Brian Ross Suspended Without Pay For 4 Weeks Over #FakeNews

Brian Ross set the progressives' and NeverTrumpers' (BIRM) hearts aflutter with his claim that candidate Trump may have directed Michael Flynn to contact the Russians in 2016.

Small problem: It wasn't candidate Trump who may have done that in 2016, it was president-elect Trump in 2017, during the transition.

Making such an outreach perfectly legal. Indeed, it would be malfeasance to not make contact with important foreign governments during the transition.

ABCNews allowed this false report to stand for hours. As they can't suspend their entire organization for negligence and bias, they've suspended Brian Ross for 4 weeks.

Oh: His #FakeNews tanked the stock market, too.

After Ross's story tanked the stock market, ABC first issued a clarification and then a full correction to the story, and suspended him for four weeks without pay.

You probably know Brian Ross from his many, many errors, almost all of which are errors made in the direction of the progressive cause.

I hear Brian Ross may have Tea Party connections.

Jake Novak, a senior CNBC columnist, writes on CNBC's website that the media's serial errors, all made in the direction of taking Trump down, threatens to "destroy" the media as we know it.

It doesn't take a Trump apologist to feel ABC or other networks and newspapers are so willing to bash Trump that these kinds of mistakes have been inevitable. And if the industry tries to palm all on Ross himself, it will surely be repeated by others.

The overall news media's credibility and viability is being threatened mostly by itself -- far more than by Trump.

...

[T]he news media is using Trump's attacks as a way to abandon all self-criticism. That self-examination and striving for improvement is the epitome of what it means to be a professional in any industry. No matter how dangerous Trump's criticisms of the news media may be, now is not the time to drop our standards....

This dangerous pattern will be repeated until top news organizations re-examine their operations and institute a better set of best practices.

If they don't, Trump won't have to destroy the American news media. It will simply destroy itself.

posted by Ace at 02:35 PM

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