In a message posted Monday afternoon by ABC News PR, Brian Ross and his producer Rhonda Schwartz have decided to leave ABC “after more than two decades” at the network, leaving multiple scandals in their wake.
The news was unsurprising given the chief investigative correspondent’s long history of not only having a liberal bias, but at least five instances of peddling false news disguised as fact (which you can check out here) and the most recent coming on December 1 with a false story about former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.
ABC News President James Goldston sent a note out to staff, informing them that, “[a]fter more than two decades at ABC News, Brian Ross and Rhonda Schwartz have decided to leave the company.”
Goldston praised them as having been “recognized with nearly every prestigious award in our business – an impressive tally of four George Polk awards, four Peabody awards, four duPonts, five Murrows, 17 News and Documentary Emmys and the Harvard Goldsmith Prize, in 2014, for the single best investigative report in print or broadcast.”
In a joint statement, the pair announced that “[t]he time has come to say good-bye” following 24 years with ABC. Here’s another excerpt from their statement:
We leave with enormous gratitude for all those who supported us and helped build the industry’s most robust and honored investigative unit. It is a point of great pride to see the soaring careers of so many of the talented and dedicated people who worked with us in producing hundreds of ground-breaking investigative reports that empowered the disenfranchised, exposed corruption and helped make our society a better place.
The pair concluded that while they’re done with the Disney-owned network, they’re “hardly leaving investigative journalism” because “[t]here is much more to do.”
The final nail in Ross’s credibility at ABC came on December 1 when he falsely claimed that Flynn is “prepared to testify...against President Trump, against members of the Trump family and others in the White House” and state that “as a candidate, Donald Trump, ordered him — directed him to make contact with the Russians.”
Hours later, the story fell apart and it was found that the order came when Trump was President-elect. Ross was subsequently suspended for four weeks without pay and then removed from being able to cover the President. Ross’s blunder was listed a month later as a winner in the President’s 2017 Fake News Awards.
Considering the reverence CNN and MSNBC show for disgraced former CBS Evening News anchor Dan Rather, it wouldn’t be a shock to see Ross end up there or make guest appearances to opine on the news.
