December 9, 2017

"The media's Russia probe meltdown: 3 screw-ups in one week."

Axios explains:
The misses

Flynn's testimony: Last Friday, ABC News reported that former national security advisor Michael Flynn was prepared to testify that President Trump, while still a candidate, directed him to contact Russian officials. But later in the day, the network issued a "clarification" that the direction came when Trump was president-elect. That changed the impact of the story entirely as it's a common occurrence for presidential transition teams to reach out to foreign governments.

Deutsche Bank subpoena: Reuters and Bloomberg both reported on Tuesday that Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation had subpoenaed Deutsche Bank for information on accounts relating to President Trump and his family members — seemingly confirming that Mueller had expanded his probe to investigate the president's financial dealings. The WSJ defused that bombshell in a follow-up report stating that the subpoenas actually dealt with "people or entities close to Mr. Trump."

WikiLeaks emails: CNN reported this morning that senior Trump campaign officials, including Trump himself, received an email from an unknown sender on September 4, 2016 that linked them to what could have been unreleased WikiLeaks documents. WaPo issued their own report later in the afternoon that the email was actually sent on September 14 — and linked to a trove of documents that WikiLeaks had publicly released a day earlier.

63 comments:

MadisonMan said...

...and I'm still waiting to read of Tillerson's stepping down. Of course, the Times did say it would happen in "several weeks".

Michael K said...

I guess we should consider ourselves lucky that the Deep State is as incompetent in the coup d'etat they are running as they are in governing.

tcrosse said...

...and I'm still waiting to read of Tillerson's stepping down. Of course, the Times did say it would happen in "several weeks".

Not to mention Al Franken stepping down in "several weeks".

Matt Sablan said...

If you can't get a date right you have no business being a journalist.

narciso said...

Three examples of mediamalpractice, the backdating was the tipoff, now some FBI flack perhaps page, or strzok is c'concerned' about hope hicks, sigh.

tds said...

we were promised exposing of a Manchurian candidate groomed by Russia for decades, and all we got is a bunch of journalists exposed for pushing unfounded conspiracy theories.

The real fun begins when it becomes obvious that Mueller investigation will not deliver goods on Trump. The only rational explanation for people who invested so much in Trump's collusion as an obvious, easy to prove fact, will be that Mueller and his team must be on Putin's payroll themselves.

Anonymous said...

Underlining the obvious: these are not small mistakes. The Junior High newspaper would be more accurate than these papers. It's a wonderful thing that the internet is available to draw attention to this garbage.

Levi Starks said...

Don’t worry,
Over at NPR a miss is as good as a hit.

narciso said...

Now that we suspect that the same judge who signed off on the warrant, was the same one that sentenced Lynn, who says they won't cook up a phone indictment.

rhhardin said...

Trump is about to be disappeared. It's the eternal story for women soap opera fans watching the news.

The stories they have to vet are the Trump-favorable ones. Those cost them eyeballs and money if they air them.

Francisco D said...

From a statistical point of view, I would expect MSM screw-ups to be similar to those by an NBA referee.

That is, the mistakes tend to even out over time so that Team A and Team B are roughly even in the bad calls made against them, unless the refs are being paid off.

What are the odds that MSM screw-ups are roughly even when it comes to Team A (Trump, conservatives, straight white males and Republicans) and Team B (the "good guys and gals")?

Sebastian said...

Goes to show, the lefty fake news hysteria is all projection.

Michael K said...

The stories they have to vet are the Trump-favorable ones. Those cost them eyeballs and money if they air them.

I agree this is a factor. The country has millions of Ingas who obsess on this and lose interest in any real news.

FIDO said...

Should I prefer being misinformed (lied to) or uninformed?

Dust Bunny Queen said...

This is a calculated strategy in the propaganda war against Trump.

1. Publish misleading and false stories that are breathlessly hyped and shouted from every television network.

2. Followed by a later and very small mea culpa announcement to correct or retract the previous lies.

3. Knowing that the public, most of whom are not paying attention, will only hear #1 and that will be the idea that sticks in their heads.

