According to an item in the Hollywood Reporter, though, ABC has told its local affiliates not to cover one celebrity in particular: actor Johnny Depp.

The actor is doing interviews to promote a new film called The Rum Diary, based on a book by Hunter S. Thompson.  But according to the Reporter, Disney-owned ABC seems to think interviewing him about a movie that isn't part of the Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean franchise would be bad business:

According to Houston's KHOU, no ABC affiliates were allowed to speak with or even shoot the actor at the event, due to a clause in his contract with Disney for its successful film franchise, Pirates of the Caribbean.

"We came here expecting to talk to one of the biggest names in Hollywood," say KHOU news reporter Shelton Green. "But apparently Disney doesn’t want Johnny Depp's new movie premiering here at the Paramount [Theatre] to get more exposure than his new Pirates of the Caribbean movie. So they wouldn’t allow us to interview him, nor would they even allow us to get video of him, but hundreds of other people did."

With pitched battles going on right now here in Washington and in statehouses from Florida to Wisconsin to California, with me now, our roundtable: George Will, Congressman Steve Southerland, a Republican freshman from Florida-- he was elected to public office for the very first time last November and sent here to Washington on a mission to cut spending. Also with us, ABC senior political correspondent Jonathan Karl and political strategist Donna Brazile, who calls herself a labor Democrat.

So the right wing Will, a right wing Congressman, an ABC journalist who came to Beltway journalism after participating in a right-wing journalism training institute... and from the left, Donna Brazile.

I quit ABC a couple weeks ago partly because they didn't like what I was doing. They viewed it as too biased.

Yes, ABC promoted Stossel to 20/20 anchor, gave him regular "Give Me a Break" commentary segments and one-hour, factually challenged primetime specials...all because they didn't like him. It's scary to think what the network would have done if they did like him.

But upon leaving corporate TV's criticism-free zone, where such lies as Rockefeller's statement that "Medicare is gonna start going broke in 2017, which is like the day after tomorrow," pass completely unchallenged, they each were questioned by real-life journalist Sam Husseini of WashingtonStakeout.com (9/15/09).

Compare the treatment described above with Husseini's calm but determined questioning of the pols:

Sam Husseini: Health insurance mandates--don't they end up being a subsidy for the insurance companies, because you're mandating that people go out and buy their product?

Mary Landrieu: ...I'm not carrying water for the insurance companies....

SH: You say you're not carrying water, but your No. 1 contributor is JP Morgan Chase, PACs and individuals associated.... And you've precluded the Medicare-for-all type option. Why shouldn't somebody conclude that you are doing the bidding of the financial industry?

And to Rockefeller's platitude, "Don't worry about the insurance companies. Believe me, we're going to take care of them," Husseini responds in a most un-Stephanopoulos manner:

You say not to worry about the insurance companies, but even though you obviously come from a very wealthy family, you've raised money for your campaigns--the No. 1 sector, according to Open Secrets, is finance and insurance. Why shouldn't it be seen that a lot of people in Congress are in effect doing the bidding of the insurance companies?