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By Curtis Houck
UPDATE, 4:42 p.m. Eastern: For those asking, CNN has already announced that Raju (and presumably his co-author Jeremy Herb) would not be facing any disciplinary action because their false story met CNN’s editorial standards and instead were burned by their sources. Yes. You read that correctly. No changes. No punishment.
Reliable Sources host Brian Stelter broke the news:
Needless to say, this space has a hunch that this situation is far from over.
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UPDATE, 4:15 p.m. Eastern: CNN finally admitted to its egregious error almost three hours after The Washington Post first blew the doors off the accuracy of the initial CNN.com story by issuing both an online correction and a two-minute-plus explanation from Raju on CNN Newsroom with Brooke Baldwin.
Raju emerged at the 3:49 p.m. Eastern mark, informing views that the network is “correcting a story that we have been reporting throughout the day today about an email that was sent to the Trump campaign, to then-candidate Trump, Donald Trump Jr. and others during the heat of the campaign.”
Video: Here's @CNN's on-air correction to their false story about the Trump team and WikiLeaks. @MKRaju, who wrote the @CNN.com story, delivered the news to viewers #TTT pic.twitter.com/uNj46rZaMr
He explained that his story had originally stated “that this email came on September 4th, that was before some of these documents were publicly available, but we have just received — obtained a copy of this e-mail and, instead, we’ve now learned that this — this e-mail was on September 14th.”
“So that is ten days later than what we originally reported earlier today and this is — appears to change the understanding of this story because, initially, it seemed perhaps they were being offered access to documents that were not yet publicly available, but in this e-mail from an individual named Michael Erickson,” Raju added.
The solemn congressional correspondent revealed that he initially had “two sources who had seen this e-mail but that information was incorrect now, based on a copy of the e-mail that we have obtained this afternoon.”
Raju concluded, in part, by stating:
[I]t just shows that perhaps the initial understanding of what this e-mail was perhaps is not as significant as what we know now based on this e-mail. We do know that Donald Trump Jr., when he testified before the House Intelligence Committee, was asked about this e-mail. He said he had no knowledge of it...That's a statement they continue to say today, but this e-mail came out September 14th, not September 4th as we said earlier[.]
Admittedly, this error didn’t exactly fit the definition of fake news and, if you peruse the NewsBusters archives, you won't find a plethora of stories about Raju's reporting. Nonetheless, it was a serious error and a setback for the important issue of media literacy.
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 With the publication of a Friday afternoon story on The Washington Post’s website, CNN was dealt another embarrassing blow to its credibility thanks to a significant error in a major story about a September 2016 e-mail to then-candidate Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and others in their orbit about a WikiLeaks document dump.
CNN.com published an early-morning story by Manu Raju and Jeremy Herb that claimed the Trump team received an e-mail on September 4 with “a decryption key and website address for hacked WikiLeaks documents” that, in turn, was presumably unavailable to the rest of the viewing public.
Thanks to the reporting of The Daily Caller, The Post, and The Wall Street Journal, the e-mail actually went out on September 14, which meant, according to The Journal’s Rebecca Ballhaus, contained “publicly available info, was riddled with typos and came from a Trump backer who had given $40 to the campaign months earlier.”
The Daily Caller’s Chuck Ross noted that the date change “is significant because WikiLeaks had released a batch of stolen documents on Sept. 13.”
All morning and into the afternoon, CNN proudly touted a “Breaking News” banner with a “CNN Exclusive” that read the following: “Emails Reveal Effort to Give Trump Campaign WikiLeaks Documents.”
Here’s more from the original CNN story, which sought to continue the liberal media’s case that there’s ample proof of collusion by the Trump campaign to steal the election from Hillary Clinton:
The September 4 email was sent during the final stretch of the 2016 presidential race -- on the same day that Trump Jr. first tweeted about WikiLeaks and Clinton.
(....)
The email came two months after the hacked emails of the Democratic National Committee were made public and one month before WikiLeaks began leaking the contents of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta's hacked emails. It arrived less than three weeks before WikiLeaks itself messaged Trump Jr. and began an exchange of direct messages on Twitter.
Trump Jr. told investigators he had no recollection of the September email.
Congressional investigators are trying to ascertain whether the individual who sent the September email is legitimate and whether it shows additional efforts by WikiLeaks to connect with Trump's son and others on the Trump campaign. The email also indicated that the Trump campaign could access records from former Secretary of State Colin Powell, whose hacked emails were made public by a Russian front group 10 days later.
(....)
The use of a website and decryption key as a means to provide information aligns with past WikiLeaks practices. The idea is that WikiLeaks posts a data file on the Internet, but it is encrypted and impossible to open without the key.
As of this blog’s publication, CNN had yet to update the story. Not surprisingly, CNN treated this story like a missing Malaysian plane until it vanished from its on-air coverage following a segment that ended just before the 1:11 p.m. Eastern mark.
Ross and Washington Examiner White House correspondent Sarah Westwood put the story in perspective in terms of its damage:
Not least because the Ross error was a one off segment. CNN covered this story wall to wall this morning
— Chuck Ross (@ChuckRossDC) December 8, 2017
So CNN misreported the date of the Wikileaks email that @DonaldJTrumpJr received, meaning that the entire point of the story -- that the campaign might have gotten advance warning of the leaks -- is wrong. Wow. https://t.co/oiXngwHZAq
Here’s the lede graphs of The Post story, which puts another stake in the heart of CNN’s self-righteous “Facts First” crusade:
A 2016 email sent to President Trump and top aides pointed the campaign to hacked documents from the Democratic National Committee that had already been made public by the group WikiLeaks a day earlier.