Unfortunately for the media, that system isn't working so well now that we have THE INTERNET, where information can be freely exchanged. The media doesn't control the game as much anymore.

This is also why (I think) that the media is getting ever more reckless and hysterical with all the false news leaks. Hoping that more of the spaghetti thrown against the wall will be able to stick.

Like the Boy Who Cried Wolf. There may be a real wolf someday but the media will have spent their credibility coin on lies.
People who ARE paying attention recognize this tactic and more and more discount anything the media puts out. The bad result of this is that eventually some really true and important news may be published and we won't believe it because of the history of lies lies lies.

Inga...Allie Oop said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Inga...Allie Oop said...

It’s no wonder that Mueller is interested in Deutsche Bank.

https://washingtonmonthly.com/2017/12/08/why-mueller-is-interested-in-trumps-records-at-deutsche-bank/

“According to financial disclosures made by Trump during the campaign, he owes more than $714 million to several banks. But his biggest lender—by far—is Deutsche Bank, which has provided Trump at least $364 million in financing.

The bank to which Trump owes all of that money has been under investigation for their role in a $10 billion money laundering scheme of Russian oligarchs.

DOJ’s money laundering division along with the US attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York have been investigating the German lender over allegations it missed red flags that allowed Russians to launder billions of dollars out of Moscow using an elaborate trading scheme…

In addition to the president’s involvement with Deutsche Bank, his son-in-law’s records might be of interest to Mueller.

One month before Election Day, Jared Kushner’s real estate company finalized a $285 million loan as part of a refinancing package for its property near Times Square in Manhattan.

The loan came at a critical moment. Kushner was playing a key role in the presidential campaign of his father-in-law, Donald Trump. The lender, Deutsche Bank, was negotiating to settle a federal mortgage fraud case and charges from New York state regulators that it aided a possible Russian money-laundering scheme.

As with so many of Kushner’s suspicious activities, this one was not mentioned on his financial disclosure form filed with the Office of Government Ethics.”

Florence said...

Does anyone know of a source/website keeping track of all of these stories based on anonymous sources that have been outed as fake?

There have been so many, not just regarding the Russian investigation, but also the "senior admins" and "someone with knowledge" recounting what Trump said/thinks/feels, or so-and-so is about to resign, etc.

Surely someone is keeping track of all of this?

Michael said...

Inga

LOL. DB is a real estate lender. They make loans on commercial RE and are especially interested in high quality Manhattan real estate like the Kushner property. The connection the WM is pointing to is absurd. Kushner has often eaten at the Russian Tea House, as have I. Also Petrossian.

The cut and paste is stupid. Whoever wrote it is your equal in financial acumen and fantasy.

exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...

Inga, who made an utter fool of herself yesterday, is here to shovel more shit.

LOL. Like the plastic blowup Bozo I had as a kid, no matter how times you punch her (figuratively speaking of course, I wouldn't want the snowflake to accuse me of fomenting violence against her.), she pops right back up.

Big Mike said...

I like what Mollie Hemingway had to say about CNN's fake news. CNN hasn't seemed to grasp that without credibility, their entire reason to exist disappears.

exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...

The Russian Tea House!!!!! Aha! A sure sign of guilt!

Eric Trump took the kids to see The Nutcracker last year. did you know it was composed by a, get this, a RUSSIAN!???? IMPEACH!!!!

Original Mike said...

"WikiLeaks emails: CNN reported this morning that senior Trump campaign officials, including Trump himself, received an email from an unknown sender on September 4, 2016 that linked them to what could have been unreleased WikiLeaks documents. WaPo issued their own report later in the afternoon that the email was actually sent on September 14 — and linked to a trove of documents that WikiLeaks had publicly released a day earlier."

So is this the encryption key Inga was prattling on about yesterday?

Original Mike said...

