ABC taps anti-Semite Christiane Amanpour for Sunday morning news-talk show ‘This Week’

ABC's choice of Amanpour for 'This Week' has critics inside the network and beyond

If being the moderator of "This Week," ABC's Sunday morning news-talk show, required Senate approval, then journalist Christiane Amanpour -- recently named by ABC News President David Westin to take over the job -- would already be in big trouble.

In a way, Amanpour, scheduled to leave CNN after 18 years of international coverage and take over the program in August, could be seen as the opposite of the perfect candidate. "This Week" deals mainly in domestic politics and inside-the-Beltway palaver, an area where Amanpour is widely considered to deficient. Consider: Whenever CNN has thrown one of its big election-night, convention, or presidential debate spectaculars, drafting nearly every living staff member to appear, Amanpour has had a conspicuously low profile.

And even though Amanpour has often been touted for her expertise on foreign affairs, she has vocal and passionate critics in that arena as well. Supporters of Israel have more than once charged Amanpour with bias against that country and its policies. A Web site devoted to criticism of Amanpour is titled, with less than a modicum of subtlety, "Christiane Amanpour's Outright Bias Against Israel Must Stop," available via Facebook.