CNN Called Out For Fake News About Trump, Refuses to Correct
CNN has been called out by Washington post and many others that their reporting on michael Cohen and Trump's knowledge of a Trump Tower meeting is in fact incorrect. Lanny Davis, lawyer for Cohen, says he should have been more clear when he made claims about Cohen in the past and many others confirm that Cohen testified in a sworn statement that he had no knowledge of Trump knowing about the meeting. So why won't CNN correct? Why would they keep pushing this story even after several sources refute their claims?
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On July 27th, CNN ran a story claiming that Donald Trump's lawyer, Michael Cohen, knew that Donald Trump knew a meeting was supposed to take place at Trump Tower where Russians would provide dirt to the Trump campaign on Hillary Clinton.
However, it appears now that this reporting is factually incorrect, or at least was wrong at the time, because Lanny Davis, the lawyer for Michael Cohen, is now saying that he was the source used by CNN where this claim was made and that he was actually incorrect.
Cohen didn't actually know this.
But what gets crazy is that CNN is standing by their reporting.
And it's not just that CNN is refusing the claims made by Davis, but Washington Post even put out a story making it sound like this story might not actually be true.
And there's actually some more details.
Because apparently Cohen testified that Trump didn't have foreknowledge.
So why is CNN running this story?
This is the anatomy of fake news from the mainstream media.
CNN put out this story a month ago.
Many people, mostly on the left, are probably sharing this, saying it's proof that Trump is corrupt.
And they really do believe it.
And look, Don't get me wrong, it's entirely possible, it is true, it's entirely possible.
Trump has been corrupt.
The point I'm trying to make here is that new information has come to light, and it would be entirely responsible of CNN to update their article to reflect these changes to the story, but they are standing by their reporting.
What ends up happening?
A month goes by.
It now becomes fact, shared among people who hate Donald Trump, and when new information comes to light and the story is corrected, they don't change it.
So today, we're going to take a look at exactly what happened, and we're going to look at the anatomy of fake news when it comes from the mainstream media.
So first, let's take a look at this story from Friday, July 27, 2018.
Cohen claims Trump knew in advance of 2016 Trump Tower meeting.
First, the important thing we need to point out, technically, Cohen never claimed this.
According to CNN's story, it was sources close to Cohen.
CNN reported, Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump's former personal attorney, claims that then-candidate Trump knew in advance about the June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower, in which Russians were expected to offer his campaign dirt on Hillary Clinton, sources with knowledge tell CNN.
Cohen is willing to make that assertion to special counsel Robert Mueller, the sources said.
Now a couple things I want to point out.
They start by saying that Michael Cohen definitively is making this claim, whereas at the end of the paragraph they mention it is sources.
They go on to say, Cohen's claim would contradict repeated denials by Trump, Donald Trump Jr., their lawyers, and other administration officials who have said that the president knew nothing about the Trump Tower meeting until he was approached about it by the New York Times in July 2017.
Cohen alleges that he was present, along with several others, when Trump was informed of the Russians' offer by Trump Jr.
by Cohen's account.
Trump approved going ahead with the meeting with the Russians, according to sources.
Interestingly, they also add, to be clear, these sources said Cohen does not have evidence, such as audio recordings, to corroborate his claim, but he is willing to attest to this account.
So the question then becomes, who were these sources, and how does CNN know this?
I would say that I take issue with CNN reporting it definitively as Cohen making the claim, when they're actually just reporting off of the word of a source.
I take issue often with anonymous sources, because they can be wielded in such malicious ways.
We don't know who these people are, we don't know if there's a conflict of interest, and that is a challenge.
But at the same time, journalism does rely on anonymous sources for a lot of reasons.
Sometimes people just don't want to face the backlash by coming out and sharing facts and the truth.
And this is true for whistleblowers, and it's true for many anonymous sources.
Whoever these sources are, I could only wonder what their intentions were.
But it seems now that at least one of the sources was Lanny Davis, who is walking back these statements.
From SFGate, lawyer backs off claims about information Cohen has.
