It's clear how ABC News feels about Denver police arresting producer Asa Eslocker for trying to record footage of Democratic senators meeting with VIP donors at a private gathering at the Brown Palace Hotel: They're pissed. That's why Brian Ross, whose investigative team Eslocker is on, makes a point to describe the "cigar-smoking Denver police sergeant" who "twisted the producer's arm behind him to put on handcuffs." The police claim the sidewalk in front of the hotel is the hotel's private property, so Eslocker was theoretically trespassing. Or, they caved to pressure from some very powerful politicos to remove the press trying to document their closed-door doings. You know, because they might be doing some shady things.
If you're an accountant, you're only as good as your client's last tax return that successfully hid the bulk of his income in an offshore shell company. If you're a journalist, you're only as good as your last report. Not that any of your past transgressions will never come back to haunt you, as they are for ABC News' Brian Ross. The newsman — who in 2001 reported the post-9/11 anthrax attacks might be linked to Saddam Hussein because tests showed traces of bentonite, a chemical linked to Iraq's supposed bio-weapons — has been facing harsh criticism from the likes of Salon's Glenn Greenwald, NYU's Jay Rosen, and the Center for Citizen Media's Dan Gillmor for failing to follow up his report — which was based on the information from three (or four?) "well-placed" government sources — with the acknowledgment that, well, he got everything completely wrong. And that his report might've helped build support for that Iraq war we're still in the middle of!
Nonsense!, says Ross, the upstanding journalist whose credibility has been turned into potato latkes. CONTINUED »
Government scientist Bruce Ivins killed himself last week, amidst reports federal officials were going to arrest him as a suspect in the anthrax-in-envelopes scares following 9/11. Ivins, who worked with scary molecules like Cholera before turning his attention to anthrax full time, basically went off the deep end as he was closed in on, and even his shrink was scared of him. With Ivins' death, though, comes new questions about Sept. 11's aftermath and the anthrax scare — namely, how ABC News might have contributed to government-planted misinformation about the situation. What type of misinformation? Say, for instance, that Saddam Hussein's biological weapons program was behind the anthrax scare. You remember Mr. Hussein, don't you? He's the late former Iraqi leader who was so evil the United States spent billions of dollars on a casualty-laden war, all based on various pieces of wrong information, like non-existent WMDs and now, perhaps, a non-existent link between Hussein and the anthrax. CONTINUED »
