It’s now day five of Rossgate and we continue to inch ever so slowly towards meaningful action. Consider this post the official launch of the Hot Air pool on when disciplinary measures will be announced. Put me down for five bucks on seventeen days from now.

Ed calls this “ABC’s version of ‘Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?'”

ABC News president Ben Sherwood told staff today that last Friday’s incorrect report by Brian Ross detracts from the network’s otherwise excellent coverage of the Colarado theater shooting, network sources tell POLITICO.

Sherwood’s remarks, made on the network’s daily editorial conference call, came the morning after Ross’s report was picked up by late night comedians John Stewart and Stephen Colbert of Comedy Central, both of whom used Ross’s erroneous suggestion of a Tea Party link to the Colorado theater shooting as fodder for their Monday night routines.

On Monday’s conference call, ABC News SVP James Goldston also commended the staff for its work, noted the incorrect report, and said that the network was taking steps to ensure it did not happen again, sources told POLITICO yesterday.

Right-wing blog indignation could be safely ignored but once the media’s patron saint gave the official thumbs down, Sherwood and Goldston had no choice but to speak up. Imagine if Stewart goes after them again tonight for that highly dubious he said/she said with James Holmes’s mother. Good lord. They’ll have to call a news conference to grovel properly.

Here’s O’Reilly with Bernie Goldberg last night insisting that Ross’s true sin was blind headline-seeking, not hardcore partisan bias. WaPo went through The Blotter’s archives to see whether the Ross oeuvre has any strong ideological bent and found a lot of stories about Solyndra, Bernie Madoff, and of course terrorism. Hmmmm. Exit question: So Stephanopoulos is off scot free in all of this, huh?