Glenn Greenwald remarks on the latest self-immolation by the major news outlets:
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.
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 promoting access to 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 on 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.
Read the whole thing.
There’s a simple explanation for such. CNN and other major media outlets’ hatred for Trump is such that they aren’t even bothering to verify stories through reliable sources any more and are publishing them as facts. They are playing a very dangerous game. That is practically the definition of malice under the law.
The Trump Administration is a target-rich environment. Why publish stories from anonymous or all but anonymous sources? We need a solid, professional, fair, unbiased news media. Unfortunately, that isn’t the one we have.
The Trump Administration is a target-rich environment. Why publish stories from anonymous or all but anonymous sources?
While these two statements are not necessarily exclusive, it takes a bit of logical gymnastics to prove they are not.
One uses anonymous sources when one has no credible sources, and one creates anonymous sources when one has no non-credible sources.
In a target-rich environment, it would be highly unlikely to not be able to find credible sources. Thus, it is most likely that the “Trump Administration is NOT a target-rich environment”.
With all the ‘forces of good’ aligned against President Trump, it would seem that they could produce one bit of evidence, but alas, goodness does not preclude evil. Using evil means will always produce evil ends.
I think it’s because, in their minds, the regular, full-vetted stories haven’t “worked.”
I wasn’t aware of this story. I used to keep a news channel (typically MSNBC) on in the family room since I started working from home so I would get a sense of what was being talked about whenever I left my office to go to the kitchen or bathroom. I slowly stopped doing that this year. All it has become is Washington news analysts talking about how crazy some tweet was. No news gathering, just commenting about someone commenting about someone . . .
PD,
If you want a good news fix during th day, I’d suggest trying France24 or Al Jazeera English.
Anonymous sources can be fine. Deep Throat is the most famous example. It isn’t just random gossip, these sources aren’t anonymous to the reporters after all.
What happened Friday was just crappy journalism, completely separate from the anonymity of the sources. We also have people deliberately pushing false stories to attempt to discredit the news media (see the recent Washington Post expose), and CNN may have been taken in by that.
We do need to move to a news culture of explicitly naming those who are peddling lies. It’s easy to do so when it is Project Veritas, but harder to do so when it is the undersecretary of basketweaving somewhere in the Administration.
The constant news cycle also create a pressure to break news as fast as one can — do a little less verification than the competition does to get things on air before them, and it will probably check out.
Here is an ethical question.
CNN did not sanction anyone because they apparently got it from multiple and what they thought reliable sources and passed their editorial process.
Should the sources deserve to have anonymity protected if said sources gave false information.
Another factor is given parts of these false stories involve supposedly secret Congressional testimony, revealing sources could result in the sources facing criminal prosecution, in that case should CNN protect sources to protect them from prosecution?
My own take is that they’ve lost the ability to distinguish between multiple sources and a single source passing along bogus information to multiple accommodating accomplices, possibly unwitting.
Obviously if CNN follows its process and still manages to report false stories the process is broken and they have a problem. Think, the National Enquirer follows its processes before publication but that doesn’t make it a trusted source in news.
Without sanctions, I don’t see how CNN or other media is going to avoid repeating the same mistake. Obviously there’s a huge incentive to get media to report damaging stories about Russian collusion whether they are true or false.
“There’s a simple explanation for such. CNN and other major media outlets’ hatred for Trump is such that they aren’t even bothering to verify stories through reliable sources any more and are publishing them as facts. ”
Nope. In fact, they usually do verify stuff. They have reported on hundreds if not thousands of stories on conservatives and on Trump. There have been a handful of instances like this. When the error has been egregious, people have been fired or suspended for a while. So, while i ma not a David Frum fan, I think he gets it right in this tweet series, or whatever you call it. Let’s face it. The media knows that the right wing media is just waiting to weaponize any mistake they make.
That said, I do think that speed has become more important than accuracy.
https://twitter.com/davidfrum/status/939502713649410048?t=1&cn=ZmxleGlibGVfcmVjc18y&refsrc=email&iid=fbcda57b0a7e4ad2bc3113fbfcc5742e&uid=345472710&nid=244+272699400
Steve
Every time any news organization makes a mistake that in any way references Trump, it becomes a big deal. When Fox or any right wing site does the same thing? Crickets. I think Dave, you have just been sucked in because of the volume of stuff complaining about MSM mistakes, and just don’t hear about the other stuff.
http://thehill.com/homenews/media/363990-fox-news-issues-correction-on-roy-moore-accuser-yearbook-forgery-headline?rnd=1512763203
Steve
Just to add to this, here is a list of 50 lies from Fox News. Somehow this did not provoke a response from you. Why did a few errors about Trump? Also, as Frum notes, shouldn’t we really be more worried, or at least as worried when the power of the state is used to lie and miscommunicate to us, as when the press makes mistakes?
