Via Drudge: Late on a Monday afternoon in June, members of CNN’s elite investigations team were summoned to a fourth-floor room in the network’s glassy headquarters in Midtown Manhattan.
A top CNN executive, Terence Burke, had startling news: three of their colleagues, including the team’s executive editor, were leaving the network in the wake of a retracted article about Russia and a close ally of President Trump. Effective immediately, Mr. Burke said, the team would stop publishing stories while managers reviewed what had gone wrong.
It was a chilling moment for a unit that boasted Pulitzer Prize winners and superstar internet sleuths, and had been introduced at the beginning of the year as the vanguard of CNN’s original, high-impact reporting. Its mission statement — “Seek truth. Break news. Hold the powerful accountable.” — invoked the sort of exhaustive reporting that has become an increasingly coveted skill for news organizations in the Trump era.
But within months of its introduction, the unit, CNN Investigates, had been rocked by damaging reporting errors — including another flawed story about Mr. Trump and Russia earlier in June — and its mistakes had disturbed network executives who were already embroiled in a public feud with the White House.
The retracted story and ignominious exits of three prominent journalists was an embarrassing episode for CNN, particularly at a time when there was widespread mistrust in the media and Mr. Trump was regularly attacking the press. Two months later it remains an illuminating chapter in the network’s effort to carry out the meticulous, time-consuming work of investigative journalism within the fast-paced, ratings-driven world of 24-hour cable news.
A top CNN executive, Terence Burke, had startling news: three of their colleagues, including the team’s executive editor, were leaving the network in the wake of a retracted article about Russia and a close ally of President Trump. Effective immediately, Mr. Burke said, the team would stop publishing stories while managers reviewed what had gone wrong.
It was a chilling moment for a unit that boasted Pulitzer Prize winners and superstar internet sleuths, and had been introduced at the beginning of the year as the vanguard of CNN’s original, high-impact reporting. Its mission statement — “Seek truth. Break news. Hold the powerful accountable.” — invoked the sort of exhaustive reporting that has become an increasingly coveted skill for news organizations in the Trump era.
But within months of its introduction, the unit, CNN Investigates, had been rocked by damaging reporting errors — including another flawed story about Mr. Trump and Russia earlier in June — and its mistakes had disturbed network executives who were already embroiled in a public feud with the White House.
The retracted story and ignominious exits of three prominent journalists was an embarrassing episode for CNN, particularly at a time when there was widespread mistrust in the media and Mr. Trump was regularly attacking the press. Two months later it remains an illuminating chapter in the network’s effort to carry out the meticulous, time-consuming work of investigative journalism within the fast-paced, ratings-driven world of 24-hour cable news.
(Link to more)
9 comments:
Fake news has consequences.
" the network’s effort to carry out the meticulous, time-consuming work of investigative journalism within the fast-paced, ratings-driven world of 24-hour cable news."
What effort? This whole story presumes there was an effort. Elite "top men" super-journalists were sacked. Why? The article does not state the specific issue, just that a Russia/Trump story had to be retracted. Probably because the super journalists went too far with their partisan lies, litigation was threatened, and someone had to pay and quickly. And where did the super-meticulous megajournalists land? They're going to land somewhere. Which of the interchangeable propaganda outlets of the mainstream media took them in and gave them shelter from the unemployment storm?
You have to like this part:
"In interviews with The New York Times, more than half a dozen CNN staff members, including three with direct knowledge of the investigative unit’s operations, provided previously unreported details about the publication of the story and the fallout from its retraction. Citing fear of retribution, the people requested anonymity to discuss sensitive internal information."
CNN's version of WAPO's Democracy Dies in Darkness: “Seek truth. Break news. Hold the powerful accountable.”
After being washed through the trutholator several times:
Seek dogwhistles. Break wind. He who smelt it dealt it.
New York Times not any better. Many of the comments on this article there believe CNN is in the bag for Trump. How deranged is that?
Fast paced? This is the network that covered that missing 777 for how long?
Amartel said...
Elite "top men" super-journalists were sacked
Oh, yeah.
Top.
Men.
So Trump is attacking the press, eh? Good thing they never attack him.
Trump's Twitter bully pulpit seems to be working well. It puts him in the catbird seat.
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