The email — sent the afternoon of Sept. 14, 2016 — noted that “Wikileaks has uploaded another (huge 678 mb) archive of files from the DNC” and included a link and a “decryption key,” according to a copy obtained by The Washington Post.
The writer, who said his name was Michael J. Erickson and described himself as the president of an aviation management company, sent the message to the then-Republican nominee as well as his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., and other top advisers.
The day before, WikiLeaks had tweeted links to what the group said was 678.4 megabytes of DNC documents.
The full email — which was first described to CNN as being sent on Sept. 4, 10 days earlier — indicates that the writer may have simply been flagging information that was already widely available.
The message also noted that information from former secretary of state Colin Powell’s inbox was available “on DCLeaks.com.” That development, too, had been publicly reported earlier that day.
For those that may or may not recall, this was not the first time a CNN.com story turned out to be wildly inaccurate. The outlet took it on the chin in June when a number of investigative reporters were ushered out when it published a false story about Anthony Scaramucci having connections to Russia.
Amidst the silence, CNN found plenty of time to condemn Fox News for their coverage of the Mueller probe and “conservative media” slamming former President Obama for comparing America under President Trump to Nazi Germany.
How rich that CNN lectures Fox News for their motives as state-run media while being wild and loose with facts to fit their narrative. They must have found some inspiration from ABC’s Brian Ross.
Here’s an exit question: Since CNN has insinuated that things coming from Fox News and the Trump administration is a banana, where does that leave the statements coming from the mouths of CNN’s journalists?
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Here’s the relevant transcript from December 8's CNN Newsroom with Brooke Baldwin:
CNN Newsroom with Brooke Baldwin
December 8, 2017
3:49 p.m. Eastern
BROOKE BALDWIN: Let's go live to now to CNN’s Manu Raju on Capitol Hill with a development. Manu, what do you have?
[ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: Email Pointed Trump Campaign to WikiLeaks Documents; Email Was Sent on Sept 14, 2016, Not Sept 14, 2016]
MANU RAJU: That’s right. We’re actually correcting a story that we have been reporting throughout the day today about an email that was sent to the Trump campaign, to then-candidate Trump, Donald Trump Jr. and others during the heat of the campaign. This email included a decryption key and a link to where they could access some of these hacked Wikileaks documents from the Democrat National Committee. Now, we’ve been reporting that this email came on September 4th, that was before some of these documents were publicly available, but we have just received — obtained a copy of this e-mail and, instead, we’ve now learned that this — this e-mail was on September 14th. So that is ten days later than what we originally reported earlier today and this is — appears to change the understanding of this story because, initially, it seemed perhaps they were being offered access to documents that were not yet publicly available, but in this e-mail from an individual named Michael Erickson. They do direct the Trump campaign to some publicly available documents, hacked documents from Wikileaks as well as from the former Secretary of State Colin Powell, saying that those documents are, indeed, available. Now our initial reporting on that September 4th date was based on two sources who had seen this e-mail but that information was incorrect now, based on a copy of the e-mail that we have obtained this afternoon. So — so, Brooke, it just shows that perhaps the initial understanding of what this e-mail was perhaps is not as significant as what we know now based on this e-mail. We do know that Donald Trump Jr., when he testified before the House Intelligence Committee, was asked about this e-mail. He said he had no knowledge of it, which we reported earlier as well and his attorney said he did not act on the offer to obtain these hacked e-mails. That's a statement they continue to say today, but this e-mail came out September 14th, not September 4th as we said earlier, Brooke.
BALDWIN: Okay. Manu Raju, thank you.
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By Nicholas Fondacaro
 In one of the most asinine discussions about the liberal media’s credibility problem, CNN host Brian Stelter took to Reliable Sources on Sunday to defend his outlet and the rest of the media for the latest swarm of fake news stories plaguing the country. And offering no apology to the public for muddying the discourse, Stelter defended their precious anonymous sources while his guests claimed such reckless mistakes were why the public should trust what they say.
Stelter began the segment with a recap of what was fake about their story. “With ABC's suspension of Ross still in the headlines, I asked CNN if there would be disciplinary action against [Manu] Raju or his co-writer Jeremy Herb. A spokeswoman said no,” he said. According to Stelter, it was because the journalists followed the networks so-called “standards process.” But Stelter failed to mention that those writers issued the report without ever seeing the e-mail in question, just the description from those who saw it. What kind of ridiculous standard is that?
“Now the sources have been reliable in the past. But they were not this time. The spokeswoman said CNN had no reason to believe this was malicious, meaning the sources weren't trying to trick the reporters, the sources were just mistaken,” Stelter explained, defending the dead wrong source. And almost as though he was trying to get the attention off of CNN, he pointed to other news organizations that had pushed their own fake news.
Stelter didn’t seem bothered by the fact that CNN’s lack of transparency in sorting out the misinformation was further hurting their already tattered credibility.
The first guest to sing the praises of the media was veteran reporter Carl Bernstein. “We have to get back to the notion that -- which is absolutely correct, that most of the media really tries, the mainstream media – the big news institutions from The Washington Post and The New York Times to The Wall Street Journal to CNN really go out of their way to be accurate, factual, contextual and we do and we have done a pretty good job of it,” he rambled.
Stelter then asked former Republican David Frum about what advice he had for viewers during this trying time for the press. According to him, their factious reporting was just why they should be trusted:
I would say, the mistakes are precisely the reason the people should trust the media. Look, astronomers make mistakes all the time because science is a process of discovery of truth. Astrologers never make mistakes or at least they never own up to them, because what they are offering a closed system of ideology and propaganda.
