When It’s Okay to Take Down a Whistleblower

 

ABC is taking seriously the leak that exposed one of its anchors venting her frustration about an investigation into the misdeeds of Jeffrey Epstein collecting mothballs. A whistleblower with access to the video leaked it to activist James O’Keefe, and the results were explosive. Ronan Farrow’s investigation into Harvey Weinstein showed just how far NBC would go to protect a serial sexual abuser, and O’Keefe’s video showed there’s more of the same for a pedophile (at the behest of at least the Royal Family, if not also the Clintons) at ABC.

ABC Network is taking seriously the video… by spending its time trying to figure out who the whistleblower was. It seems they succeeded, and the staffer they identified was then at CBS… until CBS fired him. Are you keeping track? All three major networks are now involved in burying disturbing sexual abuse allegations, and they wonder why the President calls the media the “enemy of the people” to roaring crowds across the country.

I don’t know about you, but I’m looking forward to everyone at all of these networks taking to the fainting couches about Donald Trump’s sexual escapades again for the next year after all of these revelations. It’s not that they don’t matter — they do. But since the Weinstein and Epstein stories have broken, it seems positively naive to assume someone in power in America might possibly have something resembling morals, in politics, the bedroom, or otherwise. Donald J. Trump Jr. on The View this morning offered a window into how hard the Trump camp will punch back with the ammunition their critics are providing. 

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  1. Doug Watt Member
    Doug Watt
    @DougWatt

    Sexual abuse does not concern the media, it is not the act itself, it is who the abuser is that matters.

    • #1
  2. Bob Thompson Member
    Bob Thompson
    @BobThompson

    I thought a whistleblower was someone who works for the employer about whom they are revealing acts of which they don’t approve.

    • #2
  3. Bob Thompson Member
    Bob Thompson
    @BobThompson

    So media will report news about wrongdoing revealed by whistleblowers except when the revealed wrongdoing is committed by media?

    • #3
  4. Eustace C. Scrubb Member
    Eustace C. Scrubb
    @EustaceCScrubb

    Not that the media doesn’t want to talk about sexual abuse in the media. Hollywood has made movies about the abuses of Roger Ailes – The Loudest Voice & Bombshell. I’m sure the Epstein & Weinstein movies will be coming out any time now.

    • #4
  5. Jon1979 Inactive
    Jon1979
    @Jon1979

    What Don Jr. did to the ladies on “The View” has its antecedent in what George H.W. Bush did  30-plus years ago to Dan Rather. As with Trump supposedly being invited on the show to talk about one thing, only to have Whoopi, Joy, etc. begin to attack him for something else entirely, Bush had been told his interview would be a general topic one, only to have Rather preview it with a 6 1/2-minute piece on Iran-Contra.

    Bush fought back by reminding Rather than he had walked off his CBS Evening News broadcast in a diva snit the previous year because a U.S. Open tennis match had run overtime and into his show. Trump’s push-back today was even more current-event related, as he nailed the ladies over both ABC’s spiking of their  Epstein story, along with Whoopi’s earlier playing down of a rape charge because she liked the person accused, and Behar’s very un-PC past moment in blackface.

    It would actually be interesting if more Republican/conservative guest who came in for hectoring interviews of the types Democrats rarely, if ever, get started hoisting the networks on their own double-standard petards (in ABC’s case, I’m sure if George Stephanopolus has some GOPer on “This Week” on Sunday, he’s not going to want his own dinner at Epstein’s home brought up, since it came after Jeffrey’s first conviction for having sex with a minor). Of course, to do that would be to get scratched off the Inside-the-Beltway cool kids club list, and I’m sure some Republicans would prefer to remain in the media’s good graces, no matter how badly they get treated at crunch time (see McCain, John and the 2008 election for an example of someone getting treated like dirt and then bowing to his tormentors in order to get his fawning media image back).

    • #5
  6. Franco Member
    Franco
    @Franco

    Just remember, every GOP President or candidate after Reagan refused to take on the corrupt media. ( The media wasn’t as corrupt in Reagan’s day as now)

    In failing to do that, they sold their voters and constituents down the river. That’s right. They were either complete cowards, clueless or complicit ( McCain). 

    Now in 2016- 2020 the first leader who stands up to them is mocked and reviled for doing so by people who are too stupid to recognize this media as the enemy. 

    I will never have any respect for these politicians or pundits. The Never Trumper types, to a man and woman, are responsible as enablers. 