Blogger Big Mike said..."I like what Mollie Hemingway had to say about CNN's fake news. CNN hasn't seemed to grasp that without credibility, their entire reason to exist disappears."

Oh, I don't know about that ...

Ambrose said...

Some facts are just too good to check.

Original Mike said...

Blogger exiledonmainstreet said..."Like the plastic blowup Bozo I had as a kid, no matter how times you punch [Inga] ..., she pops right back up."

LOL. Great analogy.

Derek Kite said...

Is the Russia nonsense become a positive for Trump?

This week there was something consequential moving through the Senate. Lowering taxes for corporations, and quite a bit of stuff that could be quite good front page/ 36 hour TV coverage.

But no, we have breathless coverage of an email received two weeks later than desired, a subpoena that didn't happen. Even the Commentary guys are all aflutter about Russia again.

Corporate taxes were reduced from 35% to 20%, and all we hear about is an email that wasn't sent on the date that would have proved collusion.

If idiocy wasn't a universal constant, one could start thinking there was a conspiracy afoot here.

Michael K said...

The pundits and media are assuming the Democrats will tale the House next year and will have the votes to impeach Trump even if the Senate does not convict. That would satisfy them as revenge for Bill Clinton.

I don't think the present polls represent what will happen but we will have to see. Fools like Inga will continue to hyperventilate but the real story will be the election in 2018.

I could be wrong but the left and the Ingas make no provision for error. It is all hysteria.

Another "conflicting edits" so Blogger is still screwed up.

Yancey Ward said...

Original Mike asked:

"So is this the encryption key Inga was prattling on about yesterday?"

It was, and if you go back to that thread where Inga mentioned this story 5 or 6 times, when CNN finally corrected the story, she never made another comment in thread after it was pointed out by Drago that the story was a false (and almost surely intentionally so). That is Inga's level of honesty on display.

furious_a said...

Unfortunately for the media, that system isn't working so well now that we have THE INTERNET...

...and a President with a TWTR account acting as his own war-room.

furious_a said...

The pundits and media are assuming the Democrats will tale the House next year...

At the rate #MeToo is progressing the Democrats may not have a Congressional Black Caucus next year.

Original Mike said...

Thanks, Yancey. I couldn't keep up with the Althouse fire hose yesterday. Life intervened.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Yancey Ward said...

It's possible Inga did a mea culpa in the 368 comment thread later that day, but I am not going to look- she can point us to her acknowledgement that she was reposting fake news all day yesterday if she wants to.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Don Jr. received e-mail spam about wikileaks - that gives the pro-democrat hack press the excuse they need to report fake news. Oh look - Trump Jr. is in bed with wikileaks and the Russians! we knew it!

the hive mind still beeleeves!

Phil 314 said...

Maybe this explains some of this:

-as of July 2017:
"Year to date, 2017 is on pace to be CNN’s best year on record in total day viewers, and its best year in the total day demo since 2003 during the Iraq War."
from Adweek

Yancey Ward said...

Yes, Phil, but what happens when you subtract out Inga's 1,023,085 visits/hr?

JohnFF said...

Trump has probably been a boon for most media outlets, I think viewership and readership is up everywhere. There is so much to keep up with, the news changing so quickly, it’s impossible to not make mistakes and I’m sure these won’t be the last of them on either side.

Gusty Winds said...

It's hard to report the truth on Russian collusion by the Trump campaign when there was no collusion.

We all know that once you start telling lies, they require more lies, and it starts building until you slip up. Simple.

Gusty Winds said...

Don Jr. get dragged in to testify under oath and the Democrats on the committee leak bad info to CNN. It's as dirty as the Wisconsin GAB.

Michael K said...

"Trump has probably been a boon for most media outlets,"

To the exclusion of any real news.

Browndog said...

Thing is, the two "highly professional" reporters didn't even bother to read the email they were 'reporting' about. If they had, they would have seen the date in question, which was essential to the 'report'.

No, instead they were just stenographers, repeating what 2 democrats on the Intel Committee told them.

