ABC News has reportedly invited former CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson to be a part of the roundtable on This Week, creating a potential challenge for other panelists given her history of inaccurate stories and conspiracy theories.
On her Twitter feed on Tuesday, Attkisson announced that she would be “on the panel of journalists this Sunday on ABC.”
In the past, Attkisson has come under fire for producing shoddy journalism, often with a conservative tilt, on government, health, and foreign policy.
Attkisson left CBS News in March and embarked on a campaign claiming the network suppressed and covered up her work, in one interview blaming CBS anchor Scott Pelley and two producers for keeping her stories off the air. She alleged there was a “political aspect” to the friction between herself and her supervisors at the network and complained that they had given in to “well organized” campaigns complaining about the network's coverage. The Washington Post's Erik Wemple characterized Attkisson's claims as “uncorroborated” and her repetition of them as an “un-journalistic tendency.”
She has used her media appearances to promote an upcoming book described as “my fight for truth against the forces of obstruction, intimidation, and harassment in Obama's Washington.”
Attkisson has dismissed complaints about her work as a conspiracy theory in which Media Matters “targeted” her in a campaign to “controversialize the reporting I do.” She has also suggested that Media Matters was paid to target her. The claim is false, and Attkisson had no proof of her fantastical claim, as even Fox News' Bernie Goldberg pointed out.
Attkisson resurfaced at the conservative Heritage Foundation where she is described as a “senior independent contributor” to their news site, The Daily Signal. Attkisson is also reportedly doing some form of investigative journalism for the conservative Sinclair group of television stations.