The Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) has issued a scathing indictment of the New York Times for yellow journalism during the Trump-Russia saga.

In short, the hyper-partisan ‘paper of record’ was operating in bad faith.

It’s wasn’t just the Times either. CJR’s findings accurately reflect what most objective thinkers have known this whole time – they were all operating in bad faith.

The @CJR review of post-2016 reporting is long, but important.

The TL;DR conclusion:

corpo media knowingly suppressed facts that cut against popular narratives,

ignored denials,

eagerly laundered partisan attacks via "anonymous sources,"

and refuses to reflect on mistakes. pic.twitter.com/PW27ztjxfi

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) January 31, 2023

That said, CJR aimed the majority of criticism towards the NYT.

“No narrative did more to shape Trump’s relations with the press than Russiagate. The story, which included the Steele dossier and the Mueller report among other totemic moments, resulted in Pulitzer Prizes as well as embarrassing retractions and damaged careers,” wrote CJR executive editor Kype Pope in an editor’s note.

The findings were published in a lengthy, four-part series. The first section begins with a story about then-New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet’s reaction when he found out Special Counsel Robert Mueller didn’t plan to pursue Trump’s ousting, telling his staff “Holy s—, Bob Mueller is not going to do it.”  –Fox News

“Baquet, speaking to his colleagues in a town hall meeting soon after the testimony concluded, acknowledged the Times had been caught ‘a little tiny bit flat-footed’ by the outcome of Mueller’s investigation,” according to Jeff Gerth – the author of CJR’s lengthy retrospective.

“That would prove to be more than an understatement,” he continued. “But neither Baquet nor his successor, nor any of the paper’s reporters, would offer anything like a postmortem of the paper’s Trump-Russia saga, unlike the examination the Times did of its coverage before the Iraq War.”

According to Gerth, the Times destroyed its credibility outside of its “own bubble.”

I highlighted a few parts last night from this series – the only real attempt by corporate media, apart from a few @ErikWemple columns, to grapple with their serial Russiagate misconduct and lying. They'll ignore it even though it's from @CJR and by Gerthhttps://t.co/TxLItPJrkh

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) January 31, 2023

What’s more, the Times appeared to legitimize former British spy, Christopher Steele, who was indirectly paid by the Clinton campaign to fabricate the infamous ‘dossier’ that so much of the Russiagate coverage – and the DOJ’s sham investigation, was based on.

The Times appeared to legitimize Christopher Steele, the ex-British spy who authored the infamous dossier, claiming he had “a credible track record” while Steele’s so-called “primary” source was telling the FBI that Steele “misstated or exaggerated” in his report and that information stemming from Russia was “rumor and speculation.”

Part three offered examples of the Times’ slight-of-hand coverage against Trump in comparison to other hostile outlets. For example, Trump explained his decision to fire FBI Director James Comey, mentioning the “Russia thing” as being a “made-up story” to NBC’s Lester Holt but acknowledged the firing would likely “lengthen out the investigation.”

“The media focused on the ‘Russia thing’ quote; the New York Times did five stories over the next week citing the ‘Russia thing’ remarks but leaving out the fuller context. The Post and CNN, by comparison, included additional language in their first-day story,” Gerth wrote.

In another instance, the Times avoided covering some of the more damning texts from Peter Strzok, who wrote “there’s no big there, there” shortly after the appointment of Special Counsel Robert  Mueller, something Gerth noted was covered by the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post.  -Fox News

In closing, Gerth concluded that “the erosion of journalistic norms and the media’s own lack of transparency about its work” is responsible for the broad distrust in the media.

No kidding.

“In January 2018, for example, the New York Times ignored a publicly available document showing that the FBI’s lead investigator didn’t think, after ten months of inquiry into possible Trump-Russia ties, that there was much there. This omission disserved Times readers. The paper says its reporting was thorough and ‘in line with our editorial standards,” wrote Gerth. “Another axiom of journalism that was sometimes neglected in the Trump-Russia coverage was the failure to seek and reflect comment from people who are the subject of serious criticism. The Times guidelines call it a ‘special obligation.’ Yet in stories by the Times involving such disparate figures as Joseph Mifsud (the Maltese academic who supposedly started the whole FBI inquiry), Christopher Steele (the former British spy who authored the dossier), and Konstantin Kilimnik (the consultant cited by some as the best evidence of collusion between Russia and Trump), the paper’s reporters failed to include comment from the person being criticized.“

This post was originally published at Zero Hedge

Establishment mouthpiece CNN – an integral part of both the Russiagate hoax and the Hunter Biden laptop coverup, has dropped to just 444,000 average primetime viewers between January 16 and January 22, according to Nielsen.

