While ABC News may tout itself as a source of reliable news and reporting, its brand of journalism apparently stops dead when it comes to accountability for spiked news stories.

The company reportedly went on a mole hunt for the person who accessed the hot mic footage of anchor Amy Robach commenting on the company's decision to kill a story on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

According to two sources cited by journalist Yashar Ali, executives at ABC News already know the identity of the alleged leaker.

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While it's not known if the person was directly responsible for sending the footage to Project Veritas for the bombshell story or whether it was filtered down through other means, ABC isn't pleased with its former employee's behavior.

Executives at the company informed the alleged leaker's new employer, CBS News, about the leak, and the person was fired from that job, according to Ali.

1. Scoop: ABC News execs believe they know who the former employee is who accessed footage of @arobach expressing her frustrations about her shelved Jeffrey Epstein story That former employee is now at CBS and ABC execs have reached out to CBS News execshttps://t.co/OHEoyahppY — Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) November 6, 2019

Project Veritas' exposure of the decision to spike the Epstein story came as a major blow to the credibility of ABC News.

“I’ve had the story for three years, I’ve had this interview with Virginia Roberts. We would not put it on the air,” Robach said on the tape. “First of all, I was told, ‘Who’s Jeffrey Epstein, no one knows who that is, this is a stupid story.'”

BREAKING: @abcnews anchor @arobach caught on 'hot mic' in August disgustedly exposing networks decision to strategically spike bombshell investigation into Jefferey Esptein over THREE YEARS AGO. Says what she had was "unbelievable" #EpsteinCoverup: https://t.co/HagfLpwKDn pic.twitter.com/fPvJc3JCCQ — James O'Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) November 5, 2019

According to Robach, ABC killed the story for a number of reasons.

Because some of the allegations against Epstein that were to be covered by Robach included accusations against members of the royal family, the network was worried it would not be able to interview Prince William and his wife, Kate Middleton, if they aired the story.

“It was unbelievable what we had -- [former President Bill] Clinton, we had everything. I tried for three years to get it on to no avail, and now it’s all coming out, and it’s like these new revelations, and I freaking had all of it," Robach said.

ABC News' given reason for killing the story was that the reporting did not meet its editorial standards.

Despite these so-called standards, the network decided to run with multiple stories about the thinly sourced accusations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

ABC published stories about accusations from both Christine Blasey Ford and Julie Swetnik, the latter of which had her credibility demolished in the weeks after she first stepped forward.

It's beginning to look like ABC was never interested in unbiased journalism but merely trying to push its narrative on Americans.

As for people inside the company who seek to show the world the truth, they're subject to mole hunts and apparent attempts to ruin any new job they might find.

ABC News has a lot to answer for, and its actions against an employee trying to hold the network accountable should send shivers down its viewers' spines.

This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.