One is simply gobsmacked at what has been going on over at CNN.
Talk about a bad week!
One is simply gobsmacked at what has been going on over at CNN.
Back there in the mists of July, CNN’s Jim Sciutto, Carl Bernstein posted a piece on the latest-of-the-moment “news” about the now infamous “Trump Tower” meeting between various Trump supporters (Don Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort) and a Russian woman who was pitched as having campaign dirt on Hillary but in fact was there to, as it turned out, lobby against an American law on adoption the Russians hate. Among the controversies is whether Donald Trump knew of the meeting in advance. He says no.
Thus the “breaking news” aspect of this was that supposedly now-estranged Trump attorney Michael Cohen said he did. Something Cohen twice denied to an investigating congressional committee. The CNN piece contained this line:
“Contacted by CNN, one of Cohen’s attorneys, Lanny Davis, declined to comment.”
The problem? BuzzFeed later headlined: “Lanny Davis says he was a source for CNN’s Trump Tower Story.”
In other words, with that one line CNN was telling its audience something that was, in fact, untrue. All hell quickly broke loose, and it wasn’t just coming from conservatives. There was the Left’s Glenn Greenwald headlining over his personal byline: “CNN, Credibly Accused of Lying to its Audience About a Key Claim in its Blockbuster Cohen Story, Refuses to Comment.”
Here were these lines in a story about CNN from the decidedly non-conservative Associated Press which ran, stunningly, in the New York Times. They read:
“The problem for CNN is that the July 27 story said ‘contacted by CNN, one of Cohen’s attorneys, Lanny Davis, declined to comment.’
Yet, if Davis was actually an anonymous source for CNN, the story should not also say that Cohen’s lawyer declined to comment. You can’t have it both ways. That’s a big no-no in journalism.”
One can only marvel at this. Here were not one but two CNN journalists- both of whom I know and think highly of – having a story with a line that was provably false. And they got absolutely hammered for it – by left- leaning outlets.
Then, on another subject altogether – Antifa – came these lines.
Here was CNN’s Don Lemon: “No organization is perfect, there was some violence. No one condones the violence. But there were different reasons for Antifa and for these Neo-Nazis to be there. One, racist fascists, the other group fighting racist fascists. There’s a distinction there.”
https://www.real.video/embed/5829763553001
Here’s CNN’s Chris Cuomo: “Now, how you fight matters too. There’s no question about that. But drawing a moral equivalency between those espousing hate and those fighting it because they both resort to violence emboldens hate, legitimizes hateful belief and elevates what should be stamped out…The bigots are wrong to hit. Antifa,or whomever, anarchists or malcontent or misguided, they are also wrong to hit. But fighting hate is right. And in a clash between hate and those who oppose it, those who oppose it are on the side of right.”
And last but certainly not least, here is CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin: “Let’s be clear also about what is going on here. The theme here is, ‘I’m Donald Trump and I’ll protect you from the scary, black people.’
…“Antifa is widely perceived as an African-American organization, and this is just part of the same story of Lebron James and Don Lemon and Maxine Waters and the NFL players and the UCLA basketball players. This is about black versus white. This is about Donald Trump’s appeal to racism and it just happens all the time. We never say it — we don’t say it enough for what it is, but that’s what is going on here.”