Of those, just 93,000 were in the all-important 25-54 news demographic. 

This is the first time since May of 2014 that the network has failed to reach 450,000 viewers, The Wrap reports.

By comparison, during the same period Fox News drew 1.4 million viewers and 176,000 in the demo while MSNBC notched 629,000 total viewers and 69,000 in the demo. In primetime, Fox News had 2 million viewers, 256,000 in the demo and MSNBC had 943,000 viewers and 91,000 in the demo.

Some especially troublesome news out of this week’s Nielsen numbers is that Licht’s primary programming move, “CNN This Morning,” also suffered the lowest week since its launch just three months ago. It averaged just 331,000 viewers while “Fox & Friends” had nearly 1 million and “Morning Joe” drew 760,000. -The Wrap

As Glenn Greenwald notes, CNN’s downfall is “so well-deserved and good for the country.”

Just look at this alone:

Everyone who works at CNN knows it spread an outright lie before the 2020 election: the Biden laptop was "Russian disinformation."

Not one ever told their audience it was false or they spread it, let alone apologized for it:https://t.co/kjLH42pIZN

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) January 30, 2023

According to CNN insiders, hosts of the network’s rebooted morning show, Don Lemon, Poppy Harlow and Kaitlan Collins, “seem to be growing frustrated” over the direction of the network.

“The show can’t decide strategically what exactly it is, so it’s trying to be everything which can create whiplash for a viewer when segments seem off-brand in tonality,” said one insider. “The audience for morning news on network TV is different than the cable news audience and since we’re not gaining new viewers we definitely need to retain our legacy ones.”

More on the network’s reputational suicide from Greenwald:

As with the lie about the laptop being "Russian disinformation" – it was so obvious at the time: I quit the Intercept because they spread it and wouldn't let me write about it – *not one* media outlet that used Hamilton68 to shape "news" has acknowledged Taibbi's reporting.

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) January 30, 2023

This post was originally published at Zero Hedge

Senator Ted Cruz declared Sunday that the FBI should immediately search the home of Hunter Biden to check for classified documents.

In the wake of such documents being discovered in Joe Biden’s home garage and an office he uses in Washington DC, Cruz noted “It seems he leaves classified documents wherever he goes. And we also know that Hunter Biden at times was — declared his residence to be those very same places.”

During the Fox News interview, Cruz added “I also believe it is critical for the FBI to search Hunter Biden’s homes, home and office residences to make sure there are no classified documents there, given all the evidence that’s piling up. We need to ascertain who’s had access to what and when.”

Cruz added that it is imperative that lawmakers find out whether documents Biden had “illegally” involve “family business activities and potential corruption.”

“Whether they involve Burisma and Ukraine, whether they involve Communist China and the entities that were paying the Biden family millions of dollars,” Cruz urged, adding “If he, in fact, had classified documents that implicate his own financial well-being, that raises the potential of very serious criminal liability.”

Related:

US Weapons Manufacturers Enjoy Soaring Profits Thanks to War in Ukraine

Cruz also highlighted an email Hunter Biden sent to a Burisma colleague, alleging the correspondence, which was obtained by the New York Post from the infamous laptop from hell, indicates he had access to classified material.

“Hunter Biden didn’t write that,” Cruz stated, explaining that “Hunter Biden is not an expert on Ukraine. He’s not an expert on Eastern Europe. He’s not an expert on Russia, but that email did help get him on the board of Burisma. It did help get him paid $83,000 a month because it showed a level of expertise not coming from him, but he was getting it from somewhere. That’s clearly from some sort of briefing. We don’t know whether it was a classified briefing or not, but that is the sort of analysis that is often within a classified briefing.”

Cruz continued, “there’s a level of scholarship and erudition that if it magically appeared, somehow it doesn’t appear in the other emails he’s sending.”

“The obvious question is what was he cutting and pasting from? What was his source? And it raises the natural inference that Hunter Biden had direct access to these classified documents,” Cruz asserted.

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