Using Frum’s warped logic, cheating on your spouse is precisely the reason they should trust you in the future. Use at your own risk.
Not long after that, Bernstein praised the media’s ravenous reporting on the Russia investigation saying: “The general excellence of the media's coverage particularly of Donald Trump, his presidency, and this story.” He then trashed Trump supporters for not being open-minded enough to see a possibility of collusion.
“The media, generally speaking, the mainstream media makes far fewer errors than most institutions in our culture, because we indeed are in the business of trying not to make errors,” Bernstein opined, citing no evidence. “And we have all kinds of procedures in place to keep us from making those errors.” But that apparently didn’t stop any of these new outlets from pushing false stories. CBS had actually claimed to have confirmed CNN’s false report.
For some reason, Frum was fuming and decided to smear Fox News as a news organization that didn’t have an interest in finding the truth. And in a knock against the rest of the media, Frum declared that “the worst mistakes that press organizations have made in the coverage of Trump has precisely occurred in their effort -- their overzealous effort to be fair to the President.” He actually stopped himself mid-sentence to go back and add “overzealous” as a descriptor. What news was he watching?
Frum also claimed that CNN’s biggest mistake so far was in hiring Trump supporters to be commentators. “The worst mistake CNN has made had been the result determination to bring in-house Trump associates in order to promote Trump falsehoods,” he chided. But to Stelter’s credit, he defended them, saying he thought it was important to hear their voices.
Despite the flood of fake news stories from the liberal media, Stelter had been on Twitter whining about how the President continued to call out CNN and others during rallies. You have no legs to stand on and complain about the President when you own news outlet was caught peddling false information as a bombshell report.
Transcript below:
CNN
Reliable Sources
December 10, 2017
11:14:20 AM Eastern
BRIAN STELTER: A week ago it was Brian Ross and ABC. Ross was suspended for a breaking news report about Michael Flynn that had not been fully vetted by the network ahead of time and since then several more mistakes by other media outlets have caused a lot of introspection in newsrooms. On Friday, CNN gave lots of airtime to an exclusive report that said: Then-candidate Donald Trump and Donald Trump Jr. had received an e-mail in September of 2016 providing a description key and web access allowing them to access hacked DNC documents before they were publicly available. Now, later that afternoon the story unraveled. CNN issued Manu Raju went on Brooke Baldwin’s show to issue this correction.
(…)
STELTER: It changed the understanding quite a bit. With ABC's suspension of Ross still in the headlines, I asked CNN if there would be disciplinary action against Raju or his co-writer Jeremy Herb. A spokeswoman said no. Because the reporters followed CNN's standards process which means that the anonymous sources they were using for the story were vetted and okayed ahead of time.
Now the sources have been reliable in the past. But they were not this time. The spokeswoman said CNN had no reason to believe this was malicious, meaning the sources weren't trying to trick the reporters, the sources were just mistaken. But that mistake obviously caused a black eye for CNN. On Friday night President Trump seized on the recent corrections at a rally in Florida.
(…)
STELTER: Technically CNN did not apologize but did correct the reporting. CBS also issued a correction for the same story. And this was not the only error of the week. Did you hear about Robert Mueller's team subpoenaing Trump's bank records Deutsche Bank? Bloomberg and Reuters had to issues corrections, saying the documents that were subpoenaed pertained to people or entities affiliated with Trump, not the President individually. Now that is still a big development. But it's not what the news outlets originally said. The Wall Street Journal got it right in the text of their story but misconstrued it in the headline so they had to run a correction as well. These errors have piled up this week. There’s a new one this weekend involving The Washington Post we’ll get into.
(…)
11:19:00 AM Eastern
CARL BERNSTEIN: We have to get back to the notion that -- which is absolutely correct, that most of the media really tries, the mainstream media – the big news institutions from The Washington Post and The New York Times to The Wall Street Journal to CNN really go out of their way to be accurate, factual, contextual and we do and we have done a pretty good job of it. I would say, by and large, an excellent job of it in terms of the facts of this hugely complicated story.
 (…)
STELTER: David, what's your advice for journalists in this situation and for readers?
DAVID FRUM: I have more advice for readers. You asked the question, Brian, why should, given these mistakes, why should people trust the media? I would say, the mistakes are precisely the reason the people should trust the media. Look, astronomers make mistakes all the time because science is a process of discovery of truth. Astrologers never make mistakes or at least they never own up to them, because what they are offering a closed system of ideology and propaganda.
11:23:10 AM Eastern
BERNSTEIN: Mike Allen is right about the general excellence of the media's coverage particularly of Donald Trump, his presidency, and this story. I think it's very important if open-minded people and that's what we seem to be lacking on both sides but especially Trump supporters here. And let's say that that is the fact especially among Trump supporters about open-mindedness. The media, generally speaking, the mainstream media makes far fewer errors than most institutions in our culture, because we indeed are in the business of trying not to make errors. And we have all kinds of procedures in place to keep us from making those errors. Compare us to Wall Street. Compare us to banking. Compare us to the Congress of the United States. Compare us to almost any institution and we make fewer errors.
(…)
FRUM: With the greatest respect to Carl and his incredible accomplishments, I really think framing this as a matter of two sides is fundamentally misleading. The press—the worst mistakes—again, when we talk about the press we exclude Fox and we talked about press organizations that have an interest in finding truth. Excluding Fox, the worst mistakes that press organizations have made in the coverage of Trump has precisely occurred in their effort -- their overzealous effort to be fair to the President. Because, the problem they cover is accurate coverage of this president and his campaign is very different than neutral coverage of this president and his campaign. I mean how do you fairly report the fact that the president lies tall time and that he recruits people to work for him that lie all the time?
