ABC suspends Brian Ross after misleading report on Michael Flynn’s guilty plea

  One thing that struck me yesterday as I was reading some of the stories about Michael Flynn’s decision to plead guilty to lying to the FBI was the fact that many of them tried to tie this to the 2016 campaign and the allegations that Donald Trump was colluding with the Russians. In the post I wrote yesterday this was also the case with the story I used as reference from Politico.

  The most egregious example of this came from ABC when Brian Ross took to the air and reported that Donald Trump instructed Michael Flynn to contact the Russians during the 2016 campaign. A simple check of the date of the meeting in question would have quickly dispelled this error but Brian Ross could not even be bothered to check because this was an agenda driven report and today ABC announced he has been suspended without pay for four weeks. 

  Here is more:

ABC News has announced that Brian Ross would be suspended for four weeks without pay “effective immediately.”

“It is vital we get the story right and retain the trust we have built with our audience – these are our core principles. We fell far short of that yesterday,” the network said in a statement on Saturday. “Effective immediately, Brian Ross will be suspended for four weeks without pay.”

Ross came under considerable fire on Friday after he erroneously reported on live television that then-candidate Donald Trump had instructed Michael Flynn to make contact with the Russians. In a correction seven hours later, the channel admitted that it was “President-elect” Trump who had made the request of Flynn — a pretty significant difference.

ABC issued a correction on Twitter and also updated their original article.

Here is the Tweet:

  As you can see by the correction there is a huge difference between what Brian Ross reported and what turns out to be the truth. And the liberals wonder why Republicans and conservatives do not trust the mainstream media. Of course people will remember the original reporting and will forget about the correction so for all intents and purposes this was Brian Ross’ “mission accomplished” moment.

  At this point is should be remembered that this is not the first time Brian Ross has jumped to a conclusion without the facts in order to issue an agenda driven report: There was that time when Brian Ross concluded that the Colorado theater shooter was a Tea Party member simply because he found some random dude on Facebook with the same name.

malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium