Guest Post by Glenn Greenwald
Friday was one of the most embarrassing days for the U.S. media in quite a long time. The humiliation orgy was kicked off by CNN, with MSNBC and CBS close behind, with countless pundits, commentators and operatives joining the party throughout the day. By the end of the day, it was clear that several of the nation’s largest and most influential news outlets had spread an explosive but completely false news story to millions of people, while refusing to provide any explanation of how it happened.
The spectacle began on Friday morning at 11:00 am EST, when the Most Trusted Name in News™ spent 12 straight minutes on air flamboyantly hyping an exclusive bombshell report that seemed to prove that WikiLeaks, last September, had secretly offered the Trump campaign, even Donald Trump himself, special access to the DNC emails before they were published on the internet. As CNN sees the world, this would prove collusion between the Trump family and WikiLeaks and, more importantly, between Trump and Russia, since the U.S. intelligence community regards WikiLeaks as an “arm of Russian intelligence,” and therefore, so does the U.S. media.
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This entire revelation was based on an email which CNN strongly implied it had exclusively obtained and had in its possession. The email was sent by someone named “Michael J. Erickson” – someone nobody had heard of previously and whom CNN could not identify – to Donald Trump, Jr., offering a decryption key and access to DNC emails that WikiLeaks had “uploaded.” The email was a smoking gun, in CNN’s extremely excited mind, because it was dated September 4 – ten days before WikiLeaks began publishing those emails online – and thus proved that the Trump family was being offered special, unique access to the DNC archive: likely by WikiLeaks and the Kremlin.
It’s impossible to convey with words what a spectacularly devastating scoop CNN believed it had, so it’s necessary to watch it for yourself to see the tone of excitement, breathlessness and gravity the network conveyed as they clearly believed they were delivering a near-fatal blow to the Trump/Russia collusion story:
There was just one small problem with this story: it was fundamentally false, in the most embarrassing way possible. Hours after CNN broadcast its story – and then hyped it over and over and over – the Washington Post reported that CNN got the key fact of the story wrong.
The email was not dated September 4, as CNN claimed, but rather September 14 – which means it was sent after WikiLeaks had already published the DNC emails online. Thus, rather than offering some sort of special access to Trump, “Michael J. Erickson” was simply some random person from the public encouraging the Trump family to look at the publicly available DNC emails that WikiLeaks – as everyone by then already knew – had published. In other words, the email was the exact opposite of what CNN presented it as being.
How did CNN end up aggressively hyping such a spectacularly false story? They refuse to say. Many hours after their story got exposed as false, the journalist who originally presented it, Congressional reporter Manu Raru, finally posted a tweet noting the correction. CNN’s PR Department then claimed that “multiple sources” had provided CNN with the false date. And Raru went on CNN, in muted tones, to note the correction, explicitly claiming that “two sources” had each given him the false date on the email:
All of this prompts the glaring, obvious, and critical question – one which CNN refuses to address: how did “multiple sources” all misread the date on this document, in exactly the same way, and toward the same end, and then feed this false information to CNN?
It is, of course, completely plausible that one source might innocently misread a date on a document. But how is it remotely plausible that multiple sources could all innocently and in good faith misread the date in exactly the same way, all to cause to be disseminated a blockbuster revelation about Trump/Russia/WikiLeaks collusion? This is the critical question that CNN simply refuses to answer. In other words, CNN refuses to provide the most minimal transparency to enable the public to understand what happened here.
Why does this matter so much? For so many significant reasons:
To begin with, it’s hard to overstate how fast, far and wide this false story traveled. Democratic Party pundits, operatives and journalists with huge social media platforms predictably jumped on the story immediately, announcing that it proved collusion between Trump and Russia (through WikiLeaks). One tweet from Democratic Congressman Ted Lieu, claiming that this proved evidence of criminal collusion, was re-tweeted thousands and thousands of times in just a few hours (Lieu quietly deleted the tweet after I noted its falsity, and long after it went very viral, without ever telling his followers that the CNN story, and therefore his accusation, had been debunked).
Brookings’ Benjamin Wittes, whose star has risen as he has promoted himself as a friend of former FBI Director Jim Comey, not only promoted the CNN story in the morning, but did so with the word “Boom” – which he uses to signal that a major blow has been delivered to Trump on the Russia story – along with a gif of a cannon being detonated.
Incredibly, to this very moment – almost 24 hours after CNN’s story was debunked – Wittes has never noted to his more than 200,000 followers that the story he so excitedly promoted turned out to be utterly false, even though he returned to Twitter long after the story was debunked to tweet about other matters. He just left his false and inflammatory claims uncorrected.
Talking Points Memo’s Josh Marshall believed the story was so significant that he used an image of an atomic bomb detonating at the top of his article discussing its implications, an article he tweeted to his roughly 250,000 followers. Only at night was an editor’s note finally added noting that the whole thing was false.
It’s hard to quantify exactly how many people were deceived – filled with false news and propaganda – by the CNN story. But thanks to Democratic-loyal journalists and operatives who decree every Trump/Russia claim to be true without seeing any evidence, it’s certainly safe to say that many hundreds of thousands of people, almost certainly millions, were exposed to these false claims.
Surely anyone who has any minimal concerns about journalistic accuracy – which would presumably include all the people who have spent the last year lamenting Fake News, propaganda, Twitter bots and the like – would demand an accounting as to how a major U.S. media outlet ended up filling so many people’s brains with totally false news. That alone should prompt demands from CNN for an explanation about what happened here. No Russian Facebook ad or Twitter bot could possibly have anywhere near the impact as this CNN story had when it comes to deceiving people with blatantly inaccurate information.
Second, the “multiple sources” who fed CNN this false information did not confine themselves to that network. They were apparently very busy eagerly spreading the false information to as many media outlets as they could find. In the middle of the day, CBS News claimed that it had independently “confirmed” CNN’s story about the email, and published its own breathless article discussing the grave implications of this discovered collusion.
Most embarrassing of all was what MSNBC did. You just have to watch this report from its ‘intelligence and national security correspondent” Ken Dilanian to believe it. Like CBS, Dilanian also claimed that he independently “confirmed” the false CNN report from “two sources with direct knowledge of this.” Dilanian, whose career in the U.S. media continues to flourish the more he is exposed as someone who faithfully parrots what the CIA tells him to say (since that is one of the most coveted and valued attributes in US journalism), spent three minutes mixing evidence-free CIA claims as fact with totally false assertions about what his multiple “sources with direct knowledge” told him about all this. Please watch this – again, not just the content but the tenor and tone of how they “report” – as it is Baghdad-Bob-level embarrassing:
Think about what this means. It means that at least two – and possibly more – sources, which these media outlets all assessed as credible in terms of having access to sensitive information, all fed the same false information to multiple news outlets at the same time. For multiple reasons, the probability is very high that these sources were Democratic members of the House Intelligence Committee (or their high-level staff members), which is the committee that obtained access to Trump Jr.’s emails, although it’s certainly possible that it’s someone else. We won’t know until these news outlets deign to report this crucial information to the public: which “multiple sources” acted jointly to disseminate incredibly inflammatory, false information to the nation’s largest news outlets?
Just last week, the Washington Post decided – to great applause (including mine) – to expose a source to whom they had promised anonymity and off-the-record protections because they discovered that she was purposely feeding them false information as part of a scheme by Project Veritas to discredit the Post. It’s a well established principle of journalism – one that is rarely followed when it comes to powerful people in DC – that journalists should expose, rather than protect and conceal, sources who purposely feed them false information to be disseminated to the public.
Is that what happened here? Did these “multiple sources” who fed not just CNN but also MSNBC and CBS completely false information do so deliberately and in bad faith? Until these news outlets provide an accounting of what happened – what one might call “minimal journalistic transparency” – it’s impossible to say for certain. But right now, it’s very difficult to imagine a scenario where multiple sources all fed the wrong date to multiple media outlets innocently and in good faith.