    • #6
  7. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    I’m still trying to figure out CBS’s angle vis-a-vie ABC in this case. I don’t know what I would say if I were running CBS, but I would have probably worked the phrase “get bent” in there somewhere.

    • #7
  8. Seawriter Contributor
    Seawriter
    @Seawriter

    Percival (View Comment):
    I’m still trying to figure out CBS’s angle vis-a-vie ABC in this case.

    Probably something along the lines of “all you have to do is fire our former employee and we won’t run this story we have about how ABC’s -Insert Name- was shagging women as a condition of employment.”

    • #8
  9. Jon1979 Inactive
    Jon1979
    @Jon1979

    Percival (View Comment):

    I’m still trying to figure out CBS’s angle vis-a-vie ABC in this case. I don’t know what I would say if I were running CBS, but I would have probably worked the phrase “get bent” in there somewhere.

    CBS had its own Charlie Rose problem. Not as big a blow-up as NBC with its Matt Lauer problem and other incidents that led to Ronan Farrow walking out on them, but there may be other things behind the network eye they may be worried about coming out in the future, if they have someone on staff who isn’t willing to silently go along with cover-ups (or at the very least, simply fume behind the scenes in order to keep their high-paying job, as Robach did).

    Meanwhile, the fired whistleblower apparently has done an interview with Megyn Kelly, whose ouster at NBC seems to also have had some linkage to her refusal to keep quiet about their cover-ups. Should be interesting when it comes to background on how many people at ABC knew about the Epstein story yet said nothing, and if anyone at CBS said anything when the whistleblower was axed.

    • #9
  10. Craig Inactive
    Craig
    @Craig

    Being Left means: “Never letting double standards get in the way of your own double standards” 

    • #10
  11. Ralphie Inactive
    Ralphie
    @Ralphie

    Human nature never changes. It wasn’t that the communists could control everyone’s speech personally, they just had to make an example of someone. Heck, in North Korea, they eliminate the whole family, so I guess just a job loss and career ruination is not that bad (sarcasim). That should teach anyone else thinking about spilling the beans about what goes on behind the news.  

    • #11
  12. Western Chauvinist Member
    Western Chauvinist
    @WesternChauvinist

    Bethany Mandel: I don’t know about you, but I’m looking forward to everyone at all of these networks taking to the fainting couches about Donald Trump’s sexual escapades again for the next year after all of these revelations. It’s not that they don’t matter — they do.

    Sexual escapades are not rape and predation of minors. Sexual escapades are committed by consenting adults — you know, like, what women will “let” rich and powerful men do to them (Trump was speaking a truism, not confessing a personal history). Sexual escapades stopped mattering in our politics a long, long time ago. They didn’t matter to Grover Cleveland, Harding, FDR, JFK, or LBJ. They only mattered to WJC because he was preying on a subordinate in the White House and got caught (and he had a history of assaulting women and, it turns out, taking multiple flights to Pedophile Island — Jeffrey Epstein didn’t hang himself).

    Any comparison to Donald Trump who is a playboy, not a predator, is unfair. Moral distinctions matter. He who is without sin should cast the first stone. And when the president who heartland Americans elected is reforming the judiciary and possibly saving the republic, maybe we shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth.

    • #12
  13. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    There’s a movie in the back of this somewhere. All the President’s Men meets Porky’s.

    • #13
  14. Jimmy Carter Member
    Jimmy Carter
    @JimmyCarter

    Percival (View Comment):

    There’s a movie in the back of this somewhere. All the President’s Men meets Porky’s.

    • #14
  15. DrewInWisconsin, Type Monkey Member
    DrewInWisconsin, Type Monkey
    @DrewInWisconsin

    A twist:

    She was fired because she accessed the video while she was at ABC.

    She was not fired from ABC. She left ABC for CBS. CBS fired her because while she was at ABC she accessed the video.

    Her crime wasn’t that she leaked it. Her crime was that she saw it.

    • #15
  16. Jeff Hawkins Inactive
    Jeff Hawkins
    @JeffHawkins

    Left wing whistleblowers are to be given undue importance as they are heroes fighting evil

    Right wing whistleblowers are to be thoroughly scrutinized and made examples of, so that people fear speaking out.

    • #16
  17. Franco Member
    Franco
    @Franco

    Western Chauvinist (View Comment):

    Bethany Mandel: I don’t know about you, but I’m looking forward to everyone at all of these networks taking to the fainting couches about Donald Trump’s sexual escapades again for the next year after all of these revelations. It’s not that they don’t matter — they do.

