NEW YORK — ABC says Charles Gibson will sign off from the “World News” anchor desk on Dec. 18.
The 66-year-old Gibson, who announced his retirement in September, has been at ABC News for more than three decades and plans to continue as an occasional contributor.
He will be replaced by “Good Morning America” co-host Diane Sawyer.
Gibson has anchored “World News” since 2006, and was a co-host of “Good Morning America” for much of the 20 years before that.
Among his anti-gun lowlights as compiled by the Media Research Center:
- To President Clinton during a May 12, 2000 Good Morning America town meeting promoting the Million Mom March.
“I’ve got here a pile of all the gun legislation that’s been proposed in the past year since we were here before. None of it has passed. By my count, we have more states rejecting new gun control legislation than have passed it. We have 15 states that have passed prohibitions on cities suing gun manufacturers. That hardly seems like progress.”
Gibson did challenge Clinton directly at one point: “Don’t you, to some extent, make the NRA’s case when you say that, though? You know, they say enforce existing laws. We’re not doing enough of enforcing existing laws, and yet you’ve got murder down 25 percent since ’93, gun crime down 35 percent since ’92, violent crime overall down 27 percent. That’s done with a good economy, better policing, and not necessarily such stronger gun controls laws.”
- From Good Morning America’s live interview with President Bill Clinton at the White House, June 4, 1999.
“When you went to Littleton, a friend of yours, who supports you on gun control, said to me in the last 48 hours, the President, because as he said Littleton has seared the national conscience, the President had a chance to roar on gun control and he meowed, and that was a friend of yours. There are very basic measures that could be taken that people agree on. We register every automobile in America. We don’t register guns. That’s a step that would make a difference.”
- Gibson questioning Al Gore on Good Morning America, July 12, 1999.
“But I’m curious, if you favor registration of every handgun, why didn’t you put it in the proposal? If you want to regulate handguns, why not do that as well, as we do with every other consumer product?”
- Exchange on the September 16, 1999 Good Morning America, the morning after a church shooting in Fort Worth, Texas.
Co-host Charles Gibson: “I don’t want to politicize this, and this is not the time for political questions, but…do you think the 2000 campaign will largely be about guns?”
Al Gore: “You said you didn’t want to politicize it. I can assure it’s the last thing that I want to do, and I just don’t want to get into a discussion like that.”
Gibson: “I’m just saying do you think that this is going to be a discussion in the year 2000, this country will sit down and have a frank discussion about guns?”
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