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2015/feb/26/fact-checks-behind-daily-shows-50-fox-news-lies/
Steve
Read Glenn Greenwald’s article in its entirety; it explains what the consequences are and why it’s so bad for reputable media to publish false stories. Mr Greenwald is a journalist and no Conservative, he is very Liberal but very skeptical of the anti-Russia mania; pretty good source of authority.
If CNN / ABC / CBS / MSNBC want to be regarded as reliable as Fox News, that’s their choice. Somehow I doubt that helps anyone who doesn’t like the current administration.
steve:
I don’t really care what Republicans do. I care what Democrats do because it affects my life. Maybe I’d think differently if I lived in a state in which what the Republican Party did meant anything at all. I’m not an anti-government crank as too many Republicans are. It genuinely bothers me when Democrats discredit themselves because I would like to see good government. I think that you should consider whether you’ve been “sucked in”, as you put it, by the tribal aspect of the tit for tat. Do you only worry about their tribe?
Also, as CuriousOnlooker notes, the mania about Russia is a ghastly mistake. Russia isn’t our friend but we shouldn’t make it into our enemy, either.
@Andy, I’ve listened to France24 and BBC World in the evenings while cooking. My wife, for her own reasons, has taken to reading the Guardian for her U.S. news because she thinks American journalism has gone crazy.
Poor steve.
Dave. In this case I don’t really care about tribes. Your claim is that they hate Trump so much they aren’t even verifying stories. We know from the recent O’Keefe incident that in fact they are. We know what it looks like when a news source really does not verify anything, hence my reference to the Fox 50 lies. As Frum pointed out, the media is in a position they have never been in before. A POTUS who pours out lies, not even ones concealed as spin, on a near daily basis. At a time when news agencies have fewer staff than in the past, they are trying to keep up with this flood of lies, and they occasionally make mistakes. When they do, they almost immediately correct them, and they have actually suspended and fired people.
All of this at a time when with our digital media, speed counts more than anything. We see the same in stories that are not political. So, you are wrong about a big plot to get Trump. To be sure, I suspect that some of the media who traveled with Trump harbor bad feelings after they came close to getting assaulted after his verbal attacks on them every night. I am sure some of them want revenge. That said, there is no big plot that I am seeing. Again, as Frum noted, the media is hyper aware that every time they make a mistake, it si weaponized against them. (And FTR, I have agreed here many times that we don’t need so much emphasis on the Russian story. It should be treated just like Benghazi, where there was no factual basis to the claim that they were trying to hide stuff to help the Obama election, as shown in all 8 investigations. It should just be kept in the news for political purposes, same as Benghazi.)
Poor Drew. Believes anything Trump tells him. What was that commercial. A mind is a terrible thing to waste?
Steve
I haven’t watched Fox News in a decade or more. I read it on the Internet only infrequently. I rarely read the New York Post. I ignore Trump’s tweets as nonsensical. Why should I follow this stuff obsessively?
I’d like to be able to get good, unbiased news from the major news outlets I do follow. I think those outlets should be ashamed about their present behavior. How do you expect things to improve?
I don’t allege a plot. The commonality of interest is obvious.
The difference between Russia and Libya is that Libya doesn’t have more nuclear weapons than any other country in the world. The relationship between the U. S. and Russia is the most important bilateral relationship in the world. Our relationship with Libya doesn’t matter a bit to the U. S. or, frankly, to anybody else in the world other than the Libyans. Or, possibly, to the Italians.
Personally, I think the commingling of news and “analysis” has lead to sloppy reporting.
Like others, I do not watch any of the cable news networks anymore, except on rare occasions (like I’m getting new tires on my car and its playing in the waiting room).
But even before I stopped watching I noticed the news content was consistently going down in favor of “analysis.” So we’d get 30 seconds of a “news” item followed by 7-10 minutes of “analysis” by self-described experts who are actually provocateurs most of the time. It’s gotten to the point where the people giving the news are now also providing their own “analysis” as well.
And I use “news” in quotes because it seems like most of the time they only thing being reported is what anyone can read on Twitter.
That’s a good description of my gripe. Keep the opinions on the op-ed page.
” How do you expect things to improve?”
At present, I really don’t. I think this is driven by money and ratings. The first one to report stuff gets a ratings bonanza. So as long as this only happens a few times a year, nothing changes. If it happens too often, ratings will down even if you report first all of the time. Then the networks will clean up, but not until then.
Libya and Russia? Surely you realize that neither of these is really very much about Libya or Russia. Libya was just a way for the GOP to go after Obama and Clinton. Russia is just a way to go after Trump and his gang.
Steve
My point is that perseverating over Russia is a very dangerous game. Libya? Not so much.
And my point is that almost none of this is really leading to doing anything about Russia. We have known for a year, at least, that they tried to tamper with our elections. We also know that we try to tamper with a lot of other elections, so we are hardly innocent. We aren’t going to do much about Russia, mostly because we can’t but also because we don’t care that much. This is just a way to make life difficult for Trump.
Steve