(…)
FRUM: The worst mistake CNN has made had been the result determination to bring in-house Trump associates in order to promote Trump falsehoods. Not from Trump HQ or from the White House but with CNN's own brand on them.
STELTER: We will have to disagree on that one. I think we need to hear from Trump supporters.
(…)
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By Rich Noyes
 Liberal reporters are scandalized by what they say is President Trump’s effort to “discredit” and “undermine” special counsel Robert Mueller, worried that it could presage an attempt to “remove Mueller, or end his investigation.” But when President Bill Clinton was being investigated by Ken Starr, journalists applauded Democratic and White House attacks on the independent counsel, and frequently joined in themselves.
Today’s journalists seem appalled by attempts by the President and his allies that question Mueller’s credibility. Washington Post reporters Devlin Barrett and Sean Sullivan sounded the alarm in a front-page story on December 7: “Several law enforcement officials said they are concerned that the constant drumbeat of conservative criticism seems designed to erode Mueller’s credibility.”
“You’re seeing an all-out effort by people close to the President to try to discredit the special counsel’s investigation,” ABC’s Jon Karl agreed on Thursday’s Good Morning America. On MSNBC’s Hardball that evening, USA Today White House reporter Heidi Przybyla claimed the President is “clearly trying to discredit the investigation, trying to discredit Mueller....They are trying to undermine this investigation.”
An hour later, with the words “THE PLOT TO STOP MUELLER” on screen, MSNBC host Chris Hayes announced his opinion that “there is a pretty concerted effort to lay the groundwork to essentially remove Mueller, or end his investigation.”
 Later on CNN Tonight, host CNN’s Don Lemon found it “embarrassing” that journalists would participate in criticizing Mueller, complaining to media reporter Brian Stelter about Fox News: “There has been a huge rise in anti-Mueller and FBI rhetoric from right-wing media recently....It’s just been shocking to watch.”
“Is this a concerted effort to discredit Mueller?” Lemon asked. Stelter instantly replied, “Yes.”
The media’s fierce protectiveness of the investigation into Trump is the utter opposite of how they reacted in 1998, when the Clinton White House openly challenged independent counsel Kenneth Starr. Back then, many liberal reporters enthusiastically joined the effort to discredit the prosecutor and save their hero.
ABC’s Cokie Roberts at one point marveled about the effectiveness of Clinton’s campaign to undermine the Starr investigation. “It’s fabulous. It is so good. It just unbelievably good,” she exclaimed on CNN’s Larry King Live on April 28, 1998. “Look at how they’ve managed to turn around this whole question about the President’s behavior to one of Ken Starr’s behavior, you know, just taken the whole focus off of the President and put it onto the prosecutor. That’s remarkable.”
 In stark contrast to their supportive coverage of Mueller, the media’s treatment of Starr in the 1990s was savage. Almost as soon as he was named — and long before the Lewinsky story broke — Clinton-friendly journalists tried to discredit him as an unfair partisan. “There is growing controversy tonight, about whether the newly named independent counsel in the Whitewater case is independent or a Republican partisan allied with a get-Clinton movement,” CBS Evening News anchor Dan Rather impugned on his August 8, 1994 broadcast.
Rather kept up the innuendo, four days later suggesting: “Starr is an ambitious Republican partisan backed by ideologically-motivated, anti-Clinton activists and judges from the Reagan, Bush, and Nixon years.”
The media’s Starr-as-partisan mantra was merely the first step. At the same time Bill Clinton was running for re-election in 1996, Starr was putting his ex-business partners, James and Susan McDougal, on trial for fraud uncovered during the Whitewater investigation. Again, Clinton’s friends in the press raced to innoculate the President from the damaging scandal.
“If Ken Starr is a credible prosecutor, he will bring this to a conclusion and the Clintons will be exonerated,” Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift insisted on the February 10, 1996 McLaughlin Group.
“Have you any doubt that Kenneth Starr and his deputies are pursuing an agenda that is purely political?” NBC’s Bryant Gumbel gently asked Susan McDougal, who had already been convicted of four counts of fraud and conspiracy by the time she appeared on the Today show on September 17, 1996.
 “By pandering to Clinton-haters, Mr. Starr appears to be abandoning all pretenses of impartiality. He went into this job with a reputation as a fair-minded conservative. He now looks more like a political hit man desperately eager for a future Supreme Court appointment,” Wall Street Journalcolumnist Al Hunt growled on CNN’s Capital Gang on October 5 of that year.
The liberal media’s real war against Starr began in January 1998, after the Drudge Report revealed a bombshell Newsweek report that Clinton had had an affair with a White House intern, Monica Lewinsky, and then denied it under oath when deposed as part of Paula Jones’ sexual harassment suit. Clinton’s own Attorney General, Janet Reno, had agreed to assign the Lewinsky case to Starr and his team, but Clinton’s defenders in the media chose to paint the special prosecutor as the villain.
“Given Kenneth Starr’s track record,” Bryant Gumbel (who by this time had left NBC for CBS) sneered on the January 21, 1998 Public Eye, “should we suspect that he’s trying to do with innuendo that which he has been unable to do with evidence?”
“What Starr is doing is trying to construct the truth according to Ken Starr,” Newsweek’s Clift asserted on the February 7, 1998 McLaughlin Group. “He’s the one who is suborning perjury here in my view. He has gone way beyond the pale in term of his treatment of witnesses.”
“The question now is whether Starr’s tactics will prove more offensive to the courts and the public than any alleged wrongdoing by the President that Starr is investigating,” correspondent Michel McQueen suggested that day on ABC’s World News Tonight.
