Media circle wagons to silence a story that won't die

FPI / November 11, 2019

Standards? What standards?

In its refusal to run Amy Robach’s exclusive on pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, ABC News “ostensibly a news organization, sat on one of the biggest and most consequential stories of the past decade. By the company's explanation, this was for the sake of an editorial standard, a standard that was strangely missing from its coverage of another significant moment in recent U.S. history,” the Washington Examiner noted in a Nov. 6 editorial.

ABC News and most other corporate media outlets had no problem with standards when it came to coverage of the sexual assault allegations against then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh, “even though corroborating evidence was nonexistent and most of the stories being told were quite clearly lies,” the editorial said. “In fact, some of the allegations published by ABC were so outlandish that the FBI and the Senate Judiciary Committee didn’t even consider them.”

Meanwhile, reports circulated last week that the staffer ABC had suspected of leaking the Robach video to Project Veritas was fired.

“According to the reports, ABC executives informed their counterparts at CBS, where the staffer had recently been hired, of their suspicions and the employee soon lost her job,” Fox News reported.

The fired CBS staffer, Ashley Bianco, publicly denied that she was the leaker. At the same time, Project Veritas published a note from the alleged "ABC insider" it claimed was behind the leak. It wasn’t Bianco.

“I did not" leak the tape, Bianco told media personality Megyn Kelly in an interview posted on YouTube. “I’m not the whistleblower. I’m sorry to ABC, but the leaker is still inside.”

The person who allegedly did leak the video, using the pseudonym "Ignotus", wrote in a piece published by Project Veritas: "I did not and do not seek any personal gain from this information whether it be financial or otherwise," and expressed their desire to make the information public out of "anger, confusion and sadness."

"I’ve walked the halls experiencing similar feelings we are all having right now," wrote the supposed leaker, addressing ABC employees. "All of you regardless of your own personal differences in one form or another do an outstanding job. I sincerely enjoy working with each and every one of you and will continue to do so throughout our careers."

Ignotus then addressed "those wrongfully accused," an apparent reference to Bianco.

"It is terrible that you have been lashed out at by the company. I know some may put the burden of guilt on me, but my conscience is clear," Ignotus wrote. "The actions of the company towards you are the result of their own and not anyone else. The public outcry, from coast to coast, of all people, creeds, and political affiliations, is clear. I have not one doubt that there will always be support for you, and you will have prosperous careers. For neither you, nor I, have done anything wrong."

The killing of Robach's exclusive and the collusion between ABC and CBS in pursuit of the staffer who leaked the video was a huge story for America's media.

"Just like NBC News covering up for Harvey Weinstein, here you have ABC News covering up for a rapist and sex-trafficker, and almost certainly doing so as a means to protect Hillary Clinton’s doomed 2016 presidential campaign. Robach says right in the video that she had the goods on Bill Clinton," Breitbart's John Nolte noted.

But CNN's so-called "media reporter" Brian Stelter completely ignored it.

Stelter’s show, which not surprisingly is in ratings freefall, is called Reliable Sources, and promises viewers that its purpose is to “examine the media world, telling the story behind the story.”

"Even for Stelter, though, ignoring this story is just beyond the beyond… Shameless cover ups are nothing new with Zucker’s Puppet, but this one is going to be remembered, will be defining," Nolte wrote.

Between Sept. 13 and 24 of 2018, ABC News, CBS, and NBC devoted nearly 6 hours to the accusations against Kavanaugh. The Examiner pointed out that just 8 percent of that coverage “included Kavanaugh’s denials and lack of evidence behind the accusations. Yet ABC News couldn’t be bothered to give Robach a few minutes to cover credible and substantiated accusations against a pedophile and sex trafficker who had been living it up with the rich and famous on both sides of the pond.”

In the Project Veritas video where she reveals ABC killed the story, Robach says she was told “Who’s Jeffrey Epstein. No one knows who that is. This is a stupid story.’ ”

The Examiner wrote: “It should be added here that Page Six, the New York Post's gossip column, had reported on ABC's George Stephanopoulos attending parties at Epstein's townhouse on Manhattan's Upper East Side. This not only gives the lie to the excuse that Epstein was insignificant, but it also offers a motive for top brass at ABC to do what they did.”

The Examiner also noted that one of ABC's considerations in not running Robach's story on Epstein was the potential loss of a chance to interview Prince William and Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge.

“Maybe Kavanaugh should have married a member of the British royal family,” the Examiner wrote.

Epstein, the Examiner wrote, “had powerful people on his side who likely bullied ABC into silence. Some of them may have worked for the network. But when Kavanaugh’s hearings rolled around, ABC zealously stepped into the role of bully, attempting to destroy the life of a man whose only crime was that he was appointed by President Trump.”

Free Press International