CNN's Bogus RussiaGate Story Again Shows Media's Fervor To Publish Fake News

December 11, 2017

On December 8, CNN published an exclusive report claiming an email was sent to the Donald Trump Campaign in September 2016, which included a decryption key and website address for hacked Wikileaks documents. “The email came two months after the hacked emails of the Democratic National Committee were made public and one month before WikiLeaks began leaking the contents of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s hacked emails,” reported CNN.

The email was sent from someone claiming to be “Mike Erickson.” CNN initially claimed the email was sent September 4, but it was actually sent September 14, 2016, dramatically changing the story from apparent evidence of possible collusion to a non-story.

On September 13, 2016 Wikileaks tweeted out a link with a decryption key and website address for documents from hacker Guccifer 2.0. The documents were from 2008 to 2009, including DNC and Obama Transition documents, showing ambassador picks and donors to the DNC and Obama Campaign from the time. CNN reported on the email as though the Trump Campaign was given exclusive access to additional DNC documents or Podesta emails previous to their release.

CNN’s report trended on Twitter, was subsequently reported on as fact by other mainstream media outlets, including USA Today, the Daily Beast, and others. NBC’s Ken Dilanian claimed to have verified the same exact CNN story. The Washington Post first pointed out that the documents in question were already made public, though CNN delayed in correcting their report, and only added corrections at 3:45 PM EST rather than remove the entire pointless article.

As the case has been with several Russia narrative stories, the corrections get far less attention than the initial false reporting. These sensationalistic mistakes around the Russia narrative have fueled the Trump-Russia collusion story, boosted cable TV ratings and helped popularize Russia grifters whose tweets and posts are shared thousands of times on social media, and rarely deleted or fixed when the claims they spread are proven false. Meanwhile, those who criticize the false reporting about Russia are in turn criticized as Kremlin trolls, pro-Trump, or pro-Russia from those who would rather be fed lies to reinforce their own suspicions and beliefs over factual reporting.

The trend to jump to conclusions or run outright false stories about Trump-Russia have developed into a post-2016 election past time for mainstream media outlets. On November 24, 2016 The Washington Post published a controversial interview with anonymous sources from PropOrNot, a poorly-constructed website that listed several actual news sites as Russian propaganda outlets.

Due to the backlash it received, the Post added an editor’s note claiming that it could not “vouch for the validity of PropOrNot’s findings.” However, the Post found the story valuable, in clicks and in propagating its own agenda, and has refused to take down the story.

On December 31, 2016, the Post published another false story claiming the Vermont Utility System had been hacked. The story was debunked shortly after publication, but not before several politicians and pundits ran with its bogus allegations.

An editor’s note was added to article: “An earlier version of this story incorrectly said that Russian hackers had penetrated the U.S. electric grid. Authorities say there is no indication of that so far. The computer at Burlington Electric that was hacked was not attached to the grid.” Not only was the computer not attached to the grid, but the malware code found on the laptop is common and in no way implied that the genesis of it was the Russian government.

A January 12, 2017 C-SPAN show was interrupted for 10 minutes with the broadcast of RT (Russia Today). C-SPAN concluded that the error was the result of a routing glitch. However, mainstream media outlets sensationalized the glitch and hypothesized that a Russian government hack was responsible The same month, BuzzFeed published a report on the Trump Dossier, despite the opposition research document that it was based on — and which the outlet also published — being riddled with errors and unverifiable assumptions.

Louise Mensch, a former Heat Street editor, and Claude Taylor, a former Bill Clinton White House volunteer coordinator, have built large followings by throwing out conspiracy theories and wild speculation about alleged Trump-Russia ties. In August 2017, the Guardian reported:

Explosive allegations about Donald Trump made by online writers with large followings among Trump critics were based on bogus information from a hoaxer who falsely claimed to work in law enforcement.

Claude Taylor tweeted fake details of criminal inquiries into Trump that were invented by a source whose claim to work for the New York attorney general was not checked, according to emails seen by the Guardian. The allegations were endorsed as authentic and retweeted by his co-writer Louise Mensch.

The source’s false tips included an allegation, which has been aggressively circulated by Mensch and Taylor, that Trump’s inactive fashion model agency is under investigation by New York authorities for possible sex trafficking.

Despite their overt lack of credibility, they still maintain large followings on social media, and Mensch has been published in the New York Times op-ed section, and featured on MSNBC to discuss the Russia narrative. Other media pundits, such as MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, have built large audiences with sensationalism, jingoism and false reporting on the Trump-Russia narrative.

In June 2017, three CNN journalists resigned after publishing a fake story involving short-lived White House Press Secretary Anthony Scaramucci and a Russian investment bank under congressional investigation. Three months later, several mainstream outlets reported on a fake story that 21 states had their voting systems hacked by the Russians. The story was allegedly sourced from the Department of Homeland Security, but was later debunked by several states cited in the reports.

Two weeks ago, ABC News‘s Brian Ross’ breaking report that former Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn reached a plea agreement with federal prosecutors included a false claim that Flynn was going to testify that he was instructed by Trump to communicate with the Russians during his campaign. Ross was suspended for four weeks due to the egregious error.

For all the hysteria over fake news, several mainstream media outlets lend credence to the polarizing partisan rift on the subject when they willingly push and sensationalize fake stories, only to delay correcting them and scoff at the criticisms of their mistakes. The climate that has developed around the Faux Resistance and Trump-Russia narrative enables grifters, lazy reporting, and sensationalism to thrive. Rationality has been abandoned in favor of Cold War era rhetoric that has replaced constructive — and factual — ways to criticize the Trump Administration and the forces that enabled its ascendance into office.