"The Best Mix Of Hard-Hitting REAL News & Cutting-Edge Alternative News On The Web"
December 8, 2017
Give Them Enough Rope And They Always Hang Themselves - CNN 'Game Changing' Anti-Trump Viral Report Was Fake News Using Anonymous Sources Again - Are We Seeing The Pattern Here?
It is hard to keep count these days of the amount of Anti-Trump fake news stories the mainstream media continues to publish, just to have to be corrected in a manner to which the whole point of the accusation contained within the report is completely negated when the truth is revealed.
Last Friday it was ABC News' Brian Ross that reported that former national security adviser Michael Flynn was going to testify that Donald Trump ordered him to make contact with Russia when he was still a candidate. The bombshell report instantly tanked the stock market, which saw a 350 point immediate drop, and it took ABC News nearly seven hours to clarify that Trump wasn't a "candidate" when he ordered that, but was the President-Elect and the order was a natural part of the transition process. After deleting their clarification, they issued multiple corrections, and suspended long time journalist Brian Ross, then issued a statement.
Jump forward to the following Friday, December 8, 2018, and mainstream media's attempt to out-do each other on anti-Trump fake news stories, we see CNN issue a highly cited, instantly viral, game-changing report, accompanied by their Breaking News banner and proudly touting it was an exclusive all morning and afternoon, which claimed that Donald Trump Jr. received an email on September 4, 2016, offering him a decryption key and website address for hacked WikiLeaks documents, more than a week before they were publicly released.
Keep that September 4th date in mind as we continue.
This spawned immediate headlines from other websites like "This Sounds Very Big To Me," from the liberal website TPM, and "Trump campaign had access to WikiLeaks documents," by AOL.com, and "Wikileaks sent Trump private access and a decryption key to emails weeks before they were released," by far left progressively liberal Daily KOS, and "Trump Campaign Reportedly Received Early Access to WikiLeaks Docs," by MediaIte, along with a whole host of other sites quoting the September 4th date from CNN.
How did CNN get this exclusive, breaking news blockbuster? Via the CNN report (archive is link here):
The email, which was described to CNN by multiple sources and verified by Trump Jr.'s attorney, came from someone who listed his name as "Mike Erickson." It was addressed to Trump, Trump Jr., Trump Jr.'s personal assistant and others, and turned over to Congress as part of the documents provided by the Trump Organization.
The whole point of CNN's wall-to-wall coverage all morning and afternoon was the Trump campaign had been given early access by Wikileaks to leaked (according to Wikileaks) or hacked information. Collusion! AHA!
Except.................................... Washington Post actually saw the emails and the date on that email that made this such a huge story for liberals asserting it proved collusion, was actually September 14, 2016, a day after Wikileaks had already released the information publicly.
The Washington Post story was published at 1:00 pm and CNN waited nearly three hours to issue a correction at 3:49 pm, three hours after the Wapo article with the real date, which states "Correction: This story has been corrected to say the date of the email was September 14, 2016, not September 4, 2016. The story also changed the headline and removed a tweet from Donald Trump Jr., who posted a message about WikiLeaks on September 4, 2016."
So once again, they based a headline and an entire report on information obtained by unnamed sources, and had to change their headline, edit their whole piece and issue a correction on the date, which in and of itself was the whole point of the initial report, much as they did back in June when they wrote a report based on an unnamed source, saying that former FBI Director James Comey would refute President Trump's assertions that he was told by Comey that he was not personally under investigation. That report was also, edited, had the headline changed as well as the content after Comey's prepared statements confirmed that the President was correct and he was told on three occasions that he was not under investigation.
The majority of the initial articles citing the original CNN report have not been updated with the correct information as of this writing.
Another interesting point about this latest fake news by CNN, is the incredible hypocrisy of CNN media personalities, where the day after the ABC "fake news" report, before ABC News had announced Ross's suspension, CNN's senior media correspondent, Brian Stelter, called ABC's report an "outrageous error," and asked via Twitter "Will there be disciplinary action? The network declined to say when @oliverdarcy asked."
Of course I felt the need to ask Mr. Stelter at the time "Was there disciplinary action taken when CNN reported the that Comey would refute Trump's assertion that he was told he was not personally under investigation, then corrected, updated and edited when Comey confirmed Trump's claim?"
I received no response, though I admit I didn't expect one.
It does beg the question of whether there will be any disciplinary action taken against Manu Raju and Jeremy Herb, the authors of CNN's inaccurate news story?
Nope, there will not be. Stelter now has just answered that... there will be "no disciplinary action" taken against the CNN writers for their incorrect report, because "unlike with Brian Ross/ABC," they "followed the editorial standards process." He follows that up with the ironic statement "Multiple sources provided him with incorrect info."
Two comments on that: First it appears they need a huge update on their "editorial standards," and; Secondly maybe they should be more careful of their "sources," since they seem to not be giving them correct information.
With so many of these "inaccurate" reports which some might say fits the definition of "fake news," perhaps they are being fed this false information deliberately to make them look bad? Give them enough rope and they always hang themselves.
This is happening way too often to simply be mistakes or careless reporting, unless they truly are just that incompetent.
CNN's original story also claimed that "Congressional investigators are uncertain who the sender is," yet it appears the WSJ was easily able to obtain that information as Rebecca Ballhaus, @WSJ reporter covering the White House, reports "The Sept. 14 email to Trump campaign advertising WikiLeaks emails promoted publicly available info, was riddled with typos and came from a Trump backer who had given $40 to the campaign months earlier, per email viewed by @WSJ."
It appears everybody but CNN had access to the email and the correct information while CNN was reporting what unnamed sources told them, the majority of which was wrong.
BOTTOM LINE
The state of the media in America these days is in bad shape when Washington Post, infamous for their own fake news articles (Russia attacked our grid, claiming a group was "expert" when attacking Independent media as "Russian propaganda" before having to say they couldn't vouch for the credibility of those so-called experts) has to be the one to correct CNN's fake news story of the day.
Below is CNN's on- air correction hours after wall-to-wall coverage on the inaccurate reports, but a search of YouTube for the last 24 hours, shows exactly how much of the day they spent pumping the initial story on multiple different segments of their on-air coverage, with videos stating that "Wikileaks attempted to get Clinton emails to Donald Trump," when we now know Wikileaks didn't even send the email in question.
