The New York Times reported last week that U.S. intelligence officials warned members of Congress that Russia is interfering in the 2020 U.S. election to “try to get President Trump reelected.”
The report, based entirely on anonymous sources, also claimed that Trump “berated” former acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire for briefing members of the House on the Kremlin’s reported interference efforts. NBC News, also citing anonymous sources, reported the same, seemingly confirming the narrative that Maguire lost his job because he informed lawmakers that Russia is working to reelect Trump.
However, CNN’s Jake Tapper reported at the same time that other anonymous officials dispute the way the “story is being told.”
As if these conflicting accounts were not bad enough already, NBC reports now that yet more anonymous intelligence officials say they are upset that their findings on Russia were badly distorted by whoever leaked the alleged details of the closed-door briefings.
Guess who it was?
“Intelligence officials say that was an overstatement, fueled, they believe, by a misinterpretation by some Democratic lawmakers on the committee.”
What a surprise.
“Two intelligence officials told NBC News this week that [Shelby Pierson, who led the briefing] did not tell lawmakers that intelligence showed Russia was actively working to help the president's reelection campaign,” the report adds.
So that New York Times “bombshell” report, which Democrats latched on to immediately to accuse Trump of being a “puppet” of Russia, traces back to Democrats who overstated or misunderstood what they were told in an intelligence briefing?
How many news cycles based on dubious or misleading "insider" information from anonymous sources are we going to go through before journalists start applying some rigor? People complain that the Trump era is tiring, but what's really tiring are these five-alarm news cycles based entirely on anonymous sources. Too many of these stories end up imploding, leaving readers even more distrustful of the news media than they were to begin with.
CNN fell for a hot “tip” from an anonymous source in 2017 when it claimed incorrectly that former Trump ally Anthony Scaramucci, who played a significant role on the president's White House transition team, had ties to a $10 billion Russian investment fund owned by a Kremlin-connected bank. Three CNN staffers ended up resigning over the since-retracted story.
Later, CBS News, CNN, and MSNBC reported independently of each other that an email proved Trump and his campaign team coordinated with Russia-aligned hackers during the 2016 presidential election. The reports, which were based on anonymous sources, were all wrong. All of them screwed up the date of the email.
BuzzFeed reported incorrectly in 2019 that Trump directed his attorney, Michael Cohen, “to lie to Congress about the Moscow Tower project.” Like everything else mentioned in this article, the BuzzFeed story, which was based on anonymous sources, turned out to be wrong. Special counsel Robert Mueller himself put out a rare public statement disputing the supposed “scoop” that earned BuzzFeed so much coverage and plaudits from competing newsrooms.
Are we really going to do this right up until Trump’s final day in office?
