The executive editor of the New York Times stands behind his paper’s coverage of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible collusion between President Trump and Russia.
Dean Baquet told one of his reporters that he had no regrets over the news organization’s extensive Trump-Russia coverage.
“We wrote a lot about Russia, and I have no regrets,” the top editor said. “It’s not our job to determine whether or not there was illegality.”
He joins Jeff Zucker, president of CNN, who said he stood by CNN’s reporting of the 22-month long investigation in an email reported by the Times.
“We are not investigators. We are journalists, and our role is to report the facts as we know them, which is exactly what we did,” Zucker wrote. “A sitting president’s own Justice Department investigated his campaign for collusion with a hostile nation. That’s not enormous because the media says so. That’s enormous because it’s unprecedented.”
Attorney General William Barr announced in a four-page summary of Mueller’s report released Sunday that Trump did not collude with Russia.
In the following days, the revelation has prompted a sense of vindication from Trump and his supporters who are upset at the media for its extensive coverage of the investigation. Trump, who frequently refers to the Times and CNN as “fake news,” re-purposed the phrase to describe mainstream media as a whole Tuesday morning.
Mueller also declined to determine whether Trump obstructed justice, and Barr said he and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein concluded there was insufficient evidence to show the president committed a crime.