If this were, in fact, a deliberate attempt to cause a false and highly inflammatory story to be reported, then these media outlets have an obligation to expose who the culprits are – just as the Washington Post did last week to the woman making false claims about Roy Moore (it was much easier in that case because the source they exposed was as nobody-in-DC, rather than someone on whom they rely for a steady stream of stories, the way CNN and MSNBC rely on Democratic members of the Intelligence Committee). By contrast, if this were just an innocent mistake, then these media outlets should explain how such an implausible sequence of events could possibly have happened.
Thus far, these media corporations are doing the opposite of what journalists ought to do: rather than informing the public about what happened and providing minimal transparency and accountability for themselves and the high-level officials who caused this to happen, they are hiding behind meaningless, obfuscating statements crafted by PR executives and lawyers.
How can journalists and news outlets so flamboyantly act offended when they’re attacked as being “Fake News” when this is the conduct behind which they hide when they get caught disseminating incredibly consequential false stories?
The more serious you think the Trump/Russia story is, the more dangerous you think it is when Trump attacks the U.S. media as “Fake News,” the more you should be disturbed by what happened here, the more transparency and accountability you should be demanding. If you’re someone who thinks Trump’s attacks on the media are dangerous, then you should be first in line objecting when they act recklessly and demand transparency and accountability from them. It is debacles like this – and the subsequent corporate efforts to obfuscate – that have made the U.S. media so disliked and that fuel and empower Trump’s attacks on them.
Third, this type of recklessness and falsity is now a clear and highly disturbing trend – one could say a constant – when it comes to reporting on Trump, Russia and WikiLeaks. I have spent a good part of the last year documenting the extraordinarily numerous, consequential and reckless stories that have been published – and then corrected, rescinded and retracted – by major media outlets when it comes to this story.
All media outlets, of course, will make mistakes. The Intercept certainly has made our share, as have all outlets. And it’s particularly natural, inevitable, for mistakes to be made on a highly complicated, opaque story like the question of the relationship between Trump and the Russians, and questions relating to how WikiLeaks obtained DNC and Podesta emails. That is all to be expected.
But what one should expect with journalistic “mistakes” is that they sometimes go in one direction, and other times go in the other direction. That’s exactly what has not happened here. Virtually every false story published goes only in one direction: to be as inflammatory and damaging as possible on the Trump/Russia story and about Russia particularly. At some point, once “mistakes” all start going in the same direction, toward advancing the same agenda, they cease looking like mistakes.
No matter your views on those political controversies, no matter how much you hate Trump or regard Russia as a grave villain and threat to our cherished democracy and freedoms, it has to be acknowledged that when the U.S. media is spewing constant false news about all of this, that, too, is a grave threat to our democracy and cherished freedom.
So numerous are the false stories about Russia and Trump over the last year that I literally cannot list them all. Just consider the ones from the last week alone, as enumerated by the New York Times yesterday in its news report on CNN’s embarrassment:
It was also yet another prominent reporting error at a time when news organizations are confronting a skeptical public, and a president who delights in attacking the media as “fake news.”
Last Saturday, ABC News suspended a star reporter, Brian Ross, after an inaccurate report that Donald Trump had instructed Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser, to contact Russian officials during the presidential race.
The report fueled theories about coordination between the Trump campaign and a foreign power, and stocks dropped after the news. In fact, Mr. Trump’s instruction to Mr. Flynn came after he was president-elect.
Several news outlets, including Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal, also inaccurately reported this week that Deutsche Bank had received a subpoena from the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, for President Trump’s financial records.
The president and his circle have not been shy about pointing out the errors.
