Being a journalist is dangerous. Reporting involves war, shootouts in the street, and running toward the flames. The job of a reporter is being a witness to the world and telling the truth, but one of the biggest dangers is to speak truth about the company that pays you to tell it. News companies that exist to hold everyone else to account are notoriously thin-skinned when they are the focus of scrutiny themselves.

  One of the rituals of journalism is sitting in a bar and complaining about your bosses and the company you work for. There’s a lot to complain about and not enough time in the working day to complain about it.

  My friend David Wright, a correspondent for ABC News, was in a bar in New Hampshire relaxing one evening while covering the state’s political primary.  People from a right-wing organization with no ethics recorded him doing what journalists do, talking about the people they cover, in this case Donald Trump, and complaining about his employers and how politics are covered. 

  Wright is a smart and fair reporter. He’s allowed to have opinions. He’s just not allowed to put them in his reports and he doesn’t.

  In suspending Wright and removing him from political coverage, ABC News said, “Any action that damages our reputation for fairness and impartiality or gives the appearance of compromising it harms ABC News and the individuals involved.”

  What damaged ABC in this incident is that Wright spoke the truth about his own employers. Critiquing the coverage of Trump, Wright said, “We don’t hold him (Trump) to account. We also don’t give him credit for what things he does do.” Now, is that a bad thing to say? Maybe if it was inaccurate but it’s not, it’s true and ABC News is in the truth business.

  ABC News is owned by the Walt Disney Company, which would make an animated princess the anchor of World News if they could get away with it. While being secretly recorded Wright said the commercial imperative is incompatible with running a news operation and that, “It became a profit center, a promotion center. Like now you can’t watch ‘Good Morning America’ without there being a Disney princess or a Marvel Avenger appearing.” 

  He said, “It’s all self-promotional.” It’s true. The bosses at ABC News don’t stand up to their Disney masters.

  The discussion about commercialism and profit-motive in television news has been going on for decades, ever since the big three networks were bought out by larger, greedier companies that insist the news divisions make a profit like any other widget factory. If anything, Wright should be faulted for failing to get over it. 

  In what he believed was a private conversation, Wright described himself politically as a socialist. He said, “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 that there’s a wealth gap. That’s a problem.”

  Those are all legitimate things to think and talk about. Reporters are not empty vessels. They have opinions and they are allowed to vote on them. 

  ABC correctly suspended its Los Angeles correspondent Matt Gutman for saying on air that Kobe Bryant and all four of his children died in the helicopter crash, an egregious, foolish and unsourced error. Wright is getting the same treatment for having opinions in private.  

 Nothing Wright said in the bar that night appeared in a news story. What he said was classic journalistic bar room discussion about the ethics and qualities of news coverage from a guy who has made it his life to inform the public. What Wright said shows that he is thinking and cares about what he does. He said, “I feel terrible about it. I feel like the truth suffers. The voters are poorly informed.” He went on, “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.”

  David Wright should be re-instated to the politics beat today. He’s the kind of guy you want out there. He is not being punished for anything he said about Donald Trump. He got in trouble for privately speaking truth to the power of his own employer, the most dangerous thing a journalist can do.

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