Brian Ross To Explain Video Stunt After "Planned Vacation"
Gawker reports that Toyota Motor Sales has sent a letter to ABC News President David Westin, requesting that Brian Ross’s report on unintended acceleration in Toyotas be retracted. Gawker had previously uncovered Ross’s deceptive video editing, and Toyota’s complaint built on allegations first raised by the website. Ross’s reliance on Professor David Gilbert and Sean Kane of the Safety Research & Strategies also received a withering attack from Toyota General Counsel Christopher Reynolds. Kane and Gilbert’s financial relationship with several law firms pursuing suits against Toyota was revealed during congressional hearings, and Gilbert’s research has been insistently refuted by Toyota, none of which was mentioned in the ABC report.
Reynolds wraps up his letter with gusto:
Brian Ross is on a “long-planned vacation,” according to ABC News, and “our lawyers are looking at it, and we will respond.” But did he take a private jet?
More by Edward Niedermeyer
Comments
Join the conversation
Precisely why I virtually NEVER look at mainstream "media" any more. The scales fell off my eyes decades ago, in fact. I rely upon TONS of different internet views - virtually all of them "non-mainstream" - to help inform my view of what is happening in the real world. Far more reliable (though of course imperfect because of being run by fallable humans). The more directions that I can look at a given subject, the better informed I feel.
I'd have to say that after the Sike's and New York Nanny frauds, and quick action on Toyota's Smart team investigators, that news stories about "out of control" Toyota's will now "suddenly disappear". The fear factor that was so obviously exploited by news organizations has now been used to great effect on them. The reason being that there is not a single major news network on the planet that wants its name tied to a false news story it covered. Fear? They'd rather run naked and blindfolded through a razor blade factory before the manner in which they reported the news becomes the story itself, instead of the news they were trying to report. You can bet that every news CEO and editor in the nation is now gun shy. If and when the next Toyota "out of control" story reaches their desks it will be strictly "off limits", count on it. Unofficially, the Toyota recall stories have now stopped because the fear they used so well on a nation was finally used against them.