“You don’t have to be a conspiracy buff to have trouble with how the Whitewater investigation ended up focused on the President’s pants,” Time’s Richard Lacayo and Adam Cohen fretted in the magazine’s February 9, 1998 issue. “Going after the President’s sex life, wiring Linda Tripp to secretly tape Lewinsky, trying to persuade Lewinsky to tape Clinton — are those the actions of a conscientious prosecutor or a political hit man?”
NBC’s Tom Brokaw picked up that theme on the February 16 Nightly News: “A growing backlash against independent counsel Kenneth Starr. Is he out of bounds or just tone deaf?...Has Starr gone too far in his pursuit of Monica Lewinsky and the President?”
The media clearly preferred talking about the “backlash” against Starr rather than the sordid details of Clinton’s own conduct. On February 24, top CNN anchor Bernard Shaw wanted to know if “by calling before the grand jury people such as [Clinton White House aide] Sidney Blumenthal, is Ken Starr acting illegally?” Two days later, Shaw challenged a panel of legal experts: “Should Ken Starr resign?...Should Starr pack his bags?”
As Starr continued to investigate the President, the media continued to snipe at him. “If he doesn’t come forward very soon with credible evidence of lawbreaking, he will go down in history as the Peeping Tom prosecutor,” Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter smirked on MSNBC’s The News with Brian Williams on April 1.
“Starr has stood Watergate on its head,” U.S. News & World Report editor-in-chief Mort Zuckerman complained in his magazine’s April 6 issue. “It is not the President who is involved in the politically-motivated abuse of power; it is the politically-motivated counsel.”
“Has Ken Starr overstepped his bounds? Is this a fishing expedition?” NBC’s Maria Shriver asked an ex-Secret Service agent during a July 16 Today show segment. Turning to another guest, she continued to channel the Clinton defense team: “Many people are outraged. They do call it a fishing expedition.”
CNBC host Geraldo Rivera even commandeered a nursery rhyme to show his disgust with the independent counsel. “Twinkle, twinkle Kenneth Starr, now we see how crude you are,” he awkwardly crooned on his July 21 show. “Up above your jury high, like the judge up in the sky /Twinkle, twinkle little Starr, now we see how wrong you are.”
 In the media’s campaign to demonize Starr, no insult, apparently, was out of bounds. “Facially, it finally dawned on me that the person Ken Starr has reminded me of facially all this time was Heinrich Himmler, including the glasses,” MSNBC host Keith Olbermann sneered on the August 18 Big Story, referring to the head of Nazi Germany’s feared SS divisions.
On September 9, 1998, Starr delivered his report — the Starr Report — to Congress. During MSNBC’s live coverage, Gwen Ifill likened it to a terrorist attack. “When someone drives, as one House Judiciary Committee member put this some weeks ago, a truck bomb up to the steps of the Capitol and just dumps it on them....it is in some ways, politically, a very violent action for Ken Starr to leave this on them weeks before an election when they’re trying to decide how to deal with it.”
The next morning, ABC’s Good Morning America co-host Lisa McRee proposed accepting the Clinton talking points at face value: “Couldn’t this be just a witch hunt? Couldn’t the Democrats and President Clinton’s people who’ve been defending him all these months be right?”
“Let’s not pretend for a moment that the Starr Report is a balanced, judicious presentation. It’s not. It is a partisan prosecutor with some zealous aides who’s trying to make a case against a guy he despises,” the Wall Street Journal’s Al Hunt fumed on CNN, September 12.
After nine months of badgering Starr, by mid-October 1998 many in the media clearly believed their own spin. “If this reminds you of George Orwell’s novel, 1984, it should,” CNN’s Bruce Morton complained on October 11.
“As much as Clinton stained the dress, Starr stained the country,” Time’s Margaret Carlson whined in her October 12 “Public Eye” column.
For most of 1998, CNBC’s Upfront Tonight was obsessed with discounting Starr’s investigation. “So why did it last for four years and cost $40 million? A look at the money and the men behind Ken Starr’s Whitewater investigation indicates that Hillary Clinton may have been right when she said there was a right-wing conspiracy to bring down the President,” co-host Diane Dimond insisted on October 23.
Today co-host Matt Lauer tossed this softball to longtime Clinton crony James Carville on October 26: “Remember when the First Lady was here back in January and she talked about the vast right-wing conspiracy. You agree with a lot of what she had to say. If there is a hierarchy in that conspiracy, like a military hierarchy, where does Ken Starr fall? Is he a private, is he a general, what is he?”
“What about the image and impression of Ken Starr as the sort of evil puppeteer behind this entire investigation?” NBC/MSNBC host John Hockenberry wondered on MSNBC’s InterNight, November 19.
 ABC’s Diane Sawyer conducted a lengthy interview with Starr for 20/20 on November 25. She undoubtedly spoke for many of her colleagues as she scolded him to his face for the content of the Starr Report: “This has been called demented pornography, pornography for Puritans.”
Sawyer also pushed the idea that President Clinton had more important things to do than be held accountable for his conduct: “Did you think to yourself, here is a man who has to deal with Saddam Hussein and bin Laden and what’s going on in Russia, and we’re putting him through this?”
It is, of course, impossible to imagine one of today’s journalists scolding Robert Mueller for distracting President Trump from important national business, or suggesting his investigation has become a partisan mission to destroy a President whom the Washington Establishment has never liked.
The double standard is obvious to anyone who will look.
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By Nicholas Fondacaro
 During an interview with Vermont Democratic Senator Bernie Sanders on Sunday’s Meet the Press, moderator Chuck Todd exposed just where he stood on the GOP tax reform bills making their way through Congress. And after questioning Sanders about the Democratic Party’s efforts to halt tax reform, he wanted to know about the Democratic Party’s latest efforts to impeach President Trump.
