Miami Herald reporter says 'disgraceful' ABC News virtually copied paper's Jeffrey Epstein documentary
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}A journalist for the Miami Herald blasted ABC News on Thursday over its upcoming TV special on convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, suggesting the Disney network "copied" a mini-documentary that the paper produced last year.
Julie K. Brown, the investigative reporter who broke the Epstein scandal wide open in 2018, ultimately sparking new charges against the disgraced financier, lashed out at ABC after watching the trailer for its primetime documentary "Truth and Lies: Jeffrey Epstein," which is scheduled to air Thursday evening. Epstein turned up dead in his jail cell last August.
"I caught the trailer to ABC’s upcoming 'Truth and Lies' show on Jeffrey Epstein. It looks very familiar. It's disgraceful that it is almost a copy of the @MiamiHerald mini documentary produced last year by our @EmilyMichot," Brown tweeted with a link to the paper's documentary.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Brown then pointed out what she insisted were over-the-top resemblances between her paper's work and the broadcast network.
MEDIA BLACKOUT OF ABC NEWS' EPSTEIN STORY SPIKE CONTINUES DESPITE SHOCKING DEVELOPMENTS
"Take note a few seconds in ...watch the sequence when the women (same victims in the Herald’s doc) list their ages...same photos..same construction. Really ABC? It took you a year to do a rehash of other journalists' work?" Brown asked. "What @EmilyMichot did with our project was amazing journalism. For @ABC to copy even a portion of her work is unconscionable."
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}The Miami Herald journalist then referenced ABC's previous decision to spike an Epstein story, a move that was uncovered last year. Brown said a couple of former network producers, one of them from ABC, told her it's "not unusual for the networks to back off controversial stories by saying 'let's wait until the NYT (or another newspaper) does it first. In other words, let them to the work, take the risk, etc.'"
She continued, "The irony here is, while newspapers are failing across America, networks like @ABC are profiting from newspapers’ (and news magazines’) hard work."
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Brown added, "Sometimes networks do the right thing and credit the newspaper, but too often they do not (or, they do it as a one-second mention) I won’t be watching @ABC tonight but hopefully their Epstein special mentions @MiamiHerald."
ABC News did not immediately respond to Fox News' request for comment.
Last November, Project Veritas published footage showing ABC News anchor Amy Robach claiming higher-ups at the network killed a story that would have exposed Epstein three years ago, but network executives said it wasn't up to their standards.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"I've had the story for three years… we would not put it on the air," Robach said on the hot mic. "It was unbelievable what we had, Clinton, we had everything."
Robach quickly admitted the authenticity of the video, which has not been independently verified by Fox News, but dismissed the notion of unethical journalism.
"As a journalist, as the Epstein story continued to unfold last summer, I was caught in a private moment of frustration. I was upset that an important interview I had conducted with Virginia Roberts didn't air because we could not obtain sufficient corroborating evidence to meet ABC’s editorial standards about her allegations," Robach said in a statement provided to Fox News.
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"At the time, not all of our reporting met our standards to air, but we have never stopped investigating the story. Ever since, we’ve had a team on this investigation and substantial resources dedicated to it," an ABC News spokesperson told Fox News at the time.
Fox News' Brian Flood contributed to this report.