Posted on 01/19/2019 7:16:58 AM PST by Kaslin
Friday night, the Special Counsel’s office released an extremely rare statement that took a buzz saw to BuzzFeed News’s Thursday night bombshell that alleged President Trump directed former attorney and fixer Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about possible construction of a Trump Tower in Moscow. In the statement, a Mueller spokesman called it “not accurate.”
Despite the fact that the BuzzFeed News story was not confirmed by — well — any news outlet from when it was first published to the statement from Mueller’s team, the broadcast networks devoted 27 minutes and 33 second on their Friday morning and evening newscasts (minus opening teases) to a story that, for lack of a better term, has been sunk.
All three networks pointed to the questionable veracity of the BuzzFeed piece by Anthony Cormier and Jason Leopold to some degree, but each still gave it coverage with two dithering away over 10 minutes each.
ABC led the way with 10 minutes and 32 seconds between Good Morning America and World News Tonight. Close behind was NBC, which had 10 minutes and five seconds during NBC Nightly News and Today on the Cohen claims. NBC had the longest uninterrupted span with a portion of Today’s coverage going uninterrupted for six minutes and 33 seconds.
In third place and showing the most restraint was CBS. On CBS This Morning and the CBS Evening News, they combined for only six minutes and 56 seconds of BuzzFeed coverage.
Just before 8:00 p.m. Eastern, Office of the Special Counsel spokesman Peter Carr released this statement, sending the media (and Twitter) on all sides into a frenzy: “BuzzFeed’s description of specific statements to the Special Counsel’s Office, and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Michael Cohen’s Congressional testimony are not accurate.”
Earlier in the evening, our friend Amber Athey at the Daily Caller found that CNN and MSNBC combined to use the word “impeach” (and its variations) regarding the implication of the BuzzFeed News story being, well, accurate, “nearly 200 times on Friday” during their respective “original Friday programming....up until each network learned that BuzzFeed’s report was in dispute — shortly before 8 pm.”
When broken down, Athey found that “CNN mentioned impeachment 82 times while MSNBC mentioned it a whopping 97 times.”
CNN’s Reliable Sources host Brian Stelter and his fellow media cheerleader were beside themselves on Friday night, seeking to point fingers at BuzzFeed instead of, in addition to BuzzFeed, themselves for running the story.
Don’t fall for what these politicians out there want you to do. They want you to think we are all crooked, we’re not, but BuzzFeed now — but now, BuzzFeed — now, the onus is on BuzzFeed, right? The onus is now on BuzzFeed. Ben Smith says he knows the identity of the two sources. Obviously, the reporters know the identity of the two sources. They’re going to be going back to those two sources and hopefully to other sources to try to get to the bottom of this. Now, it’s a dispute and I don’t know how that dispute’s going to be resolved....This will be used, obviously against the media as a whole. But I hope we can see past that and be smarter than that. I hope the President doesn’t guide everybody else to use it against the press.
So while Stelter and like-minded individuals may offer spin trying to condemn those making a broader point about the press’s credibility, the facts speak for themselves.
Whether it’s stories like those promulgated by Jayson Blair, Stephen Glass, Dan Rather, Class Relotius, Brian Williams, or those my colleague Rich Noyes and I outlined over a year ago, the media inflict far more damage to themselves and their credibility than almost anything the President tweets or any single piece of research put out about their biases.
Unfortunately, the press have largely proven themselves incapable of this realization.
When ever there was an article from Politico I always said you have to take that with a grain of salt.
Buzzfeed is reporting that Joe Smith...
Now you got it. Thanks for the correction.
Buzzfeed is a glorified clickbait blog being steered by an ex- from Pollutico.
It is partisan trash and unworthy of discussion in the general town square.
Politico once upon a time pretended to be non-partisan. Same with The Hill.
“Maxine Waters says ‘Trump has...’”
No one could argue with the veracity of her claims without being called a racist.
Her “truth” may stretch and shift and be molded in various forms like the theory that mathematics classes are white racist because they only allow one correct answer instead of variations and nuances of answers by black students on exams.
So, now we know the quality of the news the MSM puts out.
It’s based on something called Buzzfeed. It sounds like a gossip rag.
The would be closer to real news if their source was the Babylon Bee.
Re:Buzzfeed trash unworthy of discussion in the public square.
//////////////////////////////
True.
On the 50,000 watt WJR yesterday I stupidly tuned in and heard this milktoast phony Guy Gordon (self-appointed moderate host who is liberal but has a smarmy virtue signaling pose to appeal to the uninformed) start by saying he usually is hesitant to do a Buzzfeed based story....and then enthusiastically said it was like Nixon and obstruction of justice and questioned a professor on the beginning of the end for Trump as Nixon finally was forced to resign. The prof kept saying “we don’t know” and “That’s only if the friend of a colleague of a friend actually said Cohen said this and Buzzfeed was right...”. Gordon: “But then this would be the way Trump will be forced out of office soon.”
Ruined my afternoon.
You are 100percent correct. You have to take both Politico and The Hill with a grain of salt.
Fake, but accurate.
I heard it announced (PDJT ordered Cohen to lie) on the radio yesterday morning. You know, the news blurb they repeat every 15 minutes all day.
Funny, didn’t hear a retraction when Mueller swatted the big lie away. Hmmm, wonder how many people now believe PDJT ordered Cohen to lie? Probably most people who heard it during their busy day.
They know the base (42%) can’t be moved off of Trunp. Goal is to get the flip flop voters to think Trump is toxic.
All this debunked story proves though is the Trump is correct. The MSM is corrupt and can’t be trusted.
Mueller will have a bunch of smoke but no fire report that libs will spin to raising impeachable offenses. Nothing criminal. Case closed.
They’ll then say Mueller was compromised by Russia.
The TDS on display yesterday was level 7. They’ll crank it up to 11 when RBS dies in the next month or two. She has pneumonia.
buzzfeed was like outbrain
Was those stupid click bait links you would see at the bottom of a news article that were ads. It’s viral marketing is what it is and Democrars bought nto it by putting someone from politico in charge of BuzzFeed’s politics.
It’s the same crap of collusion that the Democrats accuse Russia of on fakebook influencing elections
Even while the story was being clearly de-bunked on the internet, CBS ran this phony BuzzFeed rumor as their 2nd top story last night.
No one should ever criticize Russian or Chinese state-run media again, as America’s is exactly the same.
Vox and Vice are equally bad.
Decades ago it was better when the founders owned and operated it
Most of the news media cant report or writhe a real news story for they have mastered in hoax reporting and they like that way no thinking required.
If Mueller was as decent as democrats are saying he would have come forward with the truth at noon... NOT waiting until it became a Friday night dump.
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