Buzzfeed FORCED To Admit It Published FAKE NEWS About Trump
Buzzfeed FORCED To Admit It Published FAKE NEWS About Trump. Buzzfeed falsely reported that Donald Trump explicitly told Michael Cohen to lie in the Russia investigation but the story was almost immediately refuted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Office. Buzzfeed REFUSED o back down and defended their reporting.Even after Cohen testified and proved the story was false Buzzfeed again REFUSED to back down.But the Mueller report released to the public gives Buzzfeed no choice but to finally admit defeat. They were wrong, they published fake news, they refused to back down even with every bit of evidence saying they were wrong and now finally they admit it.What we see is CNN giving a platform to Buzfeed's reporters to defend their fake news and journalists protecting their own, refusing to hold them accountable.The only real accountability happens across partisan political lines and that's a shame. The Trump Russia narrative is over and it's time to MOVE ON. We learned from Attorney William Barr what we needed to know, No collusion and no obstruction. While there are many interesting insights from the Mueller report we need to move on and solve our country's problems.
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BuzzFeed has finally issued a correction on their story that we knew to be false, when they claimed that Michael Cohen was explicitly told to lie by Donald Trump.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller's office came out and said it's not true, but BuzzFeed stood by their fake news story, but are now forced to admit It's not true.
They've also issued a correction on a separate story where they falsely accused the wrong person of some potential wrongdoing.
BuzzFeed isn't the only news organization that is now eating crow.
Many news outlets are having to correct the record because for the longest time they pushed nonsense.
Now admittedly, I'm gonna have to say, at least they're correcting, because not everybody is.
In fact, many outlets are saying, no, we've been vindicated by the Mueller report.
And while certainly you can say some of the reporting done was good, you chased after a conspiracy theory that led you nowhere, for the most part, so no, I'm not going to praise you.
Today, let's take a look at BuzzFeed's correction, some other corrections, and some of the criticisms levied by people who knew, and pushed, that the Russiagate story was nonsense from the get-go.
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The infamous story posted January 17th, 2019 now includes, finally, an update.
The Mueller report found that Trump did not direct Cohen to lie, and here is our note on our reporting, updated yesterday at 9.30 p.m.
How we characterized Michael Cohen's testimony, an update on our January 17th story about the Trump-Moscow lies by Ben Smith.
This January 18th, the day after BuzzFeed News reported that Michael Cohen told prosecutors that the president had directed him to lie to Congress, the special counsel's office issued a vague but forceful rebuttal of our story.
They say.
Our reporters went back to the two senior law enforcement sources who had told them, as the article put it, that, quote, Donald Trump directed his longtime attorney Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about negotiations to build a Trump Tower in Moscow, according to two federal law enforcement officials involved in an investigation of the matter.
The sources confirmed the story again.
What exactly was Carr's statement disputing?
Which description and which characterization?
The special counsel's office never explained, so we have been trying to report it out.
Today, with the release of the Mueller report, we know which characterization Carr was disputing.
Specifically, that the series of interactions between Trump, Cohen, and their lawyers did not, in the prosecutor's view, amount to Trump directing Cohen to lie.
As Mueller's team wrote in the report, while there is evidence, The President knew Cohen provided false testimony to Congress.
The evidence to us does not establish the President directed or aided Cohen's false testimony.
They say our story was based on detailed information from senior law enforcement sources.
And why should we trust those sources when the office of Robert Mueller itself issued a rebuttal of your story in its entirety?
See, after Michael Cohen's testimony, he said no, Trump didn't explicitly tell him to lie, and BuzzFeed still came out and tried defending their position.
Well, now they get to eat crow, because the Mueller report proved you wrong.
But you know what?
At least they're issuing an update on the matter, which is more than a lot of other organizations are doing.
On March 25th, we saw this story from The Daily Caller.
McClatchy stands by disputed Cohen Prague story after Mueller finds no collusion.
McClatchy is standing by a disputed report alleging that Michael Cohen visited Prague in 2016, a spokesman for the news organization told the Daily Caller News Foundation Monday.
McClatchy reported in April 2018 that special counsel Robert Mueller had obtained evidence of Cohen's visit to the Czech Republic.
The report, which relied on two unnamed sources, appeared to confirm a key point in the disputed Steele dossier's tale of collusion between President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign and the Russian government.
