Erica,Sol and I ran into George, his wife Ali Wentworth and kids last month on a flight to Puerto Rico. They are a very pleasant and talented family. Still, he is in major trouble.
By neither informing his employer nor the public of his substantial donations to the Clinton Foundation he undermines his ability to do his job. Everybody has their secret favorites and personal biases. But donations cross the line for a good reason. Money raises the specter of Pay for Play.

Up until now there’s been only George's historic connections with the Clintons to undermine his credible objectivity as the network's principal political reporter.
The donations look like he’s trying to buy continued access to the family he served so loyally as a political operative in the 1990’s.

Moral of the Story
If Bret Baier, Megyn Kelly, Chris Wallace or Bill O’Reilly made a similar donation to say an educational foundation run by Jeb Bush liberal wolves would be howling in front of Fox News.