Thursday, May 25, 2006

ABC News and Guesswork

Ten minutes into ABC’s World News Tonight, after the lengthy Enron coverage, Elizabeth Vargas got around to the Brian Ross Hastert slime story.

She introduced Ross, who was in the studio with her.

He went on to supply the "new" information ABC gathered today from its shadowy "sources."

Ross' story

It was the same old trash with extra emphasis on Hastert's letter to the Secretary of the Interior about an Indian casino. A few days earlier, Jack Abramoff had hosted a fundraiser for Hastert.

Ross doesn't buy Hastert's claim that the fundraiser and the letter weren't connected.

From Brian Ross' story, "Hastert: Letter Just a Coincidence":

"'That's very unusual activity, and we believed it needed to be and needs to be investigated,' said Fred Wertheimer,
president of Democracy 21, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to pursuit of democracy for all Americans."


Typical to Brian Ross' style, this is extremely misleading. Democracy 21 isn't nonpartisan. It has a decidedly liberal slant.

Example 1

Example 2

Example 3

At the end of his report, Ross acknowledged that "it could well turn out that Hastert did nothing unlawful."

He qualified that statement by saying that the investigation is just beginning.

Is that ABC's standard? Is that their justification for sliming someone?

In other words, the investigation is in its early stages, but we'll just assume Hastert's guilty of wrong-doing in the meantime.

So, Ross and ABC report that Hastert is knee-deep in corruption without any proof.

That's not journalism. That's guesswork. That's garbage.

That's ABC.


4 comments:

The WordSmith from Nantucket said...

Here's what I was referring to in my comment on your other post:

Laura: I got an email from a friend of mine, who works at ABC and I won’t say who this person is. But she is very uh you know she is a very significant role at ABC. (Laura begins to read the email) Laura, You ought to come down on ABC’s Brian Ross this morning. I’m sure you’ve seen or heard his report about Hastert being under investigation by the Justice Department for being “in the Mix” of the Abramoff scandal. (Laura comments) I don’t want to give give this other part away but (back to email) a friend as now told me that last night reporters in the press gallery were laughing out loud as the story aired on ABC last night. They all know that this report by Brian Ross was totally bogus. Most of the reporters and the producer who have been actually covering this story, who are really connected to this story knew of this so called explosive letter months ago and knew that there was nothing to it. ABC, I noticed is slowly weaseling out of this story. Which with each subsequent update but still refuses to retract it. Maybe this will be Brian Ross’ Dan Rather moment.


Exposetheleft.com had the transcript. Laura Ingraham's website has the audio up.

Mary said...

Thanks, WS!

Mark said...

ABC Liberal??? Who Knew?

Sorry I haven't been around much lately, Mary. The changes at my job are keeping me hopping. I barely have time to write my own blog.

Mary said...

Yes, the fact that ABC slants to the Left comes as a shock to us all. :)

I hope things are going well for you, Mark.