ABC News has called into question its reporting on acceleration problems with Toyota vehicles.
The network’s handling of a Feb. 22 World News story about potential problems with computer systems in Toyota cars has created ethical questions and intensified bitter feelings the besieged automaker already had toward ABC.
ABC has admitted to a misjudgment and swapped out the brief dashboard video in its report, which continues to be available online. Its story illustrated a report by David Gilbert, a Southern Illinois University professor who suggested that a design flaw in Toyotas might leave a short-circuit that could cause sudden acceleration undetected by the car’s computer system.
Correspondent Brian Ross’ World News report showed him driving a Toyota with Gilbert that was rigged to quickly accelerate.
Briefly during the drive, ABC cut to a picture of a tachometer with the needle zooming forward. The impression was that the tachometer was documenting the ride Ross was taking. Instead, that picture was taken from a separate instance where a short-circuit was induced in a parked car.
ABC said that editing was done because it was impossible to get a good picture of the tachometer while the car was moving because the camera was shaking. The camera shot was steady when it was taken in a parked car.
“The tachometer showed the same thing every time,” ABC News spokeswoman Emily Lenzner said.
Toyota spokesman John Hanson disputes that, saying tachometers react much more dramatically when short-circuits happen in a parked car than in a car that is moving. Tachometers measure engine speed.
Toyota recognized the differences right away — the shot showed the car’s speedometer was at zero, the parking brake was on and no one was using the seat belts, while Ross wore one on the test drive, Hanson said.
ABC edited the online version of its story shortly after that story appeared and wrote a note on its Web site explaining why.
“This was a misjudgment made in the editing room,” Lenzner said.
“They should have left the shaky shot in, but I want to make clear that the two-second shot that was used did not change the outcome of the report in any way,” she said.
Hanson said it was next to impossible for the short-circuit detailed by Gilbert to happen in real life.
The automaker, which had to recall many of its cars because of problems associated with a depressed gas pedal, held a press conference on Monday to rebut Gilbert’s study. It depicted similar short-circuits in other cars, none of which were detected by the vehicles’ computer system.
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