ABC chooses new Nightline host

[peekaboo]

Bashir In for Koppel
Congratulations, David Westin. You've replaced serious, competent, respected Ted Koppel with the oily, obsequious Martin Bashir on "Nightline." My only question is, was Jerry Springer not available?
Perhaps Westin, the head of ABC News, has not seen the "outtakes" of Bashir's interviews with Michael Jackson from his original "documentary." But I've seen it and so have the many other journalists who were in the Santa Maria courtroom where Jackson was tried for child molestation last spring.
I have no doubt most of them had the same reaction as I when they heard today that Bashir had been given a co-hosting job at "Nightline." Yikes! was probably the first word that crossed their minds.
In the outtakes, as in the main doc, Bashir is, for lack of a better word, creepy. He baits Jackson, praising his strangest qualities during breaks in the filming. Jackson is flattered and pleased, but when filming resumes, Bashir then attacks the singer for the traits he only seconds earlier complimented.

You should know that Jackson's attorney Tom Mesereau played the outtakes video for the jury in full. It was a brilliant move, because Bashir is so awful that Jackson comes off as a victim. Mesereau counted on the outtakes to help get Jackson acquitted, and he was 100 percent right.
It's a weird and awful experience to see Bashir in action. The first time the interview was shown it certainly made every journalist in Judge Rodney Melville's courtroom question our own style of interviewing. I know that having seen this rare backstage look at Bashir's technique, I would be incredibly uneasy having him question world leaders on a news program.
His method of getting headline-making answers is as dishonest as it could possibly be. Not only does he heap adulation on Jackson, but he then turns to the singer's makeup woman, Karen Faye, telling her what an injustice it is that Jackson is so misunderstood by the public.
"It's terrible," Bashir says. "How can we tell the world who the real Michael Jackson is?" He then goes on and on at length about what a great parent Jackson is, and how if only the world could see him with his kids they would think more of him.
This is all off-camera. Then the lights go on, and Bashir begins slicing Jackson into little pieces. That's what Cabinet secretaries and the like can expect I suppose when they come to "Nightline."
Of course, one of the clear hallmarks of the Jackson outtakes tape was that the singer was drunk, or getting drunker by and by, as the interview proceeded. Bashir never once acknowledges this, or suggests to Faye that there might be a problem.
Jackson simply drifts into a blissful reverie as Bashir lavishes the praise and tells him how much his music means to him, and that each of Jackson's albums has broken some kind of record.
"Isn't it amazing!" Bashir declares with wide-eyed glee.
It sure is.

Cynthia McFadden and Terry Moran are also co-hosts

[pacific breeze]

Eeew. He's an oily slimebag. Maybe he'll publicly crash and burn, but in the wonderful world of TV even if he does, he'll probably get promoted to management.