Source: ABC's newsroom upset with decision to tap Andrew Breitbart
(The PlumLine) — It looks like lefty bloggers aren’t the only ones irked by ABC News’s decision to tap Andrew Breitbart for election-night analysis: People in ABC’s newsroom were also caught completely off guard by the news, a newsroom source tells me.
“This blindsided a good portion of the team here,” the source emails. “And not in a good way.”
ABC News has confirmed Breitbart’s announcement that he will be bringing analysis live from Arizona on election eve, along with Dana Loesch, the editor of Breitbart’s Web site Big Journalism.
The news kicked off a round of criticism from liberal bloggers who pointed out that Breitbart is an unabashed right-wing activist with a known history of trafficking in distortions and falsehoods, most recently the heavily edited and subsequently debunked video supposedly showing racially-charged comments by Shirley Sherrod.
ABC’s David Ford has now justified the decision this way:
“He will be one of many voices on our air, including Bill Adair of Politifact. If Andrew Breitbart says something that is incorrect, we have other voices to call him on it.”
The problem with this, of course, is that it suggests that ABC thinks it’s very possible Breitbart may try to mislead viewers — but that this won’t be a problem because someone else will be there to correct him. You can see why the network’s professional journalists might be unhappy about this.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/plum-line/2010/10/source_abcs_newsroom_upset_wit.html
While ABC touts is BS concern about Andrew Breitbart distorting the news, let us remember that is was ABC's fantastic journalistic integrity that put Dan Rather out of a job in 2004. Dan Rather stood by the assertions made in the discredited story of forged memos regarding President Bush's National Guard record.
On September 8, 2004, Dan Rather cited “exclusive information, including documents” to justify major CBS Evening News and 60 Minutes stories alleging that George W. Bush shirked his duties when he was in the Texas Air National Guard in the 1960s and 1970s. Within a few hours of those documents being posted on CBS News’ Web site, however, typography experts voiced skepticism that the documents had actually originated with their alleged author and Bush’s former commanding officer, the late Lt. Colonel Jerry Killian.
As the evidence mounted, Rather stubbornly clung to the idea that his story was bulletproof, and he derided critics as partisans and Internet rumormongers. When he “apologized” on September 20, Rather would not concede that the documents were forgeries, only that he and CBS could “no longer vouch for their authenticity.” On November 23, 2004, CBS announced that Rather would soon be leaving his job as anchor of the CBS Evening News. An investigative report released on January 10, 2005 faulted CBS’s rush to put the flawed story on the air and their “stubborn” defense in the days that followed, but oddly decided that they could not blame partisan bias.
http://www.mediaresearch.org/profiles/rather/crisis.asp
Fast forward to 2010, and ABC worries about integrity in the news?! It's utterly laughable. There is a reason their ratings are in the tank. True 24 hour news channels have taken a hit, but another reason is the liberal bias that is all too obvious.
I won't call Breitbart a man without a slant, but the truth is he represents the antithesis to traditional "liberal" media. They know that, and are threatened by him.
