Abc News

ABC News, which has been making its own news this week with Diane Sawyer's Jaycee Dugard interview, kept the ball rolling Monday night with a report on the Christian counseling clinics run by the husband of GOP candidate Michele Bachmann. She refers to the practice owned by her and husband, Marcus, as the "family business. " Monday night's report by ABC investigative reporter Brian Ross shows the Bachmann family business, which has received $137,000 in Medicaid money, practicing a widely discredited form of Christian "therapy" that promises to turn homosexuals into heterosexuals through prayer.

It was the pictures and riveting testimony that convinced a Philadelphia jury that abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell was guilty of murdering three infants born alive following botched late-term abortions and also guilty of the involuntary manslaughter of Karnamaya Mongar, who overdosed on Demerol during an abortion at Dr. Gosnell's clinic. How ironic that the Gosnell decision was delivered the day after Mother's Day. The two-month trial has reignited the abortion debate. But while many states have managed to impose some restrictions on abortion clinics, establish informed consent laws, and in some cases require a woman to view a sonogram before aborting an unborn child, abortion on demand for almost any reason and at most stages of pregnancy remains legal in every state.

I did not think I'd ever see a better medical documentary series than the Emmy-Award-winning “Hopkins 24/7” that aired in 2000 or its sequel, “Hopkins,” which won a Peabody Award in 2008. The backstage access, immediacy and range of gripping real-life drama that ABCNews Executive Producer Terence Wrong and his team captured at Baltimore's world-renowned medical institution were landmark. But with “NY Med,” which premieres at 10 p.m. Tuesday, Wrong surpasses his earlier work in terms of prime-time storytelling without sacrificing any of the cultural seriousness or grand reach of the Hopkins series.

After spending 15 hours Friday locked on coverage of the manhunt in Boston, here are my picks for the highs, lows and deeper media stories of this remarkable day and night. The best moment belonged to Diane Sawyer and ABC News for a phone interview Friday night with George Pizzuto, a next-door neighbor to the man who discovered a wounded and bloody Dzhokhar Tsarnaev lying under a tarp in a boat in his backyard and called police. The interview started at 8:02 p.m., and was the first clear explanation of how the police found the 19-year-old bombing suspect in Watertown Friday night.

Here's hoping that news of guilty verdicts in the Jerry Sandusky case took a huge bite out of the audience ABC's  "20/20"  expected for its hour-too-long interview with Rielle Hunter Friday night. I say that because then ABC News will have gained nothing for debasing itself by giving an hour of prime time to this wretched woman so that she could sell more copies of her new book. In fact, I am really hoping ABC News lost some credibility with viewers for sticking with this tabloid con job instead of breaking away at some point to cover the real news that the former Penn State coach was found guilty on 45 of 48 counts in connection with the sexual molestation of minors.

It was the pictures and riveting testimony that convinced a Philadelphia jury that abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell was guilty of murdering three infants born alive following botched late-term abortions and also guilty of the involuntary manslaughter of Karnamaya Mongar, who overdosed on Demerol during an abortion at Dr. Gosnell's clinic. How ironic that the Gosnell decision was delivered the day after Mother's Day. The two-month trial has reignited the abortion debate. But while many states have managed to impose some restrictions on abortion clinics, establish informed consent laws, and in some cases require a woman to view a sonogram before aborting an unborn child, abortion on demand for almost any reason and at most stages of pregnancy remains legal in every state.

BET has a mixed history when it comes to news, documentaries and public affairs - and much of it is for the worse. With a former programming emphasis on music videos and a record of little or no serious commitment to news, questions have regularly been raised whether Black Entertainment Television was serving its audience or exploiting it. The paucity of serious news and first-rate public affairs programs was impossible not to notice. The National Association of Black Journalists gave BET its "Thumbs Down Award" in 2007.

After spending 15 hours Friday locked on coverage of the manhunt in Boston, here are my picks for the highs, lows and deeper media stories of this remarkable day and night. The best moment belonged to Diane Sawyer and ABC News for a phone interview Friday night with George Pizzuto, a next-door neighbor to the man who discovered a wounded and bloody Dzhokhar Tsarnaev lying under a tarp in a boat in his backyard and called police. The interview started at 8:02 p.m., and was the first clear explanation of how the police found the 19-year-old bombing suspect in Watertown Friday night.

The Monday, May 2 morning update will be devoted entirely to news of Osama bin Laden's death at the hands of U.S. troops.  • "The Mastermind" of 9/11 meets his demise . (NY Times)  • Mission was to kill, not capture . (Reuters)  • Bin Laden buried at sea . (AP)  • Capturing bin Laden would "unleash hell. " (AFP)  • President Obama spoke with Presidents Bush and Clinton before making his statement on the terrorists' death. Here a re their reactions.

Chris Cuomo is leaving ABC to join CNN, where he will have a "major role in a new CNN morning show," the cable channel announced Tuesday. Cuomo, who has served as co-anchor of "20/20" and chief law and justice correspondent for ABC, will also anchor and report on "major events" for CNN, Jeff Zucker, the channel's new president, said in making the announcement. “Chris is an accomplished anchor who is already an established name in morning television, as well as a widely respected investigative journalist,” Zucker said in a CNN release.

