In an apparent effort to salvage its reputation, a convenient and timely leak sprung up at ABC News Monday regarding disgraced reporter Brian Ross. And now, thanks to this convenient and timely leak, the whole wide world knows that ABC News president James Goldston has never “felt more rage and disappointment and frustration that I felt through this weekend and through the last half of Friday.”
If you think that is unfair or cynical, you should know that back in 2012, when Ross disgraced himself by falsely blaming a movie theater shooting on a Tea Partier, Goldston’s conference call of righteous rage was also conveniently leaked, that time to the left-wing Politico.
This convenient and timely leak somehow ended up at the left-wing CNN.
As we all now know, Brian Ross, one of the most notorious fake news-spreaders not currently working at CNN or the Washington Post, tanked the stock market Friday morning with the outrageously false claim that President Trump’s former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn was prepared to testify that candidate Trump ordered him to get in contact with the Russians.
No one at all familiar with the left-wing Ross believed that bunk for a second, but stocks still tanked because this bombshell could only mean one thing — that Trump is in fact guilty of colluding with the Dirty Reds and was therefore on the road to impeachment.
There was just one little problem — it was not true. Not even close. It was President-elect Trump who told his incoming national security advisor to contact the Russians, not candidate Trump, and that difference is all the difference — is the difference between Trump acting responsibly and acting impeachably (if that is not a real world thank the public schools).
Anyway, because ABC News is a real news organization committed to objective truth, it took the left-wing network seven hours(!) to issue a “clarification.” Not a correction, mind you. Not a retraction. A clarification; which is exactly what we have come to expect from the Clinton Foundation Network.
And so, in order to prove itself a real news organization buried in real journalists committed to all that is holy and righteous about journalism, ABC News punished Ross by … giving him four weeks off (over the holidays) without pay.
Oh, no, not that briar patch.
Naturally, that so-called punishment did not go over very well with those of us who do not cocktail and backslap in the velvet, high-rise salons populated by our media elite — you know, us Deplorables who are actually held accountable when we do things like, say, tank the stock market with fake news.
How fortunate for ABC News, then, that this convenient and timely leak happened when it did.
According to CNN, on Monday’s editorial call, Goldston raged and raged and raged about how what Brian Ross did in no way reflected what ABC News really is.
“We just went on air with that information,” Goldston proclaimed. “We hadn’t approved doing that. And the thing that just kills me about this is all we had to do was wait. We had to wait a few minutes. A few minutes after that, the charging documents came out. We know that those charging documents had come out, and we had looked to those charging documents, and the charging documents didn’t match what we thought the story was. We would have not gone with that story.”
Goldston also brought up the fact that it took all day for ABC News to issue its “clarification.”
“The thing that compounded our mistake is that not only did we make a mistake, if we had then corrected ourselves right away, again — we wouldn’t be in this position,” he raged. “It would have been a very different story … This is not acceptable. It’s not acceptable. And we will all pay the price for a long time.”
And then, thanks to this convenient and timely leak, under the bus went Brian Ross.
“No one wants to work with him,” said a real journalist who works for ABC News.
“The future doesn’t seem bright for him,” added another real journalist who works for ABC News.
It’s a major embarrassment,” said a third real journalist who works for ABC News.
“It makes me cringe,” exclaimed a fourth real journalist who works for ABC News, who then added a crucially important talking point he HAD NO IDEA would soon be heard by the entire world!
“This is not what any networks needs when people are so quick to say ‘fake news’ to you. It makes me sick to my stomach.”
Behind the scenes ABC News actually sounds like a credible news organization.
But when the product they produce in no way reflects this timely and convenient leak, I cannot be the only one who smells the Kabuki.
ADDED: ABC News Ross will no longer be allowed to cover anything Trump-related. Tea Partiers, however, remain fair game.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.