5 years ago
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BuzzFeed’s stumble is highest-profile misstep at a time when press is under greatest scrutiny
BuzzFeed News’s apparently mistaken story about Michael Cohen and President Trump is the highest-profile misstep yet for a news organization during a period of heightened and intense scrutiny of the press, as the special counsel’s office issued a thorough rebuke of the website’s story published Thursday. Reporters at the Guardian, CNN, McClatchy News and other outlets have published disputed, suspect or uncorroborated stories about Trump and the investigation swirling around him since special counsel Robert S. Mueller III began his probe 21 months ago.
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Buzzfeed gets one thing slightly wrong and it's a major thing, Trump, the president, makes speeches where nearly every sentence is basically a lie and no-one bats an eyelid.
That's how this apologia from The Washington Post frames it, sure. Then again, going to the Post for the word on BuzzFeed's journalistic malpractice is like taking Facebook's word on the privacy threats posed by Google.
Is it, though? In yet another completely isolated incident, an innocent, chaste, earnest inquiry is led astray when it just by chance happens to treat anonymous hearsay from the Establishment as unquestionable fact? You don't reckon each new mass shooting in isolation, but you're glad to write off each new day's journalistic malfeasance around Russiagate as another lamentable 'oopsie?'
Could it be — and bear with me here — that we're pretending we can't see the obvious pattern of behavior here because it plays to what we already want to believe? Confirmation bias is easy, but critical media literacy ain't that hard.
Sure, Trump's a bullshitter. May I suggest he's not the only one? It isn't only Trump supporters that've picked up on that by now, is it?
Not at all. It's just ATM when Mueller isn't talking, and the subjects of his investigation are, it's very hard to know who's telling the truth or the usual porkies. Also Mueller's team didn't say what buzzfeed said wasn't true, they said it went too far, it was a bit exaggerated. That's just muddying the waters.
Definitely not the only one, but he doesn't even bother to maintain a consistent story.
As the special counsel's office would say, your description of specific statements by the special counsel’s office is not accurate.
I'm not a reporter. I don't even report on twitter. I don't even report on my narcissism on twitter.
I also possibly read the article wrong. What did Mueller's team actually say?
Edited: added: It was inaccurate? Not that it was incorrect? More likely just that they didn't have evidence of that. Like I said muddying the waters.
Or, how to get from wishful thinking to magical thinking by way of backward-chain reasoning.
This is the verbal thrashing he deserves. It feels good to finally not be the target.