That’s just the last week alone. Let’s just remind ourselves of how many times major media outlets have made humiliating, breathtaking errors on the Trump/Russia story, always in the same direction, toward the same political goals. Here is just a sample of incredibly inflammatory claims that traveled all over the internet before having to be corrected, walk-backed, or retracted – often long after the initial false claims spread, and where the corrections receive only a tiny fraction of the attention with which the initial false stories are lavished:
- Russia hacked into the U.S. electric grid to deprive Americans of heat during winter (WashPost)
- An anonymous group (PropOrNot) documented how major U.S. political sites are Kremlin agents (WashPost)
- WikiLeaks has a long, documented relationship with Putin (Guardian)
- A secret server between Trump and a Russian bank has been discovered (Slate)
- RT hacked C-SPAN and caused disruption in its broadcast (Fortune)
- Crowdstrike finds Russians hacked into a Ukrainian artillery app (Crowdstrike)
- Russians attempted to hack elections systems in 21 states (multiple news outlets, echoing Homeland Security)
- Links have been found between Trump ally Anthony Scaramucci and a Russian investment fund under investigation (CNN)
That really is just a small sample. So continually awful and misleading has this reporting been that even Vladimir Putin’s most devoted critics – such as Russian expatriate Masha Gessen, oppositional Russian journalists, and anti-Kremlin liberal activists in Moscow – are constantly warning that the U.S. media’s unhinged, ignorant, paranoid reporting on Russia is harming their cause in all sorts of ways, in the process destroying the credibility of the U.S. media in the eyes of Putin’s opposition (who – unlike Americans who have been fed a steady news and entertainment propaganda diet for decades about Russia, actually understand the realities of that country).
U.S. media outlets are very good at demanding respect. They love to imply, if not outright state, that being patriotic and a good American means that one must reject efforts to discredit them and their reporting because that’s how one defends press freedom.
But journalists also have the responsibility not just to demand respect and credibility but to earn it. That means that there shouldn’t be such a long list of abject humiliations, in which completely false stories are published to plaudits, traffic and other rewards, only to fall apart upon minimal scrutiny. It certainly means that all of these “errors” shouldn’t be pointing in the same direction, pushing the same political outcome or journalistic conclusion.
But what it means most of all is that when media outlets are responsible for such grave and consequential errors as the spectacle we witnessed yesterday, they have to take responsibility for it by offering transparency and accountability. In this case, that can’t mean hiding behind PR and lawyer silence and waiting for this to just all blow away.
At minimum, these networks – CNN, MSNBC and CBS – have to either identify who purposely fed them this blatantly false information, or explain how it’s possible that “multiple sources” all got the same information wrong in innocence and good faith. Until they do that, their cries and protests the next time they’re attacked as “Fake News” should fall on deaf ears, since the real author of those attacks – the reason those attacks resonate – is themselves and their own conduct.
I’m shocked to find that the “News” is agenda driven propaganda.
Trump Lashes Out At “Fake News” CNN For “Vicious And Purposeful” Mistake, Demands Terminations
by Tyler Durden
Dec 9, 2017 9:31 AM
After yesterday’s latest botched hit job by CNN on president Trump, which came exactly one week after the fiasco where erroneous ABC reporting on the Flynn affair sent the market tumbling, it was only a matter of time before Trump lashed out at the news network whose credibility and influence is evaporating with every fabricated story.
A little after 8am on Saturday, he did just that slamming CNN of making a “vicious and intentional mistake” over the network’s effective retraction, when it was forced to correct an erroneous news report related to the Trump/Russia probe. Having been on the receiving end of three “fake news” stories in the past week, betwee the ABC Flynn debacle, the Bloomberg Deutsche Bank subpoena, and now CNN, Trump demanded that CNN fire “those responsible,” and commented that an ABC reporter who was suspended for a separate erroneous report should be fired as well.
“Fake News CNN made a vicious and purposeful mistake yesterday. They were caught red handed, just like lonely Brian Ross at ABC News (who should be immediately fired for his “mistake”),” Trump wrote. “Watch to see if @CNN fires those responsible, or was it just gross incompetence?” It is worth noting that Ross was not fired but rather suspended for 4 weeks.
In a second tweet, the president suggested CNN change their slogan after the report to “the least trusted name in news.”
“CNN’S slogan is CNN, THE MOST TRUSTED NAME IN NEWS. Everyone knows this is not true, that this could, in fact, be a fraud on the American Public. There are many outlets that are far more trusted than Fake News CNN. Their slogan should be CNN, THE LEAST TRUSTED NAME IN NEWS!” the president tweeted.
