CNN Publishes Single-Source Claim on Russia Investigation, Then Disappears It, Then Finally Retracts;
Forbids Reporters From Running Any Russia Story Without Permission, Promises "Discipline"

Before getting to that, Camille Paglia said last week that the Democrat Party had broken journalism, and that it would take "decades" to heal the wounds.

It would take decades to recover if they ever self-critiqued and self-corrected, which they're psychologically incapable of doing.

"It's obscene," she said. "It's outrageous, OK? It shows that the Democrats are nothing now but words and fantasy and hallucination and Hollywood. There’s no journalism left. What’s happened to The New York Times? What's happened to the major networks? It's an outrage."

"I'm a professor of media studies, in addition to a professor of humanities, OK?" she continued. "And I think it's absolutely grotesque the way my party has destroyed journalism. Right now, it is going to take decades to recover from this atrocity that's going on where the news media have turned themselves over to the most childish fraternity, kind of buffoonish behavior.”

Now on to the newest CNN #FakeNews: CNN reported, on the basis of a single anonymous source, that a Trump associate did business with Russia, and that he's now the target of a criminal probe.

They then retracted. First, they seem to have done so without acknowledging the retraction, just deleting all mentions of the story in their Twitter fed and nuking links to it.

But after Buzzfeed asked where the story went to, they issued a note stating it had been retracted, and failed to even meet CNN's Like Whatever Man exacting editorial standards for Russia reporting. If you can imagine such a thing.

CNN claimed Senate investigators are looking into whether or not Scaramucci discussed lifting sanctions with Kirill Dmitriev, the chief executive of the $10-billion Russian Direct Investment Fund, in a meeting just four days before President Donald Trump’s inauguration.

“CNN.com published a story connecting Anthony Scaramucci with investigations into the Russian Direct Investment Fund,” CNN said in its editor’s note, “That story did not meet CNN’s editorial standards and has been retracted. Links to the story have been disabled. CNN apologizes to Mr. Scaramucci.”

Given that CNN is actually apologizing, and nuking the story from orbit, I have to guess that this story didn't just fail to meet their "editorial standards," whatever those might turn out to be when discovered, but was objectively and perhaps actionably false.

CNN is now forcing reporters to pre-clear all "Russia-related" stories by high ranking editors before publishing anywhere -- including social media -- and promising "discipline" over this error:

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...

When a report is so fake that even CNN is panicking over it-- well, that's CNN showing us what it really is. A hotbed of conspiracy theorists and vulgar partisans.

posted by Ace at 03:09 PM

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