Barbara Walters will retire in May of next year, a source familiar with her plans told Reuters on Thursday . (Deadline Hollywood broke the story; Read it here .) The 83-year-old executive producer and co-host of "The View" has struggled with health issues in recent months. A slip and fall sent her to the hospital earlier this year. That was followed by a bout with chicken pox. "The View," one of the most successful daytime talk shows on television, is in the process of a radical overhaul with several of the original co-hosts gone or about to go. Walters was the first female co-anchor of a network morning show at NBC's "Today" in 1974.

Chris Cuomo is leaving ABC to join CNN, where he will have a "major role in a new CNN morning show," the cable channel announced Tuesday. Cuomo, who has served as co-anchor of "20/20" and chief law and justice correspondent for ABC, will also anchor and report on "major events" for CNN, Jeff Zucker, the channel's new president, said in making the announcement. “Chris is an accomplished anchor who is already an established name in morning television, as well as a widely respected investigative journalist,” Zucker said in a CNN release.

Journalistic mistakes are easy to make in the immediate wake of events like the horrific shootings last week in a movie theater in Colorado. Bits and bites of information explode across myriad media. Meanwhile, revulsion at the violence mixes with adrenaline, leaving some reporters at less then their intellectual and emotional best - especially when they are on live TV. Still, that's still no excuse for what happened with ABC News veteran Brian Ross Friday morning on “Good Morning America.” There's a journalistic lesson to be learned - and it's not as simple as all of us in the media are too obsessed with trying to be first.

I did not think I'd ever see a better medical documentary series than the Emmy-Award-winning “Hopkins 24/7” that aired in 2000 or its sequel, “Hopkins,” which won a Peabody Award in 2008. The backstage access, immediacy and range of gripping real-life drama that ABCNews Executive Producer Terence Wrong and his team captured at Baltimore's world-renowned medical institution were landmark. But with “NY Med,” which premieres at 10 p.m. Tuesday, Wrong surpasses his earlier work in terms of prime-time storytelling without sacrificing any of the cultural seriousness or grand reach of the Hopkins series.

As I have said earlier, I believe the pilot for Aaron Sorkin's "The Newsroom"  is one of the decade's best productions. I love this series for the way it calls out the press for having lost its sense of purpose. But the press doesn't like be called out that way, and you can see that in some of the reviews attacking Sunday's pilot for being sanctimonious and self-righteous. I love the righteousness of this series -- self or not. Here's video from CNN's  "Reliable Sources" Sunday of a discussion I had with some of my colleagues who don't like "The Newsroom" very much at all. I respect their views.

Here's hoping that news of guilty verdicts in the Jerry Sandusky case took a huge bite out of the audience ABC's  "20/20"  expected for its hour-too-long interview with Rielle Hunter Friday night. I say that because then ABC News will have gained nothing for debasing itself by giving an hour of prime time to this wretched woman so that she could sell more copies of her new book. In fact, I am really hoping ABC News lost some credibility with viewers for sticking with this tabloid con job instead of breaking away at some point to cover the real news that the former Penn State coach was found guilty on 45 of 48 counts in connection with the sexual molestation of minors.

Last Sunday, I wrote about the way in which British tabloid values had already taken root in American media and corroded the soul of our press. I was challenging the conventional wisdom here that our journalistic standards are somehow vastly superior to those of the British. I think too many analysts are using the News of the World scandal to support that false belief. I am hoping we can use the discussion to help us pull back from the values Rupert Murdoch had helped import.

White House counterterrorism chief John Brennan said at a press briefing today that terrorist leader Osama bin Laden died as a coward, hiding behind a woman "presumed to be his wife," who was also shot.  "Here is bin Laden ... hiding behind women who were put in front of him as a shield," Brennan said.  Maybe this is just U.S. propaganda, but if it's not, that's a pretty ignominious way to go.  Video below from ABC News.  ...

Thursday morning, ABC senior White House correspondent Jake Tapper posted a TwitPic of "Good Morning America" co-host Robin Roberts with the cutline "woman of the hour. " I can appreciate a newsperson congratulating a colleague, and I have to admit I was glad ABC News and not NBC News got the exclusive interview with Barack Obama to which the cutline referred. Headlines and history were made in the interview with Obama saying he was in favor of same-sex marriage. But the image struck me as part of a wrongheaded discourse generated by ABC and propagated by many of my critic colleagues celebrating Roberts and the network for getting this "scoop.

In November, I advanced one of CNN's  debates with a piece hoping aloud that Wolf Blitzer would not let Newt Gingrich bully him as the the former Speaker of the House had been doing to other debate moderators. Here's a bit of what I wrote: And so it is that I will come to TV tonight hoping to see one of the few anchors who has the stature and the credibility to call out Gingrich take the candidate of bluster on for his phony game of pounding the press by telling moderators how "stupid" (one of his favorite words)