"Yes. We must all be spanked."
Posted on 06/26/2017 7:29:26 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
It must have sounded like a great scoop. CNN reporter Thomas Frank heard from a single source that claimed the Senate Intelligence Committee was probing Trump transition team member Anthony Scaramucci for a supposed meeting with a Russian investment fund CEO, and ran the story on Thursday. By Friday, though, the story had mysteriously disappeared, and it took more than twelve hours for CNN to officially retract the story — and only after Buzzfeed began asking questions about it:
The now-deleted story, by investigative reporter Thomas Frank, was published Thursday and cited a single, unnamed source who claimed that the Senate Intelligence Committee was looking into a “$10-billion Russian investment fund whose chief executive met with a member of President Donald Trump’s transition team four days before Trump’s inauguration.”
But by Friday evening, the story had vanished from CNN’s website. It was not immediately clear when the story was removed, but a tweet linking to the story, from CNN’s Politics account, was also deleted sometime Friday evening.
After noticing the story’s disappearance, BuzzFeed News contacted CNN. More than an hour later, an editor’s note appeared on CNN’s website. A company representative sent BuzzFeed News a link to the note, but did not answer other questions about why the story was removed.
“The story did not meet CNN’s editorial standards and has been retracted,” the editor’s note said. It did not say which parts of the story failed to meet the company’s standards. The note also apologized to Anthony Scaramucci, a member of Trump’s transition team and an adviser to his presidential campaign, who was named in the report.
Over the weekend, CNN’s executives busied themselves with a new process for reporting on Russia, Buzzfeed later learned. According to an internal memo, all reporting from CNN on that topic will have to get specific approval from executives before appearing on any of their platforms. Jon Passantino’s source says that disciplinary action will also be forthcoming over last week’s debacle:
In wake of story retraction, CNNMoney exec editor sends memo to staff mandating all "Russia-related content" must be cleared by him or VP pic.twitter.com/2Y6QMZj1h5
— Jon Passantino (@passantino) June 25, 2017
A source close to the network, who requested anonymity to discuss the matter, told BuzzFeed News earlier that the story was a “massive, massive [f***] up and people will be disciplined.” The person said CNN Worldwide President Jeff Zucker and the head of the company’s human resources department are “directly involved” in an internal investigation examining how the story was handled.
It will be worth watching just how CNN handles the discipline in this specific case. Did Frank’s source provide solid reporting before, and just get this one wrong? Or did the source simply sucker Frank? How much effort went into corroborating the information? While CNN is at it, they may also want to explain why the story was allowed to be deleted off their platforms without any explanation at all for hours, which also seems like an editorial failure of its own.
In part, though, this happens because of the hyperbolic and hyper-competitive environment in which the national media now operates on the Trump administration, and especially the Russia angles. There seems to be almost a desperation to provide grist for that particular mill, as no real evidence has emerged of any collusion between Trump campaign officials and Russian intelligence, despite several months of focus on it by Congress, the FBI, and national media outlets. So far at least it’s a dry hole, and yet media outlets insist on pumping it continuously — and that need to provide new reporting on a weak narrative seems like a pretty good incentive to lower standards on reporting in order to get something fresh to put in front of readers and viewers. If that is what happened in this case — we don’t know that for sure yet, of course — it would be an utterly predictable outcome.
Perhaps this might provide a lesson to other outlets about this particular story. It’s one that will in all likelihood get ignored.
I doubt it.
They’ll probably receive merit badges.
With what? A 5 minute timeout in the corner with a favorite binky?
CNN is not going to do $hit!
They are just trying to make look like they are real news.
CNN = Fake News
A big part of me think someone in the Trump admin is trolling the media by ‘leaking’ provably false allegations just so that after they have been reported Trump can slap them down with facts. Too funny if true.
Buzzfeed is fake news too.
Buzzfeed = Fakefeed
Anybody can make an anonymous claim against Trump or any Republican and the MSM will blast it all across the world with no problem...............
Right if the even BS generator Buzzfeed is calling you out you know your story is crap.
It did not say which parts of the story failed to meet the company’s standards.
That's an easy one to answer: the story failed to fool anybody. Surprising only because that's a very low bar to meet. They need to develop a higher standard for the lies they tell...or, at least, have a standard.
Interesting angle that Trump could be leaking fake info on himself and his people, just to get the media to bite, and then make asses of themselves.
I personally think that top DNC officials have decided that this manufactured political-media campaign has run its course, and they and their media outlets can no longer sucker or scare the American public into believing it - so they are pulling the plug. its the end of “Russia-gate.”
Personally I think they got a letter from an attorney and are afraid of being sued.
Disciplined?
Banned from the CNN office coffee pot for a week?
So.. CNN is drawing a “red line”
Maybe they can “keep their doctor?”
Perhaps they will even have to bow to another dictator like they did during the Gulf war?
I think they will be forced to actually tell the truth for a day. - Now that would be a punishment!
If CNN can report for months on end about a missing Malaysian airliner, then they should have no problem making sh*it up about Trump and the Russians, to keep their narrative going for months on end. Even though the Trump-Russian connection has been proven false.
But do you think that will stop CNN from pursuing a deader than dead, dead horse?
At some point, this Trump-Russia narrative will eventually fissile out into some tangental spin by CNN, so that they can try to save face about getting it ALL WRONG. But they will still claim it's all Trump's fault.
I think they got a phone call, with a promise there would be an official letter sent.
Looks like Democrats have decided the Russia story isn’t a way to win 2018. It’ll be interesting to see what story they tell CNN to focus on next.
The “discipline” will probably be throwing out all sorts of trial balloons to see which ones help the Ds. In his worst nightmares it will involve traveling to PA, Ohio, Kansas and other “hellholes” to test various narratives in person.
And it’s not fair since it’s not the “reporter’s” fault that Ds took a few days to inform CNN of the change after Ossoff’s loss.
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