“I know you are not a fan of this bill at all. Okay, I know where you believe the priorities are all wrong,” Todd prefaced as he led into his first question for the Senator. “But what should the Democratic-- Has the Democratic Party collectively done enough, you think, in the institution of the House and the Senate to stop this bill?”
Sanders did little to quell Todd’s fear of the bill ultimately passing Congress and being signed by the President. “Well, one of the absurdity of this whole process is the Republicans made a decision to go forward without any Democratic Party input,” the Senator complained, overlooking just how he and his colleagues passed ObamaCare.
The Senator then flew into the canned liberal talking points about how the tax cuts were only for millionaires and billionaires, and how the middle-class was going to receive a hefty tax hike. They were claims that had been debunked over a month ago by The Washington Post, who gave four “Pinocchios” for similar assertions.
But Todd didn’t say anything to correct the Senator. He was more interested in how the Democrats were going to stop the bill that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) called the “apocalypse.” “I understand that. But what's realistic? You don't have the votes and is it trying to find one more Republicans? Where are you in this,” he demanded to know.
After the discussion on stopping the GOP from giving Americans a tax cut, Todd wanted to know where Sanders stood on impeaching President Trump:
Let me go to this impeach question here, is Tom Steyer right, that it’s time to look at that option? There was already a House vote this week. Many Democrats weren’t ready to get on that bandwagon yet, where are you on this issue?
As much as Todd wanted to portray the House impeachment vote as something dangerous to Trump it really wasn’t. In a vote of 364-58, Democrats largely sided with Republicans to table the motion and it seemed mostly like a stunt designed to show off in fundraisers for those who participated. And if it really was something, then why did Todd’s own network refuse to report it Wednesday night after it happened?
Sanders was hesitant to back such an impeachment effort by his colleagues, citing how it was too soon and they had to wait for Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation to wrap up. “I think there is a process that has to be followed,” he explained. “But I think jumping the gun does not do any good. You have to bring the American people onto this issue. You don’t want to make it into a partisan issue.”
Transcript below:
NBC
MTP Daily
December 10, 2017
10:45:24 AM Eastern
(…)
CHUCK TODD: Let me start with the issue of taxes here. Since we just ended that with Senator Scott. I know you are not a fan of this bill at all. Okay, I know where you believe the priorities are all wrong. But what should the Democratic-- Has the Democratic Party collectively done enough, you think, in the institution of the House and the Senate to stop this bill?
BERNIE SANDERS: Well, one of the absurdity of this whole process is the Republicans made a decision to go forward without any Democratic Party input. What they made a decision to do is operate behind closed doors on an issue that impacts every single American. There was not one public hearing. What this tax bill is about is nothing more than a gift to billionaire campaign contributors to the Republican Party.
 You have 62 percent of all the tax benefits going to the top 1 percent, 40 percent going to the top 1/10 of 1 percent and at the end of ten years. 83 million American middle-class taxpayers were paying more in taxes and 13 million people will lose their health insurance and they're going to run up a deficit $1.4 trillion. This is not a tax bill designed to help the American people. It is a tax bill design to help the wealthiest people in the country and the largest corporations and I am going to do everything I can to see that it is defeated.
TODD: I understand that. But what's realistic? You don't have the votes and is it trying to find one more Republicans? Where are you in this?
SANDERS: It’s not true. Senator Corker has made it clear that it’s absurd that we would run up a deficit of $1.4 trillion. He's right. There are other senators and Senator Rubio has his concerns, McCain has his concern, and Collins has her concerns.
(…)
10:51:49 AM Eastern
TODD: Let me go to this impeach question here, is Tom Steyer right, that it’s time to look at that option? There was already a House vote this week. Many Democrats weren’t ready to get on that bandwagon yet, where are you on this issue?
SANDERS: I think there is a process that has to be followed. I think Mr. Mueller is doing a good job on his investigation. And if Mueller brings forth the clear evidence that there is collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians, I think you have grounds for impeachment. But I think jumping the gun does not do any good. You have to bring the American people onto this issue. You don’t want to make it into a partisan issue.
(…)
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By Chris Reeves
 On Friday’s Morning Joe, the MSNBC show’s hosts and guests spent most of their broadcast mourning the announced resignation of Minnesota Senator Al Franken from Congress in the wake of over half a dozen allegations of sexual assault against him. In a stunning display of hypocrisy, MSNBC’s liberal morning pundits went to extraordinary lengths to cast doubt on the women who have accused Franken of sexual misconduct, violating the network’s own oft-repeated standards for Republican and conservative politicians.
New York Times writer Bari Weiss was even brought on to complain about how “some innocent people are going to go down” as a result of what co-host Mika Brzezinski dubbed a “sex panic.” With so many liberal media and political figures biting the dust career-wise in recent weeks, the co-host also explicitly questioned the accuracy and honesty of Franken’s accusers, wondering repeatedly “if it happened” and whether “all women need to be believed.”
However, before diving into today’s show, let’s take a cursory glance back at how Morning Joe, The New York Times, and MSNBC have treated Republicans and conservatives who have been charged with committing sexual misconduct or those who have defended them. Were they given the benefit of the doubt or treated as principled defenders of due process?
Well, in short: Not at all.
In the lead up to the presidential election last year, The New York Times repeatedly pushed front-page allegations of sexual harassment and assault against Donald Trump in a completely uncritical fashion. In particular, NYT reporters Megan Twohey and Michael Barbaro published two separate pieces in 2016 painting Donald Trump as a serial sexual predator and a creepy pervert. Media outlets across the political spectrum published and broadcasted endless follow-up reports on woman after woman coming forward with more allegations similar to those originally put out by the Times.
