Boris Epsheyn’s recent
comment on Brian
Ross’s recent misreporting in relation to the Michael Flynn plea, is, as is
typical with “Bottom Lines,” not terribly original or thought out. It’s a rehashing of the “fake news” trope
favored by Trump and his supporters.
Epshteyn attempts to turn Ross into a synecdoche for the
media in general, suggesting that Ross is emblematic of a hostility to the
president endemic in the media.
Not surprisingly, Epsheyn himself distorts the facts, even
has he chastises others for doing so. He
supports his assertion by noting that Ross had erroneously reported that the
Aurora movie theater shooter was a member of the Tea Party. This is to establish the point that Ross is
vehemently anti-conservative. However,
one of the other (of several) times Ross
got a story wrong was reporting that Saddam Hussein was behind anthrax attacks
in the U.S. after 9/11. That goes
unmentioned, of course, because it doesn’t fit with the narrative Epshteyn is
weaving. (For the record, even the Bush
administration, to their credit, tried to steer ABC right on this story—that’s
how far out it was.)