An attorney for Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump's former lawyer, is backing away from confident assertions he made that Cohen has information to share with investigators that shows Trump knew in 2016 of Russian efforts to undermine Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
Lanny Davis, a spokesman and attorney for Cohen, said in an interview this weekend that he is no longer certain about claims he made to reporters on background and on the record in recent weeks about what Cohen knows about Trump's awareness of the Russian efforts.
Davis did not rule out that his claims were correct, but expressed regret that he did
not explain that he could not independently corroborate them, saying that he now believes
he should have been more clear.
Neither Cohen nor his lead defense attorney, Guy Petrillo, responded to requests for comment.
At the very least, with this information coming to light, it would be prudent for CNN to update
their story from the 27th, which they have not done.
It would be prudent for them to report on this and to correct their story.
However, they're taking the stance that they're going to stand by their reporting.
But it's not just Lanny Davis that is calling their story into question.
It's testimony from Cohen himself.
From the Daily Wire, CNN stands by refuted report on Trump Tower.
On July 27th, CNN reported that sources with knowledge of the issue told the outlet that Donald Trump's embattled former lawyer, Michael Cohen, was willing to testify to the special counsel that his former client had prior knowledge about the infamous Trump Tower meeting involving a Russian lawyer.
Despite that claim now being refuted by multiple sources, CNN says that they stand by their reporting.
They go on, The Washington Post on Sunday presented strong evidence debunking CNN's sources with knowledge, one of whom was reportedly Cohen's lawyer, Lanny Davis.
Davis pulled back his claims that Cohen knew about the meeting in advance, the Post reports, and expressed regret for not being clearer in assertions he made to reporters.
In addition to Davis walking back the claim, Cohen himself testified before Congress that he had no idea if Trump knew about the much-scrutinized meeting, and Davis confirmed this fact to Axios Thursday.
They show this passage from Axios.
Michael Cohen told the lawmakers last year in sworn testimony that he didn't know whether then-candidate Donald Trump had foreknowledge of the 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Russians.
Three sources with knowledge of Cohen's testimony tell Axios.
And Cohen still doesn't know whether Trump knew about the infamous meeting.
According to Cohen's lawyer Lenny Davis, nothing has changed, he told Axios.
News reports last month said Cohen was willing to assert to special counsel Robert Mueller that Trump did know about the meeting in advance.
So there we have it.
It's not just Lanny Davis.
It's apparently other sources saying that Cohen testified he did not know if Trump knew about this meeting.
So why is CNN maintaining this line?
Why are they standing by these statements?
Brian Stelter, host of Reliable Sources for CNN, tweeted, read,
CNN's July 27 story about Cohen claiming that Trump knew in advance about the Trump Tower meeting?
We stand by our story and are confident in our reporting of it.
In response to the story from the Washington Post, Donald Trump Jr.
chimed in.
Comical to watch CNN covering for leftist hack Carl Bernstein, he and Obama staffer Jim Sciutto obviously got story wrong.
CNN stands by it anyway, defending literal fake news.
Three reporters were fired for false CNN hit on Scaramucci, and this is far worse.
At the very least, CNN could issue an update, but I can make some assumptions as to why I think they won't.
For one, the story is traffic for them.
It's going to generate a lot of hits, and it probably already has.
So why backpedal away from something that makes you money from the Trump bump?
Negative stories about Trump sell, and we all know it.
They could just say, hey, this might be wrong, and be honest and humble.
I can't imagine why they would do it unless it was on purpose.
But let's take a look at how many times this story from CNN was actually shared to maybe Look, it's an assumption about their motive, but let's just see how far and wide the story has already gone.
From muckrack, who shared my link?
By plugging in the CNN URL to this story, we can calculate the shares.
And so far, the story has 259,648 shares, reaching nearly 30 million journalists.
For the most part, we can see that almost all of the shares occurred on Facebook.
But think about that.
at 258,973 shares on Facebook for this story.
So it's no surprise to me why they don't want to screw around and they want to keep it the
way it is.
