The Media Have Done Irreparable Damage To The Country

For the past two years, a large swath of the media engaged in a mass act of self-deception and partisan groupthink. Perhaps it was Watergate envy, or bitterness over Donald Trump’s victory, or antagonism towards Republicans in general—or, most likely, a little bit of all the above. But now that Special Counsel Robert Mueller has delivered his report on Russian collusion, it’s clear that political journalists did the bidding of those who wanted to delegitimize and overturn Trump’s election.

While bad behavior from partisan sources should be expected, the lack of skepticism from self-appointed unbiased journalists has been unprecedented. Any critical observer could see early on that Trump-era partisan newsroom culture had made journalists susceptible to the deception of those peddling expedient stories. Our weekly bouts of Russia hysteria all sprung from one predetermined outcome: the president was in bed with Vlad Putin.

The natural disposition of journalists—even opinion journalists—should be skepticism. Like him or not, the notion that the president of the United States, a wealthy showman who’s been in the limelight for decades, and ran one of the most chaotic major political organizations in history, had been secretly conspiring with Russia to steal a 50-state election should immediately have been deemed too good to be true by any decent journalist.

Yet once-respectable, if biased, mainstream outlets churned out one deceptive and faulty stories on the matter after the next. Even when corrected, these many debunked pieces helped foster an environment that allowed the Big Myth to fester.

For all the alleged reporters who spread tales of conspiracy—Ken Dilanian, Natasha Betrand, Ryan Lizza, Manu Raju, and Jason Leopold come to mind, although they certainly weren’t alone— there were an endless number of pundits and liberal writers who regularly accused the president, not of being merely mendacious or incompetent, but of sedition.

A bunch of crackpots were transformed into social media stars. Cable news paraded out officials with axes to grind, like John Brennan and James Clapper, and a slew of supposedly credentialed talking heads as experts. They all claimed that the most remarkable conspiracy in American history had transpired.

No one, of course, will take responsibility for two years of panic-driven coverage. Margaret Sullivan, a media columnist at the Washington Post, in fact, argues that mainstream journalists—not the ones who were rightly dubious about the collusion narrative—should be “proud” of the exemplary job they did. Sullivan might not be aware that it was the Washington Post that helped ignite the Russia scare with two “scoops” that turned out to be completely false in early 2017: the first, a piece on Russia hacking a Vermont power grid and the other a breathless story about the reach of Vladimir Putin’s fake news operations.

“There’s been so much solid reporting about the Trump-Russia mystery,” wrote Brian Stelter, CNN’s chief media correspondent, “but the media ecosystem tends to reward speculation over straight news.” He would know. Not only was feverish speculation regularly batted around on CNN panels, but most of the network’s anchors allowed guests to perpetuate conjecture without any pushback.

Stelter often relied on Dan Rather, a man who propagated false information to try and take down another president. CNN’s reporters, in fact, were some of the worst offenders. It got to a point where the network had to stop firing people for acts of journalistic malpractice.

Take the legendary Carl Bernstein, now with CNN, who also claims that coverage of Russia collusion was “one of the great reporting jobs” in history. One of these great bombshells, authored by Bernstein, Marshall Cohen, and former Obama administration political appointee Jim Sciutto, had numerous “sources” on the record claiming that Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen was going to tell Mueller that Trump knew in advance of the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting that his campaign was colluding with a Kremlin-linked lawyer who was allegedly selling dirt on Hillary Clinton. False alarm.

There were many false alarms. And every time a story was debunked, we were told that reporters, like all humans, make mistakes. It’s true. Unlike everyone else, though, the many supposedly innocent blunders of mainstream reporters were almost always skewed in the same direction.

“I’m comfortable with our coverage. It is never our job to determine illegality,” New York Times editor Dean Baquet explained, “but to expose the actions of people in power. And that’s what we and others have done and will continue to do.” In reality, The New York Times and other outlets have hurt their ability to expose the actions of the powerful, because, even when they’re right, many Americans will have a difficult time believing them. And the powerful will certainly have a lot easier time dismissing them as tools of the Democratic Party.

Half the country doesn’t trust anything you have to say. And after being accused of sedition for two years, conservatives have every right to be “sore winners” and pouncers. After all, this wasn’t your typical political debate.