Skipping forward to this year, MSNBC’s pundits have been absolutely relentless in rhetorically crucifying anyone on the political right who has come anywhere within ten feet of saying that Moore deserves more fact-finding or some sort of due process regarding the accusations against him of sexually assaulting and dating teenage girls. As I noted on NewsBusters on November 21st:
Less than two weeks ago on Morning Joe, MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace and USA Today reporter Heidi Przybyla excoriated Republicans for even qualifying their condemnations of Roy Moore’s alleged sexual criminal activity with “if true” prefixes. More damningly, only five days ago, Wallace and MSNBC analyst John Heilemann lambasted the entire Fox News network for Sean Hannity’s plea for the truth to come out in Moore’s case, interpreting this as an endorsement of “child molestation.”
The next day, as NewsBusters also covered, Morning Joe devoted a significant portion of its show to labelling the Republicans as either the “party of pedophiles” or “child molesters” for not more vigorously opposing Moore’s candidacy.
So, according to MSNBC and NYT, at least with Republicans, the rules for sexual misconduct allegations seem pretty clear:
1) The female accusers are always telling the absolute truth.
2) Impeach/resign/expel/drop out now, [relevant person’s name]!
Okay, that’s not too hard to understand. So, how well did the liberal journos stick to these standards today on Joe?
Ehh, not too well. In fact, Morning Joe used a stunning array of methods to disparage the Franken accusers’ accounts of sexual assault [all times EST]:
6:09 AM
BRZEZINSKI: I’m worried for women, I'm concerned about women who are legitimately sexually harassed in the workplace across America and where this is taking us. Ruth Marcus says it one way. She tackles the issue in her P-, Washington Post column and she says: “Was Al Franken's punishment fair?” And she writes, in part, this: “There's no doubt, in the case of Al Franken, that Democrats are better off with the Minnesota senator gone. There's more doubt about whether justice was done. The political calculus is simple: Franken had to go. With the grotesque picture of him groping, or pretending to grope, the breasts of a fellow USO performer, he would have been a nonstop distraction, muddling Democrats' case against” the “alleged groper President Trump and alleged child molester Roy Moore. Franken paid not only for their sins but also for the alleged behavior of Bill Clinton two decades ago. Democrats underreacted then and consequently were impelled to overreact now.”
And, um, the woman -- I mean, all this time along, and I’m gonna read another one, we’ve never really talked about the woman who first came out against Al Franken who’s in the picture that you say, Susan, is just the death knell. I would think a dress owned by Monica Lewinsky would bring down a president, but it didn't. So I'm surprised that you think a comedian’s picture of a performer, Playboy model who goes on Hannity, who voted for Trump -- um, you know, I see some politics there, but I haven't brought that up every step of the way because, of course, in this “me too” environment, you must always just believe the women. And I think that there's a lot of reasons why we need to look at the women seriously and believe them, and in many cases -- like, for example, I spoke to accusers in Mark Halperin, which, to which he admits a lot of what he's accused of doing. I spoke to them. I believe them. I'm just wondering if all women need to be believed. And I'm concerned that we are being the judge, the jury, and the cops here and so did Senate Democrats getting ahead of their skis. And, trust me, Kirsten Gillibrand, I want you to run for president, but you gotta keep it real.
(...)
6:12 AM
SUSAN DEL PERCIO: But with -- when it comes to Al Franken, he's, he’s collateral damage. There's just no way else to put it.
BRZEZINSKI: That’s, okay, so I would appreciate if senators, um, Democratic senators would say the photo is too, uh, too dangerous. We recognize the work that he’s done for women. I have a list of, of, of legislation that he sponsored for victims of domestic violence and rape survivors. We appreciate his work at this time. Right now, that picture is too politically damaging and we prefer if he step aside. That would have been a more honest way of asking him to step down. In my opinion, just my opinion, I feel like we are, we’re just -- we've got a machine gun out, and we're just, you know, going around the room with every man that perhaps we don't like politically. I don't know. Here’s Masha Gessen. She says it a lot better than me. This is what concerns me. Sh-, uh, she writes in The New Yorker in a column entitled "Al Franken's Resignation and the Selective Force of #MeToo." And it reads in part this:
“The case of Franken makes it all that much more clear that this conversation is, in fact, about sex, not about power, violence, or illegal acts. The accusations against him, which involve groping and forcible kissing, arguably fall into the emergent, undefined, and most likely undefinable category of “sexual misconduct.” Put more simply, Franken stands accused of acting repeatedly like a jerk, and he denies that he acted this way. The entire sequence of events, from the initial accusations to Franken's resignation, is based on the premise that Americans, as a society, or at least half of a society, should be policing non-criminal behavior related to sex. If only Franken's heartbreakingly articulate expression of his loss were capable of focussing [sic] our attention on this root, and on the dangers of the drive to police sex.” The sex panic that is happening. Having said that, Kasie, there's a lot of work to be done on Capitol Hill.
KASIE HUNT: I think that there is. And, and, I think that the mood on Capitol Hill yesterday reflected some of the conflict that you have highlighted here. I think there was a lot of sadness among women, Democratic senators, who truly did actually feel that Franken has done good work on behalf of women.
(...)
6:20 AM
SCARBOROUGH: Mika, so, the joke has been, I have, at times, put my arm down low and I said I'm going to put, you know, put what I called the “butt bar” to stop people from their hands wandering down.
[smiles and mild chuckling from panel, including Mika]
But guess what?