Brian said...

Maybe this explains some of this:

-as of July 2017:
"Year to date, 2017 is on pace to be CNN’s best year on record in total day viewers, and its best year in the total day demo since 2003 during the Iraq War."
from Adweek


And like an addict they willl be willing to report more and more #fakenews to get their fix.

Original Mike said...

"That is Inga's level of honesty on display."

Emily Litella, at least, had scruples.

Dr Weevil said...

There's another possible reason for the fake stories that no one's mentioned. Here's something I wrote last night on the nearly-dead 368-comment thread:

"The stock market dropped a lot last Friday on Fake News that made it look more likely that Trump might be impeached. I'm told it dropped again today on the fake Don Jr news. I wonder if any of CNN liars or their friends made money on the drop."

That was at 10:59pm. It took almost an hour for the next comment to appear, but it was a good one. Birkel wrote (11:52pm):

"Dr Weevil,
Brian Ross could have made more shorting the market than he lost getting suspended without pay."

In the same message, he (she?) added another point well worth pondering:

"Has any Democrat thought thru how a stock market drop would affect their post-impeachment fantasies? Not to mention the coup factor."

By the way, when I started writing this comment, I called stock-market fraud "a more sinister possible reason". Thinking about it before pressing the Publish button, I realized that mere greed and fraud and willingness to cheat other investors out of large sums of money is actually much less sinister than trying to change the results of a Presidential election by fraud and thus cheat your fellow Americans of their choice in leaders. If only we could believe these people were merely liars and thieves and not fascist thugs. (I believe the UK armed forces in Northern Ireland used to refer to bankrobbers and muggers as "ordinary decent criminals". The IRA and their Prod opponents were of course much worse.)

The Godfather said...

There was a different kind of fake news on ABC (Good Morning America) yesterday. A correspondent named James Longman, reporting from Jerusalem as Muslims were getting out of religious services, explained that Palestinians were concerned because "Donald Trump made that declaration that this [Jerusalem] would be the capital of a future Israeli state." I mean one Israeli state is bad enough, but now Trump's threatening a NEW one?

Yancey Ward said...

What makes this particularly egregious is that CNN did publish a date- September 4th. Either they saw the e-mail themselves and made the mistake in writing the story, or they outright lied. If they were simply quoting a source who read them the e-mail and the date, the same applies to the source. In the correction, CNN owes its readers an actual explanation for the "error"- not just a statement that it is wrong.

And my point is this- had the story simply read that the e-mail was sent to Trump Jr. prior to the public release of the Wiki files, then CNN's reporters might plausibly claim they or their source simply was mistaken about the order of things, but the publication of a specific date is indicative to me that someone intended a deception. CNN owes us a better explanation of what happened.

Bruce Hayden said...

One of the interesting things to me is how much data must have been crunched to discover this stuff. Someone is looking at every post, every Tweat, every campaign contribution, every mention publicly, etc, of every member of the Mueller team, plus the one judge. And then feeding it to the Republicans in Congress and the conservative media. Likeliest candidate is the NSA, with maybe some help from the White House. Could, of course, be someone else doing the heavy lifting. Should be interesting to see how this all plays out.

Original Mike said...

"Either they saw the e-mail themselves and made the mistake in writing the story, or they outright lied."

Can anyone recall a media error beneficial to Trump? All the errors in one direction (harmful to Trump) is clear evidence they are lying. It's very dismaying, but that's the world we are living in.

BJM said...

CNN embarrasses itself again...even Kal Penn mocked them.

Layers and layers of fact checkers.

traditionalguy said...

The Impeachment of the President for enlisting Russian help in the 2016 election has always been 100% a fictional event, so what's the matter with adding three new fictional chapters.

Just think of CNN as Charles Dickens turning out new installments of Bleak House each week.

David said...

Nothing about that almost here pending just about to occur Tillerson firing?

ccscientist said...

