ABC And Good Morning America Should Be Ashamed Of Themselves

Peter Casey-USA TODAY Sports

The aftermath of the race this past weekend at Charlotte Motor Speedway is something that NASCAR fans might be talking about for a while. The emotion and stress that is the new chase format finally boiled over for a few drivers and the result was quite the display. While on some level I am sure that NASCAR is loving what happened (as the fans are eating it all up) there are other levels in which NASCAR is not happy with the way things unfolded following the race.

Given what happened it was obvious that some other news outlets that might not normally cover NASCAR were going to cover the post-race conflicts at Charlotte. One of those outlets happens to be ABC News and Good Morning America which is aired on the ABC Network. Below is a video of the coverage that ABC News and Good Morning America provided in regards to the post-race happenings.

To be honest, I had to watch the video a few times because I could not believe the angle in which ABC and GMA decided to take while presenting this to their viewers.

The majority of the two minute piece was centered around Tony Stewart who interestingly enough played the smallest role in the actual events that took place Saturday night in Charlotte. Stewart simply got caught between the fire as Brad Keselowski was going after Matt Kenseth and the result was Keselowski hit the rear of Stewart’s No. 14 car. After that happened Stewart backed into Keselowski to show his displeasure with being hit from behind for seemingly no reason and that was the end of Stewart’s involvement. Denny Hamlin who played a much larger role in the post-race events of Charlotte was barely featured at all in this piece.

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If you watch the ABC and GMA coverage it would seem that Stewart played a much larger role in what took place that night. They open the story by talking about how it’s Stewart’s “first incident since the deadly accident over the summer,” as though to say that two are somehow comparable. The opening video of the report is a dramatic replay of Stewart backing his car into Keselowski in which we see multiple angles of the contact while the narrator of the story gives us the dramatic play by play; “watch as he stops his car. Puts it in reverse and rams into the car behind him, destroying the front end, this, weeks after being cleared by a grand jury after his car struck and killed 20-year-old racer Kevin ward Jr.” This is the second time in about 20 seconds that they have referenced the accident in which Kevin Ward Jr. lost his life.

Later on in the piece they acknowledge that Stewart was not involved in the garage fight only to then close the piece by once again going back to Stewart. A special analyst in the piece calls out Stewart for his “unconscionable” actions (backing into Keselowski) and in the closing seconds of the piece they reference how NASCAR said they are looking into the incidents but Stewart “isn’t talking” as he declined to comment with them.

Aside from the one-sided attack on Stewart, the piece also diced up the post-race interviews with Matt Kenseth and Keselowski by pulling only one sentence from each of them to be featured in their piece. After the race on Saturday both Kenseth and Keselowski explained their actions and why they felt things went down as they did, if you watch the ABC/GMA piece you would have no idea any of that took place. Instead, you would believe that Kenseth called out Keselowski for being a poor champion and that Keselowski responded by saying other drivers can dish it but can’t take it. While both things were said, ABC purposely took them way out of context.

The above news piece as a whole is a grave injustice and one that the folks at ABC and GMA should be ashamed of. The light in which they chose to paint these drivers and specifically Stewart is unacceptable and unprofessional. In the world of the media everyone is entitled to their own opinion and that is all well and good. However, when it comes to reporting news there is very little room for opinion when news is based in facts. When it comes to the video above the fact is that ABC and GMA decided to target Stewart for reasons that I am not quite sure of. In the process of targeting Stewart they also grossly misrepresented Kenseth and Keselowski and the incident as a whole.

I think that it is fair to say that the majority of the audience that GMA reaches are probably not NASCAR fans. With that in mind it would also be fair to say that the majority of the audience most likely only hears about NASCAR when it comes from media outlets like ABC News or Good Morning America. As a result of that it makes the above video even more disgusting because it is the responsibility of ABC and GMA to provide its viewers with an accurate portrayal of such events as opposed to the contrived garbage that can been seen above.

Were the events of Charlotte a bit too much? Absolutely, these drivers are professional athletes and each of them made a poor choice in the heat of the moment and conducted themselves in an unprofessional manner. In the scope of NASCAR did anything that took place on Saturday night rock the foundation of the sport? No, in the world that is NASCAR the events of Saturday were almost par for the course and a sight that was welcomed by the majority of friends (and most likely by NASCAR as well even if they never admit to it).

Had ABC and GMA took the time or cared to take the time to report this properly these notions would have been portrayed in the story as they should have been, instead we are left with the above video. In my opinion ABC and GMA have a long list of apologies to start handing out; a list that begins with NASCAR and Stewart and ends with all of the fans.

Christopher Olmstead is the Editor of BeyondTheFlag.com on the FanSided Network. Follow us on Twitter @Beyond_The_Flag and “Like” us on Facebook.

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