ABC News suspended senior correspondent David Wright after he was caught on undercover film by Project Veritas admitting that the network bosses spike news that is important to voters, and that ABC is unable to provide relevant news to Americans due to their bias.
Wright, who joined ABC nearly 20 years ago, reports for "Wold News Tonight," "Good Morning America" and "Nightline."
As a national political reporter at a legacy broadcaster, Wright said he feels left behind by the new digital media.
“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. 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.”
The desperate pace means reporters like him lose focus, he said.
“As a result, we’re easily distracted and that means that we don’t bring focused attention to something that could make a difference,” he said. “I think, some of that at least in the place that I work [ABC News], and places like it, is that we’ve, 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. Beyond that, we don’t really cover the guy [Trump]. -Project Veritas
Wright added that networks can’t stop Trump from dominating news cycles every day. "The first story is the big story, about Trump. And it’s about whatever outrageous thing he said or tweeted about, and it’s about, or it’s about this effort to unseat him, or it’s about, you know, ‘Today we found anonymous’ or ‘Who’s he [Trump] throwing out of the White House today,’ or ‘Who’s blowing the whistle and stabbing him [Trump] in the back?’"
"We’re not disciplined enough to cut [Trump] off and we second-guess ourselves because we’re sensitive to the accusation that we’re in the tank for the Democrats. And so that enables them, and so we enable them. And every time we take the bait on it and that’s what he wants," Wright told a Veritas operative at the Doubletree Hotel in Manchester during ABC’s coverage of the first Democratic primary.
"It’s totally and abusive relationship. He’s [Trump’s] the nightmare spouse that you can’t win an argument with," Wright added.
Trump’s domination of the media also leads to reporters not reporting the positive stories about the president. “We don’t hold him [Trump] to account. We also don’t give him credit for what things he does do.”
Q: “How do you feel about it though?”
Wright: “I feel terrible about it. I feel that the truth suffers, the voters are poorly informed, and people don’t have the opportunity to tune into whatever they want to here. It’s like there no upside in, or our bosses don’t see an upside in doing the job we’re supposed to do which is to speak truth to power and hold people to account.”
"Would you consider yourself a Democrat Socialist?" Wright was asked.
"Oh yeah. More than that I would consider myself a socialist; like 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."
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