ABC says interview with Epstein accuser wasn’t ready to air

By DAVID BAUDER
November 5, 2019

NEW YORK (AP) — ABC News faced questions Tuesday about its reluctance to air a sensitive story of alleged sexual misconduct after a leaked video emerged of reporter Amy Robach complaining about how her bosses handled an interview with a Jeffrey Epstein accuser.

The conservative web site Project Veritas released video of Robach venting that “every day I get more and more pissed” that her 2015 interview with Virginia Giuffre never made the air. Robach made her remarks late in August while sitting in a Times Square studio with a microphone but not on the air.

ABC said Tuesday that the interview didn’t meet its standards because it lacked sufficient corroborating evidence. Robach, co-anchor of ABC’s “20/20” newsmagazine, said the leaked video caught her “in a private moment of frustration.”

The episode was remindful of Ronan Farrow’s accusations that NBC News discouraged his reporting on Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein’s misconduct. Farrow then took his Pulitzer Prize-winning story to the New Yorker magazine.

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Project Veritas is known for its efforts embarrass mainstream media outlets, often sending undercover reporters to catch employees making statements that display an anti-conservative bent. But it needed no such help with the Robach video, which Project Veritas said came from an “ABC insider” it would not identify.

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