CNN Pushes More “Trump-Russia” Fake News, Refuses to Own Correction

Security guards walk past the entrance to CNN headquarters in Atlanta. (Photo: AP)

It’s been another bad week for the leftwing cable news outlet CNN. The network and website reported an “exclusive” alleging the Trump campaign, including President Donald Trump himself, received WikiLeaks information from an unknown sender before it was public on September 4, 2016.

The story collapsed within hours, even at the hands of the fellow liberal Washington Post. The email was in fact sent on September 14 and linked to scores of documents that WikiLeaks had already publicly released a day earlier.

The Post reported that the emailed information in question was already public before being emailed to the campaign. CNN also assumed the email sender, Michael J. Erickson, who offered a decryption key and access, worked for WikiLeaks and, by extension, the Russians.

He was just a person from the public who felt compelled to give the Trump campaign his suggestion — to look at publicly available emails.

If WaPo is right on the date of the email and @rebeccaballhaus is right on its contents – and CNN is wrong – this is a bigger error than the Brian Ross report. https://t.co/cnh2pIMiqy

— Steve Krakauer (@SteveKrak) December 8, 2017

Mr. Krakauer was referring to the last story covered by Fake News Watch. Last Friday, ABC News’ Brian Ross reported that former national security advisor Michael Flynn was prepared to testify that President Trump, directed him to contact Russian officials while still a candidate. The markets cratered before the network issued a “clarification.”

Ross, who is known for his long history of fake news before fake news was cool, basically got a vacation over the holiday as punishment.

The Washington Post of course was right and, in reality, was only confirming what numerous people on Twitter began to point out immediately. But CNN refused to own up to the mistake, blaming sources and still taking heavy fire from journalists.

“CNN’s initial reporting of the date on an email sent to members of the Trump campaign about Wikileaks documents, which was confirmed by two sources to CNN, was incorrect,” CNN said in a statement. “We have updated our story to include the correct date, and present the proper context for the timing of email.”

CNN still refuses to address the huge, glaring obvious question: how did "multiple sources" all innocently get the same date on the same email wrong? And how/why did this also happen to MSNBC? What's the explanation for that?? https://t.co/izlKdpeHbR pic.twitter.com/AsZaupZ3Ph

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) December 9, 2017

Does anyone think for one second that there would be no action if someone at CNN did something so flagrantly wrong to a Democrat? #witchhunt https://t.co/bZBjqCEW0p

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) December 9, 2017

No one will be held responsible, CNN said in a statement.

This is far from the first fake news story meant to push the “Trump-Russia collusion” narrative at CNN. As PPD’s editor-in-chief pointed out, the collapse of the story wasn’t even the only stain on a CNN article this week.

Another really bad day for @CNN. This latest #FakeNews story demonstrates, at best, research laziness and/or incompetence. But at least it helps overshadow "appalling defense" of the yearbook blunder by their editor @CillizzaCNN. https://t.co/Ody6FWcGux

— Richard Baris (@Peoples_Pundit) December 8, 2017

Beverly Young Nelson, who leveled the most serious sexual misconduct charge against Judge Roy Moore, admitted to forging portions of the yearbook. ABC News coached her through an interview, which attempted to rebrand the admission as an “annotation” rather than flat-out forgery.

CNN editor Chris Cillizza authored an article that demeaned those who questioned the validity of the yearbook inscription Ms. Nelson put forward as evidence of her relationship with Judge Moore, the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Alabama.

PPD readers may remember Cillizza as previously writing for “The Fix” at The Washington Post. In mid-September 2014, he published an “analysis” of the 2014 midterm elections, in which he declared the Democrats were favored to hold control of the U.S. Senate.

They lost a historic number of seats and Republicans took control of the upper chamber.