    Sexual escapades are not rape and predation of minors. Sexual escapades are committed by consenting adults — you know, like, what women will “let” rich and powerful men do to them (Trump was speaking a truism, not confessing a personal history). Sexual escapades stopped mattering in our politics a long, long time ago. They didn’t matter to Grover Cleveland, Harding, FDR, JFK, or LBJ. They only mattered to WJC because he was preying on a subordinate in the White House and got caught (and he had a history of assaulting women and, it turns out, taking multiple flights to Pedophile Island — Jeffrey Epstein didn’t hang himself).

    Any comparison to Donald Trump who is a playboy, not a predator, is unfair. Moral distinctions matter. He who is without sin should cast the first stone. And when the president who heartland Americans elected is reforming the judiciary and possibly saving the republic, maybe we shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth.

    Thanks for this. Somehow I think some of our ‘friends’ on the right try to send their packages of moralism on the ride with feminism as though it’s the same. They get to signal their loathing of Trump and criticize Democrats and the media.

    I had a business partner who was a sex addict. It was absolutely astounding how fixated he was, and how often he slept with different women. Also noteworthy, how many women were willing to have casual sex with him. But he was always respectful of “women” and to the best of his ability was honest. They knew what the deal was. He also never preyed on a woman who was in the least bit under the influence. In other words, he was no Bill Clinton. 
    Donald Trump is not much different than any man. If he were anything like Clinton, or as prolific as my former business associate, we’d certainly know about it.

    This is Bethany trying to scold and shame men into fidelity. That’s natural I suppose, and maybe living a perfect life with the perfect woman is to be encouraged, but it’s pathetically unrealistic to expect even most men to live up to those standards. Be thankful you have a hubby who doesn’t cheat, and show it(!) Let’s just start with the predators before we go after… virtually everybody, for political gain.

     

     

    • #17
  18. DrewInWisconsin, Type Monkey Member
    DrewInWisconsin, Type Monkey
    @DrewInWisconsin

    Franco (View Comment):
    Donald Trump is not much different than any man. If he were anything like Clinton, or as prolific as my former business associate, we’d certainly know about it.

    Damn right. If President Trump made multiple visits to Underage Sex Slave Island, none of the cable and broadcast news outlets would be spiking that story.

    But Bill Clinton? Bob Menendez? Randy Andy? Bury those stories so deep that you’d hit magma if you tried to find them.

    • #18
  19. Jeff Hawkins Inactive
    Jeff Hawkins
    @JeffHawkins

    DrewInWisconsin, Type Monkey (View Comment):

    Franco (View Comment):
    Donald Trump is not much different than any man. If he were anything like Clinton, or as prolific as my former business associate, we’d certainly know about it.

    Damn right. If President Trump made multiple visits to Underage Sex Slave Island, none of the cable and broadcast news outlets would be spiking that story.

    But Bill Clinton? Bob Menendez? Randy Andy? Bury those stories so deep that you’d hit magma if you tried to find them.

    They wouldn’t even be hiding it if all of them went WITH Trump, because the story would be Trump

    • #19
  20. DrewInWisconsin, Type Monkey Member
    DrewInWisconsin, Type Monkey
    @DrewInWisconsin

    Isn’t it interesting that the media spent the last three years covering up the crimes of America’s most famous pedophile while at the same time promoting the sexualization of “trans kids”?

    Is there an agenda here? A really skeevy agenda?

     

    • #20
  21. Western Chauvinist Member
    Western Chauvinist
    @WesternChauvinist

    DrewInWisconsin, Type Monkey (View Comment):

    Isn’t it interesting that the media spent the last three years covering up the crimes of America’s most famous pedophile while at the same time promoting the sexualization of “trans kids”?

    Is there an agenda here? A really skeevy  evil agenda?

     

    FIFY

    • #21
  22. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    Bob Thompson (View Comment):

    So media will report news about wrongdoing revealed by whistleblowers except when the revealed wrongdoing is committed by media?

    Oh, I think there are other exceptions in addition to that one.   

    • #22
  23. Bob Thompson Member
    Bob Thompson
    @BobThompson

    The Reticulator (View Comment):

    Bob Thompson (View Comment):

    So media will report news about wrongdoing revealed by whistleblowers except when the revealed wrongdoing is committed by media?

    Oh, I think there are other exceptions in addition to that one.

    Yes. But here’s something else. I don’t think the audience size is very significant in any case. I don’t think MSM is the source from which most voters get whatever it is that informs their vote. On the other hand, I don’t know where they get it either.

    • #23
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