"How did CNN end up aggressively hyping such a spectacularly false story? They refuse to say."

"Many hours after their story got exposed as false, the journalist who originally presented it, Congressional reporter Manu Raju, finally posted a tweet noting the correction. CNN’s PR Department then claimed that 'multiple sources' had provided CNN with the false date. And Raju went on CNN, in muted tones, to note the correction, explicitly claiming that 'two sources' had each given him the false date on the email, while also making clear that CNN did not ever even see the email, but only had sources describe its purported contents... [H]ow did 'multiple sources' all misread the date on this document, in exactly the same way, and toward the same end, and then feed this false information to CNN? It is, of course, completely plausible that one source might innocently misread a date on a document. But how is it remotely plausible that multiple sources could all innocently and in good faith misread the date in exactly the same way, all to cause to be disseminated a blockbuster revelation about Trump/Russia/WikiLeaks collusion? This is the critical question that CNN simply refuses to answer. In other words, CNN refuses to provide the most minimal transparency to enable the public to understand what happened here."

Glenn Greenwald, at The Intercept, "The U.S. Media Yesterday Suffered its Most Humiliating Debacle in Ages: Now Refuses All Transparency Over What Happened."