In a January 2017, I wrote a column, titled “Russia Isn’t Our Friend, But That Doesn’t Make The Left’s Conspiracy Theories True,” that argued a person could view Russia as an adversary and be critical of Trump, and still not embrace fantastical notions about Putin’s superhuman reach. At the time, arguing there was no “evidence that Russian intelligence carried out a successful plan to pick the government of the United States,” as New York’s Jonathan Chait and others had done, produced plenty of sneering blowback about one’s patriotism.

Chait later went on to pen an entire Birther-like feature pondering whether Trump had been a Russian asset since 1987. He now takes the authoritarian position that if “you refuse to cooperate with the investigation, you can’t claim you were cleared.” This is the moderate, serious wing of liberal punditry talking writing in heavily trafficked sites. You can imagine what the rest looks like.

Now, I’m no fan of Trump’s use of the fraught phrase “enemy of the people” to attack the media. It’s undeniable, though, that the media have done more damage to trust in American institutions, including their own, than the Russians could ever have hoped with their Twitter trolls and Facebook ads.

Polls show that a majority of Democrats still believe Russians tampered with their votes. The 2016 election wasn’t Pearl Harbor. It isn’t the worst attack on America since 9/11. You have free will. No one determines your vote but you. In truth, Russia didn’t really “meddle” in the election. Russia, as they have always done and always will, tried to meddle in the American election.

Trump antagonists, with the help of the media, used fear over Russia to try to reverse the results of a legitimate election. Nothing like this has ever happened in modern American history.

Mueller concluding his investigation,inspired the The Daily Caller’s Amber Athey to compile a list of some of the worst media screw-ups in the history of Russia theories.

1. CNN Accuses Don Jr. Of Wikileaks Collusion
Last December, CNN’s Manu Rajur reported that Wikileaks emailed Donald Trump Jr. to give him access to stolen documents a full 10 days before they were released to the public. Unfortunately for CNN, it turns out their sources gave them the wrong date. Don Jr. actually received an email with access to the stolen docs on Sept. 14, 2016, after they had already been released publicly.

2. ABC Tanks Stock Market With Fake Flynn News
ABC was forced to suspend Brian Rossafter he falsely reported that former national security adviser Michael Flynn was prepared to testify that then-candidate Donald Trump ordered him to make contact with the Russians.
The stock market dropped a few hundred points at the news — but it turned out to be fake.ABC clarified that Flynn was actually prepared to testify that Trump asked him to contact Russia while the administration was transitioning into office. Pretty standard preparation for an incoming president.

3. The Mooch Is NOT Under Investigation
CNN earns another spot on this list for their shoddy reporting about former Trump adviser Anthony, “The Mooch,” Scaramucci. In June, CNN relied on a single unnamed source to claim that Scaramucci was under investigation for a meeting he took with a Russian banker prior to Trump’s inauguration.The Mooch denied the story and CNN later gave him a much-deserved apology. Oh … and three CNN employees resigned over the botched piece.

4. Bloomberg’s Dirty Deutsche Bank Scoop
Bloomberg initially reported in December that special counsel Robert Mueller had “zeroed in” on Trump by subpoenaing Deutsche Bank records for the incoming president and his family.Bloomberg later admitted that Mueller was looking for records relating to “people affiliated” with Trump.

5. Sessions Exonerated—Last May, CNN was sure that Attorney General Jeff Sessions had botched protocol when he didn’t list meetings he had with the Russian ambassador on his security clearance forms. To CNN and other establishment media outlets, this was proof that Sessions was hiding something related to Russia. A little over six months later, CNN quietly walked back the scandal, explaining the FBI sent emails informing Sessions’ aide that he did not need to disclose the meetings on his forms because they were carried out in the course of his duties as a senator.

6. Russians Aren’t Just Hacking The Election — They’re Hacking Our Power Grid The Washington Post claimed in January 2017 that Russians were hacking the U.S. power grid through a company in Vermont, only to change the story to say that only one laptop was infiltrated. It turns out that one laptop was never even connected to the power grid.

7. Republicans Funded The Dossier! A number of news outlets have consistently claimed that Republicans initially paid for the anti-Trump Steele dossier, failing to note that Steele wasn’t even contracted by Fusion GPS until after the GOP donors pulled funding. The Republican donors say they paid Fusion for standard opposition research and that they have zero connection to the dossier. The media has perpetuated this falsehood so consistently that even former FBI director James Comey was confused, repeating the lie in an interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier.

