Throughout the campaign and into Donald Trump’s time in office, the president has consistently pushed back against “fake news” narratives from major media outlets.
For the most part, the media brushed him off, treating him more like an ignorant child who didn’t understand the concept of how the media operated. Unfortunately for them, Trump’s accusations about the media reporting fake or unfounded reports recently grew teeth when CNN retracted a story they have previously reported as fact.
The Original Story
On Thursday, June 22nd, CNN reported a story on their website saying Senate investigators were looking into a meeting between a member of Trump’s transitional team, Anthony Scaramucci and Kirill Dmitriev.
This was considered a story because Dmitriev plays a big role in a Russian Direct Investment Fund that guides investments from U.S. entities inside of Russia. The meeting allegedly took place in a restaurant on January 16th.
CNN’s report also indicated that two Democratic senators quested if Scaramucci had indicated if sanctions against Russia would be lifted during the meeting, which of course would have been a decision that would greatly impact investment funds.
CNN Back Peddles
By Friday night, June 23rd, the story was removed from CNN’s website, and all the links were disabled. The organization simply stated that the story didn’t meet their standards.
CNN did issue an apology to Scaramucci and the story itself didn’t appear on CNN’s television networks. Network executives haven’t said exactly what was wrong with the story to lead them to remove it, or issue an apology other than the one aimed at Scaramucci.
Scaramucci reacted graciously to CNN’s apology by tweeting the following:
“They did the right thing. Classy move. Apology accepted. Everyone makes mistakes. Moving on.”
As of Monday, June 26th, CNN had accepted the resignations of three of their journalists who were involved in the investigation of the alleged pre-inaugural meeting between the head of a Russian investment fund and an associate of President Donald Trump. The story’s author, Thomas Frank was of course among the three. The other two resignations included Lex Harris, head of investigations unit and Eric Lichtlau, an assistant managing editor in CNN’s Washington bureau.
What This Means for Trump
President Donald Trump frequently describes CNN as “fake news”, and refuses to appear on the network.
This story, although CNN took the right steps to fix it after the fact, only adds fuel to the President’s “fake news” fire. His suspicions or beliefs about this network at least have been justified.
CNN ran a story without adequate evidence as fact and had to retract it, only after being called out. Who’s to say how many other similar stories made it on the network’s website or even nightly news program without any more evidence to back them up?
Unfortunately, the days of unbiased journalism are long gone – if they ever existed at all. Virtually all news networks have an agenda, and they select or word stories to back up the narrative they want to promote. Therefore, consumers have to be educated enough to recognize a fake or poorly researched information. They cannot rely on the mainstream media to tell them the whole truth.
How to Spot The Truth Within a News Story
• Look for The Information Convergence: If a story is legit, all the major news networks will cover it. They will not all cover it the same way, though. For example, a left-leaning publication will communicate the facts but slant it towards their narrative and the right winged network will do the same. To find the complete truth, look for the information that both the right and left-winged publications shared. Where their information converges, truth is likely to exist.
• If It Sounds Outrageous, Wait 24 Hours Before Buying Into it: Facebook and Twitter are both designed to promote the latest news. Therefore, they will share information quickly. However, the earliest reports of anything are often not accurate as information evolves over time.
• Be Careful of Anonymous Sources: Anytime a story is reportedly backed by “anonymous sources”, wait and see if anyone is willing to put their name with the story before believing the information entirely
CNN’s retraction is just more evidence of the problem that exists within mainstream media. They aren’t interested in the truth. To this network’s credit, they did at least take the story down, but not before they ran it without evidence to back it up. Therefore, consumers are wise to take everything they read and hear these days from mainstream media outlets with a grain of salt.
~ Liberty Planet