As reported yesterday, in the original CNN report posted Friday claimed Trump’s eldest son received a “head’s-up” email on Sept. 4, before WikiLeaks had made public a cache of hacked documents containing Democratic information. Other media outlets correctly reported that Trump Jr. and other campaign officials had received the email pointing them to the WikiLeaks documents on Sept. 14, after the documents had already been made public. CNN later corrected its report, issuing the following correction.
CNN originally reported the email was released September 4 — 10 days earlier — based on accounts from two sources who had seen the email. The new details appear to show that the sender was relying on publicly available information. The new information indicates that the communication is less significant than CNN initially reported.
However, despite Trump’s demands a CNN spokesperson said there will not be disciplinary action against the reporter involved, because the reporter used multiple verified sources, following CNN’s editorial process. The most amusing bit, however, was CNN claims that it does not believe there was malicious intent involved.
How many people watch MSNBC and CNN or read WaPo outside of those poor souls stuck in airport bars during blizzards?
One of the YMCA’s I frequent usually has CNN playing in the men’s locker room. Mostly retired white guys in their ’70’s. The other day I switched it from CNN to the local news and some credulous old bastard switched it back.
Give it up. After watching PBS last night. You couldn’t make it out that Moores accuser just admitted forgery. Then they followed it up with balanced commentary of Shield and Brooks.
Oh, how the Republicans are going to hell in a hand basket!
The MSM presenters smugly and arrogantly try to tell you what to think, and present it as news. They all know they are lying. If the mutts were smart enough to think it through they might realize how this might end up.
When, if ever will these “news hacks” be brought to task for their constant fostering of fake news items? At least newspapers print a retraction on page 100.
I went into town yesterday for lunch. They already had streets blocked off around the event venue. Our local ABC affiliate showed a protester declaring CNN as Fake News with his poster, on last night’s 6 pm show. One sign among many lined up in front of the Pensacola Bay Center.
“It was Trump’s fourth visit to Pensacola in two years, but his first since being elected.”
http://www.pnj.com/story/news/politics/2017/12/08/donald-trump-pensacola-bay-center-rally-go-vote-roy-moore/934962001/
This is the inevitable end result of a media that is owned largely by a few corporations. The corporate agenda is the problem. If the owner sees a threat to the golden egg, they are going to do anything within their power to make sure that the threat is neutralized.
As I have said in the past, the more opposition I see to Trump by those in power, media and corporate America, the more I think Trump, from the inside is actually changing things. That is the only logical conclusion one must reach. If Trump was simply doing what the masters wanted, things would be relatively quiet, and business as usual.
Anon…
You are correct; another phrase to use is ‘it’s working’.
Someone should start a pool betting on when the next fake news attack on Trump will come out.
Wonder what odds the odds makers would put on different dates?
Team Trump wins again:
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This news story along with the other false news stories from “unnamed sources” are a counter intelligence operation. The news media is being played and are to stupid to realize the harm being done to their profession.
I do not know who is behind all of these stories, could be multiple sources. Might even be individuals, just for laughs, trying to see how gullible the news media really is.
In any case the goal of this operation is to convince the public that anything the news media prints or says is probably false. Even if the story is “no kidding this is the truth” kind of story.
The CIA (or elements within it) are indeed behind most of the fake news (see the laughable PropOrNot site), but the media knows what’s going on. I think David Ignatius of WaPo is a paid CIA employee.
I was about to post the same thing. They are deliberately being trolled by their opposition because it is quite clear they will write anything that casts aspersions at the current POTUS.
Smart move, very Sun Tzu-ish
The Black Pigeon has been doing a video series of “what ifs”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwbq9mDPdN0
What if CNN, MSNBC and all of the rest of the dullards in MSM were duped into reporting this fake news. Could it just be that the Trump Administration in an effort to fight fake news and ferret out the leakers intentionally did just that. Leak a false narrative.
What if leakers were known and this was the very inner circle ‘s way to out and fire those who are drilling holes in the leaky boat. It seems hard to believe that CNN could blunder their way into this without some credible source to back up their claims.