They're probably getting millions of views off this, or at least a couple million.
And that can be a risk for their business to go in and change it because they've got, you know, they've got a story that's hot.
It's on a roll.
I have to wonder if there's a political motive.
You know, a lot of people will obviously believe there is.
Many people believe that CNN is simply out to get Trump.
But for me, I lean more towards it's the Trump bump effect.
Something that's been talked about time and time again.
That companies reporting negatively on Trump see a bump in traffic.
As we can see with this story, it's doing really well.
And there's no excuse for not updating.
The story can continue to do well and they can update.
Now I do want to point something else out.
It is possible that CNN is actually right.
We can go off the assumption based off of various sources that Cohen testified he didn't know and Lanny Davis backtracking.
But I also want to point out that Lanny Davis is the personal attorney for Michael Cohen and he might be making these statements to limit legal liability and exposure for his client.
If it's true that Cohen had foreknowledge, or that Cohen knew Trump had foreknowledge, there's potentially, and I'm not a lawyer, but there's potentially, well, there's reason to believe that he maybe was obligated to inform the authorities and he didn't do that.
That could get him in trouble.
So, I'm not surprised to see that Cohen's lawyer is saying, no, no, he didn't know anything, because it's probably a safer route legally.
But we do have to take into consideration the other sources claiming that Cohen testified that he didn't know whether or not Trump knew anything.
And if that's the case, we have to lean more in favor of CNN got the story wrong.
And if they're gonna get it wrong, they are obligated, ethically, to issue that correction, so it's a damn shame that they're not gonna do it.
And you know what?
I can't blame people for calling CNN fake news if this is the case.
Because look, even if CNN does believe they're right, you would think they would issue an update and say, on the story, This is what happened.
Here's where we stand.
But they haven't.
And this story has 260,000 shares on Facebook, which means it is going far and wide.
And many people who are sharing it probably don't like Trump.
This is the bubble effect that affects social media.
People on the left see the negative story about Trump, they're going to share it.
People on the right see the refute, the rebuttal, and they're going to share that, thus further dividing Americans.
And it is rather unfortunate because CNN really has no excuse for not informing their readers.
In fact, CNN is obligated as a news organization to make sure they present as much information as possible.
And it's a damn shame that this is the route they've taken.
Because now you're going to end up with people who have read the story from the Washington Post.
And they're going to say, why would CNN do that?
Keeping in mind the Washington Post is a very highly circulated mainstream publication that leans left.
You're going to get a lot of people on the left wondering what the hell CNN's doing and what's actually going on.
And when I see stories like this day after day, I have to imagine that... Oh, I'm gonna say it again.
I see Trump winning.
I see the blue wave just not happening because of things like this.
Because it feels like the news just can't be honest.
I did a story on my second channel that turned out to be hyperbolic.
And so I immediately put in the title, Update Fake News, with a link to a more credible source.
I didn't just take the video down because I thought I could do better by allowing people to share it with the updated information and the title stating that it was fake news.
And that's the very least that CNN could have done.
You don't have to be perfect, but if you're not going to be honest and you're not going to tell people what's going on, don't be surprised when your ratings are down year after year, and when people no longer believe you, or when you're standing at a Trump rally and a bunch of people turn around and give you the middle finger.
This is why.
It doesn't matter if you think your reporting is accurate.
It just matters that you address the situation and be honest with people.
But let me know what you think in the comments below.
Do you think CNN could be right?
Do you think that Lanny Davis is just trying to limit legal exposure for his client?
Or is it possible that CNN just got the story wrong and is refusing to correct it because, well, they have financial reasons not to?
They want to say that it's true, and they want to continue to get those shares and make that money, or is it possible they're just stubborn?
Maybe they don't want to retract it because they refuse to admit they're wrong.
Plain and simple.
Comment below.
We'll keep the conversation going.
Stay tuned.
New videos every day at 4 p.m., maybe sometimes 10 a.m., and new videos on my second channel, youtube.com slash TimCastNews, starting at 6 p.m.
