ABC big rails at staff over Flynn bungle
A seething ABC News President James Goldston ranted at his staff on Monday over Brian Ross’ false report on former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn — and declared that the journalist would no longer be covering President Trump.
“I don’t think ever in my career have I felt more rage and disappointment and frustration than I felt through this weekend and through the last half of Friday,” Goldston railed at the staffers during a morning editorial call, according to CNN.
“I don’t even know how many times we’ve talked about this, how many times we have talked about the need to get it right,” he added. “That how we have to be right and not first. About how in this particular moment, with the stakes as high as these stakes are right now, we cannot afford to get it wrong.”
In an on-air segment Friday, Ross, who is ABC News’ chief investigative correspondent, implied Trump had colluded with Moscow, citing an anonymous source to report that Flynn was prepared to testify that Trump — “as a candidate” — directed him to contact Russian officials.
Ross later corrected his report on “World News Tonight” and said Trump was actually president-elect when he allegedly gave the order.
Ross was suspended for four weeks over the blunder.
CNN, which said it obtained audio of Monday’s call, reported that Goldston lamented to the staffers that ABC News “spent this weekend getting absolutely pilloried as a news division for reporting fake news,” with most of the criticism coming over social media.
“250,000 tweets. One percent positive, 99 percent negative about this news division,” he seethed, also noting “two tweets from the president.”
The news chief also told staffers that Ross would no longer be allowed to cover any stories related to Trump.
He called Ross’ reporting “just plain wrong” and said it warranted a “full review” of the news division’s vetting processes.
“We just went on air with that information,” he fumed. “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 . . . The charging documents didn’t match what we thought the story was.”
ABC employees, speaking anonymously, told CNN that Ross was essentially a pariah in the newsroom now.
“No one wants to work with him,” one said.
“The future doesn’t seem bright for him,” another said.