ABC News has suspended Emmy Award-winning broadcast journalist David Wright this week in light of a recently released undercover video widely believed to have reflected badly on the network.
Wright’s suspension was initially made public Wednesday in an exclusive statement to Project Veritas, the right-wing investigative news outlet responsible for producing the video which revealed the correspondent’s radical-left political values and personal feelings that ABC News lacks journalistic integrity.
The length of Wright’s suspension has not been revealed, however, the network has announced it will be removing the reporter from the political beat upon his return.
“Any action that damages our reputation for fairness and impartiality or gives the appearance of compromising it harms ABC News and the individuals involved,” ABC News wrote.
“To avoid any possible appearance of bias,” the outlet added, “he will be reassigned away from political coverage when he returns.”
Wright had unknowingly voiced concerns regarding ABC’s journalistic integrity to Project Veritas at the Doubletree Hotel bar in Manchester, New Hampshire, while covering the first-to-vote state’s Feb. 11 primary for ABC’s “Nightline.”
According to Project Veritas, the network, struggling to keep up with increasingly popular digital news media, has moved away from reporting on events “that could make a difference,” instead focusing on moments of drama within the Trump administration and 2020 Democratic primary cycle.
As a result, Wright told the outlet, the truth has been reemphasized, becoming far less important to the editorial process at ABC and similar networks.
“We live in a moment where people live in echo chambers and the truth suffers and, in an effort, to compete, we’ve become an echo chamber ourselves,” Wright said. “We’ve been in the mainstream media we have an effort to match the zippy news cycle with responding to the latest tweet and trying to keep pace with the desperate pace of it all.”
“We’re easily distracted and that means that we don’t bring focused attention to something that could make a difference,” Wright continued. “I think, some of that at least in the place that I work, and places like it, is that, with Trump we’re interested in three things: the outrage of the day, the investigation, and of the palace intrigue of who’s backstabbing whom. But beyond that, we don’t really cover the guy.”
“We’ve lost, at least in television, we’ve lost any sense of context and perspective and it’s just, the urgent moment, the horse race and the outrage from Trump,” the correspondent later added.
“We often talk about how it used to be better.”
“We’re all guilty of the same thing. I think that all the big news organizations, I’m speaking about broadcast television, that’s all I’m speaking about. ABC, CBS, NBC,” he said. “And we recognize that we are dinosaurs and we’re in danger of dying.”
Wright had also unknowingly admitted to Project Veritas during his New Hampshire primary coverage that he was in fact a supporter of “democratic socialism” — a political ideology promoted and popularized within the U.S. by radical Vermont senator and two-time Democratic presidential primary candidate Bernie Sanders.
In fact, Wright told the outlet, he was simply an outright socialist.
“Oh yeah. More than that I would consider myself a socialist,” the political correspondent said. “I think there should be national health insurance. I’m totally fine with reining in corporations, I think there are too many billionaires, and I think there’s a wealth gap — that’s a problem.”
EXCLUSIVE: @ABC News SUSPENDS Political Correspondent David Wright(@WrightUps) after he is caught by @Project_Veritas on undercover video identifying himself as a ‘Socialist’ and admitting the network spikes news important to voters.#ExposeABC
UPDATES: ExposeABC.com
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ABC has struggled recently with public perceptions regarding its credibility, suffering major blow-back last November in light of revelations that the network had for three years failed to report on exclusive details regarding wealthy financier Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged sex offenses.
The development had come from Project Veritas, when an unnamed network insider leaked never-before-seen footage of “20/20” co-host and investigative journalist Amy Robach venting about the situation on a hot-mic to a producer in August 2019.
“I’ve had the story for three years, I’ve had this interview with Virginia Roberts. We would not put it on the air,” Robach said. “First of all, I was told, ‘Who’s Jeffrey Epstein, no one knows who that is, this is a stupid story.'”
“We would not put it on the air,” the host added. “It was unbelievable what we had, Clinton, we had everything.”
High-profile efforts have reportedly been made at ABC to seek out and remove the insider responsible for leaking Robach’s soundbite.
As of yet, however, the source has not been found and “continues to gather damaging information from behind the network walls,” Project Veritas reported.
ABC News Suspends Reporter After He Blasts Network, Calls Himself a Socialist in Undercover Video
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February 27, 2020
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Reviewed by CUZZ BLUE
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February 27, 2020
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