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The press versus the president


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trumped-up-press-versus-president-part-2.php
Columbia Journalism Review

In a windowless conference room at Trump Tower, on January 6, 2017, Comey briefed the president-elect about the dossier about him and Russia. Trump had heard, from aides, media “rumblings” about Russia, but, in an interview, he said he was unaware of the dossier until he met with Comey.

Comey’s one-on-one with Trump came after the intelligence community briefed him on a new “Intelligence Community Assessment” (ICA) on Russian activities in 2016. The ICA claimed that Russia had mounted an “influence campaign” aimed at the election but had not targeted or compromised vote-tallying systems. Its most important, and controversial, finding was that “Putin and the Russian government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump,” as opposed to Russia’s usual goal, which was generally sowing chaos in the United States. An unclassified version of the ICA was released the same day in Washington. The dossier, actually a series of reports in 2016, was included in the assessment, but it remained secret, temporarily, because a summary of it was attached as a classified appendix.

“The only thing that really resonated,” Trump said about the briefing, “was when he said four hookers,” a reference to the unsubstantiated claim of a salacious encounter in Moscow. Trump’s immediate reaction was that “this is not going to be good for the family,” he recalled. But his wife, Melania, “did not believe it at all,” telling him, “That’s not your deal with the golden shower,” Trump recalled.

Trump’s marriage might have survived but his hoped for honeymoon with the press was about to end. The dossier, largely suppressed by the media in 2016, was about to surface.

But first came the ICA. It received massive, and largely uncritical coverage.:snip:

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Legacy media slammed in Columbia Journalism Review for botched Trump-Russia narrative

The "damage to the credibility of the [New York] Times and its peers persists, three years on," investigative reporter Jeff Gerth writes in explosive four-part series.

Nick Givas

Updated: January 31, 2023

(Snip)

In a statement to CJR, the Times touted the journalism awards it won for its Russiagate reporting, adding that it "thoroughly pursued credible claims, fact-checked, edited, and ultimately produced ground-breaking journalism that has proven true time and again." 

(Snip)

 

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@Geee

What are the chances This will make it into Corporate Media? I'd say (hope I'm wrong) somewhere between slim and None. I recall right after the 2016 election They were asking "How Did  We Get This So Wrong?" That lasted about 2-3 days then Full  Blown TDS kicked in.

 

Something I've notice, They are  throwing Grand Pa Joe  under  the bus. He has served his purpose, he's  done. I would  not surprise me to see Joe resign before the end of his term.

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19 minutes ago, Valin said:

@Geee

What are the chances This will make it into Corporate Media? I'd say (hope I'm wrong) somewhere between slim and None. I recall right after the 2016 election They were asking "How Did  We Get This So Wrong?" That lasted about 2-3 days then Full  Blown TDS kicked in.

 

Something I've notice, They are  throwing Grand Pa Joe  under  the bus. He has served his purpose, he's  done. I would  not surprise me to see Joe resign before the end of his term.

MHO is that they(whoever is pulling the strings)  are hoping (health wise) that he hangs on till his term ends than put mega mega bucks (in ads and 'get out the liberal vote' any way possible) behind a selected candidate. Kamala would be a stupid stretch too far.

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The press versus the president, part four

Trump, in July 2018, finally had a summit meeting with Vladimir Putin, the man he mistakenly claimed in 2015 to have met years earlier and his supposed puppet master, according to Steele’s dossier.

In advance of the summit, Trump met with his national security adviser, John Bolton, to discuss how to deal with Russian meddling. The president “remained unwilling or unable to admit any Russian meddling because he believed doing so would undercut the legitimacy of his election and the narrative of the witch hunt against him,” Bolton wrote in his 2020 memoir The Room Where It Happened.

At a press briefing, the final question was whether US intelligence or Putin should be believed with regard to meddling in the 2016 election. After going on a tangent about the server at the DNC, Trump said, “I don’t see any reason why it would be” Russia that did it. Then, a bit later in his answer, he expressed “great confidence in my intelligence people.”

The first remark received all the attention. Some outlets, like the Times, didn’t include his comments about “great confidence” in US intelligence in their stories, while others, such as the Post, did.

Trump flew home to Washington, and when aides talked to him the next day about the reaction, he said he meant the opposite.

A clarification was released, but the cleanup was not enough for critics such as Roger Cohen, then a columnist at the Times, who wrote of the “disgusting spectacle of the American president kowtowing in Helsinki to Vladimir Putin.”

Rachel Maddow, the MSNBC host, saw the day’s events as affirmation of her having covered the Trump-Russia matter “more than anyone else,” because, as her blog pointed out, Americans were now “coming to grips with a worst-case scenario that the US president is compromised by a hostile foreign power.”:snip:

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Revealing the New York Times’ Deceitful Russiagate Coverage
COMMENTARY
J. Peder Zane
February 03, 2023

“You've been given a great gift, George,” the angel Clarence tells George Bailey in “It’s A Wonderful Life.” “A chance to see what the world would be like without you.”

Readers of the New York Times have been given a similar gift this week – a chance to see how the paper they revere deceives them. Where the Christmas classic showed the difference one person can make through the contrasting fates of two towns, Bedford Falls and Pottersville, Times readers can see how far their paper has fallen by comparing two recent articles.

The first is a survey of the Trump Russia collusion scandal the Times published on Jan. 26. While ostensibly focusing on the relationship between former Attorney General William P. Barr and the man he appointed to investigate Russiagate wrongdoing, John Durham, its real aim is to rewrite the history of Russiagate to justify the actions taken while minimizing the problems that occurred. This long article is written with such seeming authority that readers who consider the Times the “paper of record” will easily dismiss Russiagate critics as part of the right-wing echo chamber.

(Snip)

In an opinion piece written four days after the Times article, David Firestone, a member of the paper’s editorial board, concisely stated the message the Times wants its readers to believe about the bureau’s conduct: “[T]here is no evidence in this case that they willfully tried to smear Mr. Trump and his campaign with false allegations of collusion. They were trying to do their jobs, on which the nation’s security depends.” 

If I were making a movie about this sorry episode, I would have an angel named Jeff visit every reader of the New York Times, to show them that they are residing in a journalistic version of Pottersville. He would tell them about the heavy cost we are all paying for this by quoting from the end of Gerth’s brave undertaking:

"My main conclusion is that journalism’s primary missions, informing the public and holding powerful interests accountable, have been undermined by the erosion of journalistic norms and the media’s own lack of transparency about its work. This combination adds to people’s distrust about the media and exacerbates frayed political and social differences. … During this time, when the media is under extraordinary attack and widely distrusted, a transparent, unbiased, and accountable media is more needed than ever. It’s one of a journalist’s best tools to distinguish themselves from all the misinformation, gossip, and rumor that proliferates on the Web and then gets legitimized on occasion by politicians of all stripes, including Trump."

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