It would be interesting to find out who the reliable sources were that CNN used to undertake this wayward reporting.
Yellow journalism ain’t new or the province of the particulars in yobo’s ocd brain. Yellow snow consumers ain’t new, either. All the “news”piss fit to lap•rint?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism
When the levee breaks and the torches and pitchforks come out, these “journalists”, “reporters”, “sources”, and networks are dangerously out front.
Unfortunately the nature of their task requires such an exposed position, perhaps many have not adequately considered this and thus have acted so in the current safety of their bubble. Or perhaps they act out of duress, either way the mob will not care and their names and lies will be low hanging fruit.
I met a man while travelling recently who told me his daughter is graduating from a ‘prestigious’ journalism school, I told him that’s too bad. He was taken back, I said it so instinctively, I did not realize at first it was rude of me. But I believe it to be true.
Ya’ know, it seems like every fake news attack on Trump and “right wing” politicians by the Dems and MSM backfires on them with their own people ending up being the ones taken down by it.
You’d think they would learn after the last year of constantly biting themselves in the ass with it.
What was it Forrest Gump’s mother said? “Stupid is as stupid does” IIRC.
Life is like a box of chalklines.
forgetful, here Magita was asking if nobody wrote poetry anymore.
Paint by numberlessness…. ☻
It’s the old-fashioned way.
Please cut the Bulls**t. Any informed person knows that we do not have a free main stream media. What we have is a Deep State controlled, propaganda and subversive Main Stream Media (MSM). Stop asking propaganda agents to behave as open, objective, informed and balanced journalists because there are no true journalists in the entire lot. And these propaganda agencies posing as news outlets must be shut down and the fake journalists and the people behind them indicted for corruption and treason. No self-respecting nation can allow Deep State propaganda agencies to control the dissemination of honest news, ideas and opinion in the US or any sovereign nation.
We desperately need sanctions against the MSM for sedition. Time to flush the toilet.
I pre-ordered an English translation of Dr Udo Ulfkotte’s book this year from Amazon but it seems the print run was so limited that they could not deliver (read the email from Amazon below). But if you have tons of cash, you can buy one for about $1000 or more! I tried inter-library loan but this book could not be found by the university library I deal with but they said they would purchase a copy. But wait until they see the cost of this book. What appears to have happened is the CIA and other powerful entities in the Deep State put pressure on the publisher to limit the number of copies they printed. This is the modern version of book burning. And we live in a free and democratic country? Details of the suppression of this book are here:
Journalists for Hire: How the CIA Buys the News by Dr Udo Ulfkotte PH.D. (2016-06-07) Paperback – 1847
Hardcover
from $997.09
Paperback
from $2,796.00
Hello from Amazon.ca.
We’re still trying to obtain the following item[s] you ordered on January 16, 2017 (Order #701-*******):
Ulfkotte Ph.D Ph.D., Dr. Udo “Journalists for Hire: How the CIA Buys the News”
Still want it? We’ll keep on trying. You’ll still be able to cancel at any time before we ship it. If you want to cancel the item now, please click the link below:
http://www.amazon.ca/gp/css/order/edit.html/?useCase=cancel&orderID= ****
If there are other items in your order, they’ll be shipped according to the delivery estimates listed in the order details in “Your Account” (www.amazon.ca/your-account).
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Could be. But I’ve used every objection wrench in the toolbox, to no avail. Then dug down into the lint & grime at the bottom, dredged up the take-a-away close, & viola. Telling someone they can’t have it can make ‘em want to prove you wrong. And high price (+ a good story) = good because most can’t have it might gin up more profits than a low price = more unit volume moved does.
As for amazon, not always low price. I just got a couple of 22qt cambros, 16.99 each. Amazon: 41.99. (in the real world, not this one, bezos would need to make a profit…) https://camelcamelcamel.com/ price tracker can be useful
Despite being a gay liberal, Glenn Greenwald is a must-read. I check his Twitter feed most days. http://Www.twitter.com/ggreenwald
No wonder he prefers living in South America – just a little harder for the Deep State to pull a Michael Hastings on him.