A report by online’s BuzzFeed News, alleging that prosecutors had detailed evidence that President Trump directed Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about Trump’s proposed office tower project in Moscow in 2016, was smacked down Friday by Robert Mueller’s team.
A case of fake news?
Special prosecutor Mueller’s spokesman didn’t specifically say what was wrong about BuzzFeed’s story, but media watchers point out the fact that Mueller’s camp debunked the story in a carefully worded statement is enough to put the online news organization on thin ice. It’s perhaps the thinnest ice yet for a media outlet among those who are frantic to get the goods on Trump that might push him closer to impeachment, resignation, etc.
Most telling was that no other news organization has produced its own corroboration of the BuzzFeed report — although that did not stop the 24/7 talking heads at the likes of CNN and MSNBC to feed in frenzied manner on the story.
Couched in the preamble of “If this is true…” pundits breathlessly rushed ahead to count the ways in which the report was the most damning — and legally serious — yet for Trump. Why, they could almost taste vindicative victory … until the Mueller camp threw icy water on the whole thing Friday evening.
That led to Saturday’s irony of President Trump being appreciative of his nemesis, Mueller, and saying so: “It was a total phony story and I appreciate the special counsel coming out with a statement last night. I think it was very appropriate that they did so,” Trump told reporters at the White House.
Aaron Chimbel, the dean of St. Bonaventure University’s Jandoli School of Communication, who coincidentally presented a talk, “Making Sense of ‘Fake News’ and Real Journalism,” Tuesday in the Cuba Circulating Library, commented on the buzz over the BuzzFeed story.
He noted that BuzzFeed had sought comment from the special counsel’s office before posting the story, yet received no reply — certainly no indication that the story was in error. Chimbel also offers that the Mueller camp statement was not a blanket denial, but tailored to point out vague discrepancies. What was inaccurate, the SBU dean asks.
“For journalists and the public, there are important lessons here,” Chimbel wrote in an email. “One is that journalists are only as good as their sources, and placing trust is someone, especially when they have anonymity, leaves the journalist on the hook and not the source. We also don’t know the sources’ motivation.
“The higher the stakes, and a story accusing the president of a felony that could lead to impeachment is about as high as it gets, requires the utmost care.”
At play here might be a notion that in the today’s 24/7 news cycle, along with the bloodsport arena that is today’s political reporting, BuzzFeed might have felt compulsion to break a story that wasn’t fully developed — if not outright wrong. Combine that with the inherent political and social lean that most national news organizations have against Trump and his policies, and you have a recipe for making the kind of journalistic decisions that can be questioned.
One could also point to the New York Times’ decision in September to print an anonymous guest column, purportedly written by a Trump cabinet member, which called the president “erratic” and described a “quiet resistance” of cabinet members who had whispered about taking steps to remove him from office. Excerpting the column or interviewing the unnamed source in a news story would have sufficed, but the Times set aside the standards of its opinion page because the target of the piece was Trump.
The president’s cries of “fake news” can unfairly undercut the hard, dedicated work of journalists everywhere — even at the level of small-city newspapers like the Olean Times Herald.
Journalists give up the high ground — and play into Trump’s hands even further — if they compromise tenets of their calling in the rush to print and produce pieces that are damning of his administration.
(Jim Eckstrom is executive editor of Bradford Publishing Co. His email is jeckstrom@oleantimesherald.com.)