8. CNN Gets Comey Prediction Wildly Wrong
Prior to former FBI director James Comey’s congressional testimony last June, CNN asserted that Comey was prepared to contradict a key claim by President Trump — that Comey told him he was not under investigation.Sadly for them, Comey’s prepared testimony was released with the line, “During our one-on-one meeting at Trump Tower … I offered that assurance [that he was not under investigation].”

9. The ’17 Intel Agencies’ Lie——The media perpetuated a false claim from presidential candidate Hillary Clinton for months, insisting that all 17 intelligence agencies agree that Russia interfered in the 2016 election. The New York Times, for example, rated that claim as true only to later say the exact opposite. Only four intelligence agencies ultimately deemed Russia responsible for meddling because the other 13 have no business making judgments on the claim. As The NYT succinctly explained, “The rest were doing other work.”

10. Manafort Notes Are A Nothing Burger
NBC botched its big scoop claiming that Paul Manafort’s notes from a meeting with a Russian lawyer included the word “donations” near a reference to the Republican National Committee. Turns out, not only did the word “donations” not appear in Manafort’s notes, but the word “donor” didn’t, either. POLITICO had to correct the NBC report, leaving the legacy network looking awfully embarrassed.

11. NBC Issues Cohen Correction——NBC issued a major correction in May on a story about wiretaps and Michael Cohen.NBC initially claimed that federal investigators were listening in on Cohen’s phone calls, but it turns out they had what’s called a “pen register warrant,” which means they could see who Cohen spoke to on the phone but could not hear what was said. (RELATED LINK: MSNBC Issues HUGE Correction To Michael Cohen ‘Wiretap’ Story)

12. Did Cohen Go To Prague?——A McClatchy report stated that special counsel Robert Mueller had evidence that Michael Cohen visited Prague in the summer of 2016, which seemed to corroborate the portion of the Steele dossier claiming Cohen visited Prague at that time to meet with a Kremlin official. However, no other outlets ever confirmed the report and Cohen told Congress during an open hearing in February that he has never been to Prague. (RELATED: Here’s Why You Should Be Skeptical Of That Michael Cohen Prague Story)

13. Busted BuzzFeed -—The special counsel’s office disputed a 2019 report by BuzzFeed claiming that Trump directed his lawyer to lie about a potential business deal in Moscow during the 2016 presidential campaign. The BuzzFeed report was used to float impeachment proceedings and obstruction of justice charges against the president, but Mueller’s team disputed the core premise of the reporting. “BuzzFeed’s description of specific statements to the Special Counsel’s Office, and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Michael Cohen’s Congressional testimony are not accurate,” spokesman Peter Carr said in a statement to The Daily Caller News Foundation.

14. Lanny Davis Obliterates CNN’s Trump Tower Story
CNN reported in July that former Trump attorney Michael Cohen was prepared to tell special counsel Robert Mueller that the president had knowledge in advance of a Trump Tower meeting between his son and Russians. But Cohen’s lawyer, Lanny Davis, said in August that CNN’s reporting got “mixed up” and that Cohen had no information related to the Trump Tower meeting. Cohen said the same to Congress on two separate occasions.CNN doubled, tripled, and quadrupled down on its reporting, despite a series of issues with the report.

15. NPR Accuses Don Jr. Of Perjury——NPR published a report in November insisting that Donald Trump Jr. lied to Congress about efforts to build a Trump Tower in Moscow because his statements conflicted with those of former Trump attorney Michael Cohen. However, NPR failed to realize that the piece of Trump Jr.’s testimony they quoted was about a different project.“Trump Jr.’s statements about work on a Trump Tower Moscow that ended in 2014 referred to negotiations with Aras Agalarov,” The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Chuck Ross explained. “Felix Sater, a businessman with links to Cohen and Russian officials, tried to make a Trump Tower Moscow happen in 2015.”

16. Mic Claims Russian Spy Infiltrated The Oval
Shortly after it was revealed that a Russian spy was attempting to infiltrate right-wing networks, Mic writer Emily Singer claimed that same Russian spy was present during an Oval Office meeting with Russian diplomat Sergey Lavrov. Singer claimed Russian spy Maria Butina was spotted in a photo of the meeting, citing the fact that she has red hair like the woman in the photo.
The woman in the photo is actually NSC staffer Cari Lutkins.

NOTE: This story was originally published in May 2018 but has been updated with additional information regarding the delivery of Mueller’s report to Attorney General Bill Barr.

https://amp.dailycaller.com/2019/03/25/media-russia-collusion-mueller-report-fake-news/

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