BRZEZINSKI: That's not funny. But, yeah.
SCARBOROUGH: No, no, but I’m just saying it happens and there's so many people. And sometimes people do it accidentally. I've had women, um,-
BRZEZINSKI: I just-.
SCARBOROUGH: -middle-aged women from Middle America do it to me through time. You know what you do? You're like – ugh, ugh. And it moves on. And you know what? You assume maybe it was a mistake, maybe it’s this, maybe it’s that. But, David Ignatius, for a guy to be going: Well gee, let’s see, I've had 10,000 people do this, and this woman says back in 2008 my hand wandered to her waist and maybe a little bit lower. If that is the new standard for destroying people's career, that is a dangerous, arbitrary standard. Not just -- I find that -- I, listen, I find that behavior gross and vile and when, and when people in photo lines do it to Mika, I just stop and stare, like, what the hell’s going on? I’m not justifying that gross behavior. I'm saying, to say to a senator who does this 10,000 times over a decade -- hey, back in 2009, you may not remember, but you grabbed me in the waist in a way that made me feel uncomfortable or went down to my, my butt.
DAVID IGNATIUS: No, we're all struggling to figure out what the new balance is, what the right standards are. A good starting point, obviously, as, as, as people keep saying is, conduct that makes women uncomfortable-
BRZEZINSKI: Right.
IGNATIUS: -is inappropriate and we need to think more about that as, as, as men, and in the workplace and in general. This is, as Time magazine told us, the year of the silence breakers.
BRZEZINSKI: Yeah.
IGNATIUS: I thought that was the right cover choice. Something big is happening in our culture. And, as with any big thing that happens, there's some kind of overreaction.We're not trying to feel our way, but the funda-.
SCARBOROUGH: [interrupting] Like, like, like for instance, the French Revolution.
IGNATIUS: Well, I don't think this is the French revolution.
SCARBOROUGH: [talking over Ignatius] No, no, I'm just saying. Some, some-.
IGNATIUS: [inaudible] People are not being taken to the guillotine. But, but I think you’ll find, you’ll find [inaudible].
BRZEZINSKI: [interrupting] Um, wait a minute.
SCARBOROUGH: [interrupting] How, how, how, how, how about – wait a second. But what about, what about -- and, and again, this is something, I think, that Masha talked about, or maybe it was Bari Weiss talked about it – this is going to keep going and it's going to keep steamrolling. And women have said this, not me, but it ultimately leads to a Duke lacrosse case, it ultimately leads to, ultimately leads to a Rolling Stone Virginia article, two stories which, by the way, while I've been at this network, we covered as the truth, I covered as the truth for a month.
IGNATIUS: Pe-, people get wronged in these investigations, and the two examples you cited are, are, are, are perfect ones. I'm just saying that, that, again, the Time magazine cover was right.
BRZEZINSKI: Yeah.
IGNATIUS: This is the year of the silence breaker.
BRZEZINSKI: I'm the first to-.
IGNATIUS: And, you know, I -- it was poignant to watch Al Franken, who in many ways has been a hardworking, decent legislator, who was a classmate of mine in college, this is a person I’ve known for many years, uh, see his political career shatter that way.
BRZEZINSKI: [agreeing] M-hm.
IGNATIUS: But, when you look at the fundamentals of what's going on, you’d, you’d have to say: He’s, he just got caught up in something-
BRZEZINSKI: Yep.
IGNATIUS: -whose fundamental rightness, I -- it's, it’s, it’s just -- when I go home, talk to my wife and daughters, I don't hear a lot of s-, you know,-
BRZEZINSKI: Right.
IGNATIUS: -people saying: Stop this right now, it's just gone too far. I'm not hearing that at all.
BRZEZINSKI: No, I, I don't disagree, and I'm very torn apart by it. But I, I feel that to just be on one side of all of these stories sometimes is very dangerous.
(...)
7:07 AM
[preceded by clips of Franken’s Senate speech yesterday]
BRZEZINSKI: And with that, Al Franken will be leaving office in the next few weeks. It’s pretty moving, twenty-minute speech that he made. Bari Weiss, you've been writing about this. Um, what's your perspective on what happened yesterday?
WEISS: Very smart politics. The Democrats have just -- are making themselves into the party of family values while the Republicans are now the party of people like Roy Moore who are alleged to have molested 14 and 16 year-old girls. Which is the more long-lasting and appealing political brand? I don’t even think there’s a contest. Also, they'll be able to keep Al Franken's seat because the governor will appoint, apparently, Tina Smith, his deputy, who conveniently is also a woman. So that's the political question. There's a different question here, though, which is the ethical one and the moral one. And that's much more gray. Right now, I fear that there's a sort of category collapse and a moral flattening happening which is that the punishment -- when a judge gives down a punishment, the punishment has to fit the crime. Does Al Franken deserve the same punishment as Harvey Weinstein, as Charlie Rose, as Matt Lauer, as Garrison Keillor, as Leonard Lopate, who doesn’t even know what he stands accused of, the public radio host who was public-, who was es-, physically escorted out of the WNYC building the other day because of an anonymous complaint? That's my fear, is that all of these people are having the same punishment, and in a way, it devalues the more serious allegations. That's my fear.
BRZEZINSKI: Well, we had a, a U.S. Senator who was sort of leading the charge on Al Franken resigning saying: You know what? She's tired of, of trying to make a differentiation between a, um, I don't have the exact word, but a grope, or a whatever, and assault, that it's all bad. They all should go? I mean?
WEISS: It's all bad. I'm not defending squeezing someone's butt.
BRZEZINSKI: But is there a difference?
WEISS: I
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