When you can't tell that 1/4 women raped in college is a wonky statistic, when you complain that people already paying no taxes are not getting a tax break by the Republican bill, when you say with a straight face that sea level will rise 20 feet, you are innumerate and a sloppy thinker. Such people make terrible journalists. Even house painters have to be more precise than this.

The Godfather said...

@Unknown (4:54PM): Any house painter who was as sloppy as the MSM would be out of work.

BJM said...

Evelyn Waugh's 1938 take on the newspaper business, Scoop reminds us that journalism is still a duplicitous business.

Ken B said...

Big Mike:
For Arthur Anderson all they had to sell was their credibility, and when they lost it they went out of business. But CNN does not sell credibility. It sells little emotional frissons, shocks of outrage and self-righteousness. “I was right” in three minute portions. They don’t need more than a fig-leaf of credibility because theirs is a niche market. That’s why the errors continue: they don’t matter and CNN knows it.

Michael K said...

"They don’t need more than a fig-leaf of credibility because theirs is a niche market"

When they began, they had good credibility and the Tom Clancy novels all used them as unimpeachable sources of truth.

It was the Clinton scandals that destroyed the cred of CNN as they became "The Clinton News Network."

The Gulf War had improved their reputation until it was admitted they had cooperated with Saddam to stay in Baghdad.

Bad Lieutenant said...

When they began, they had good credibility and the Tom Clancy novels all used them as unimpeachable sources of truth.

Not just truth-in fact CNN once helped deceive the enemy on the basis that "after all, we ARE an American news network!"

Imagine that now!

BTW google still choking.

Ken B said...

CNN is having a great year, ratings wise. Their core viewers simply do not care if the stories are true. They do not care.

Stelter was proud to announce that Trump was wrong when he said CNN apologized for its falsehoods. CNN he insisted did not apologize — to anyone, certainly not its viewers, for foisting false, unvetted stories upon them!

They got another one wrong today. That’s how much they care about upping their standards.

Their Day Of Rage proves my point (and Trump's). They spent a whole day not on news, and not on what Trump actually said, but in an exhibitionist “Fuck you” — confident that viewers would enjoy that more than actual reporting.

Quaestor said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Quaestor said...

Should I prefer being misinformed (lied to) or uninformed?

The Russians have a word for what CNN, MSNBC, CBS, NYT, and the others are up to, дезинформация, dezinformatsiya — a kind of black propaganda intended to render the target population incapable of rational thought, literally to drive them mad. Theoretically, the disinformed cannot endure the induced contradictions between the expectations generated by disinformation and reality, leading them to embrace communist totalitarianism and reject capitalist liberty. In the late Sixties and early Seventies, dezinformatsiya nearly worked in several targeted countries, including France, Italy, and Greece, and marginally succeeded in Honduras and El Salvador. It may also have had some success in this country in the matter of the Kennedy assassination. For example, there are literally millions of Americans who suspect the CIA, J. Edgar Hoover, Lyndon Johnson, DuPont, the "Mob", or any combination of same to have engineered the murder of the President, and at the same time consider it insignificant that the only person creditably associated with the assassination was a self-described communist and a defector to the Soviet Union. Those millions may have been disinformed through the writings and television appearances of professional conspiracy theorists who, willing or otherwise, recycle KBG black propaganda.

Today the MSM is actively engaged in black propaganda aimed disinforming enough voters such that our Republic will be lost to socialism via the ballot box.

Quaestor said...

Typo alert: Today the MSM is actively engaged in black propaganda aimed disinforming enough voters such that our Republic will be lost to socialism via the ballot box.

Should read: Today the MSM is actively engaged in black propaganda aimed at disinforming enough voters such that our Republic will be lost to socialism via the ballot box.

narciso said...

Possibly but weissman took their failure of due diligence, re enron, and burned it to the ground, an overreaction united in the appeal.

Comey investigate Dr. Hatfill based on this crazy theory promoted by kristof, that he was some extreme rightist who had been witness to genocide in Rhodesia propounded by mass and risenberg.