But no other news outlet has confirmed McClatchy's report almost a year later, and Mueller concluded his investigation without finding evidence of conclusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
But of course, a McClatchy spokesman told the Daily Caller, And you'd think maybe!
McClatchy would publish an outright correction, but no, they just published this story.
Mueller report states Cohen was not in Prague.
It is silent on whether a Cohen device pinged there.
They say McClatchy reported in April 2018 that Mueller's office had been presented with evidence of Cohen entering the Czech Republic via Germany.
In late August or early September 2016, Cohen denied the allegation.
In a subsequent story in December 2018, McClatchy reported that it was a pinging cell signal picked up by a foreign intelligence agency that geo-located Cohen's phone to the Prague area.
While a contradiction to the assertion in the dossier, compiled by Christopher Steele, this scenario raised the possibility that Cohen was not there, but one of the many phones he used was.
The Mueller report states Cohen was not in Prague.
Cohen had never traveled to Prague and was not concerned about those allegations, which he believed were provably false.
But that's interesting because to the Daily Caller in just March, a spokeswoman said, We stand by our reporting.
Your reporting was wrong.
We also saw this ridiculously silly story from June 6, 2018 from BuzzFeed.
Ivanka Trump was in contact with a Russian who offered a Trump-Putin meeting.
Her contacts said a meeting between Trump and Putin could expedite a Trump Tower in Moscow.
And now, thanks to the Mueller report, with the evidence being clear, they issued this editor's note that, in fact, the individual, Dmitry Klokov, that they mentioned, the former Olympic weightlifter, was not the actual person.
They published photos of this man, and they have been removed from the story, and references to the weightlifter have been removed from the subhead.
But the main text of the story has not been edited since its initial publication.
In a news story from BuzzFeed, they wrote, BuzzFeed, what did you do?
shed new light on Dmitry Klokov, a mysterious figure in the Trump Tower Moscow deal.
A Russian who offered Michael Cohen a meeting between Trump and Vladimir Putin
was a former government official, not a weightlifter by the same name.
BuzzFeed, what did you do? Did you just Google search the name and found out that it was a
weightlifter and then you just put it in your story? They didn't verify who this guy was.
They posted photos of it.
And now that the Mueller report is out, they have to go back and fix this.
No.
The reporting was not perfect, as many would like to suggest.
I'm seeing hot take after hot take talking about how the Mueller report has vindicated the mainstream media.
Well, it didn't.
Well, it certainly proved that some of the reporting was correct.
It proved some of it was wrong.
And I'm not going to sit here and go through every story published by everyone, but these are the ones that have received the most attention.
For one, BuzzFeed refused, refused to issue a correction after their story was refuted several times.
And McClatchy refused to issue a correction when their story was refuted.
While it's true many people were reporting on the story, and they did a fine job reporting what the investigation was uncovering and what it was doing, as I've stated time and time again, if I hire you to mow my lawn, And you start the mower, and you cut the grass and do a damn good job, and when I come outside, you're at my neighbor's house?
I'm not gonna be happy.
Sure, you did hard work.
Sure, you did it correctly.
But you went the wrong way.
That's the point.
Should I be happy that for years they reported correctly on a conspiracy theory?
No!
And neither should anybody.
Where was the scrutiny from the journalists debunking the nonsense when, in fact, BuzzFeed and McClatchy, among others, published completely fake news?
The Dimitri thinks hilarious.
Seriously, BuzzFeed?
Again, did you just Google, search the name, and then be like, there it is!
That must be it!
You published photos of the guy!
Come on!
If you can't verify it, why would you publish it?
You know?
News organizations used to need three sources to confirm a story before publishing it.
It was kind of an ethical standard.
It wasn't definitive.
But what do they do now?
How did BuzzFeed end up accusing a weightlifter of being this intermediary when it was just so absurd in the first place?
Because apparently now, this guy's a government official.
Doesn't that make more sense?
The guy in the story was working with the Russian government.
Makes a million times more sense than a weightlifter in Russia trying to organize a deal.
But of course, this is the state of the media today.
Now I will say, I do want to give credit to BuzzFeed for at least correcting now.
Because McClatchy's is just now re-reporting, and they're not really going to admit they got it wrong.
But at least BuzzFeed is saying, OK, OK, we'll admit some of it.
It's not perfect.
It's not hard to say we were wrong.
Seriously, come out and just say, look, we got this one straight wrong.
We apologize.
We stood by reporting.
And there's nothing we can really do about it.
But too often, we're expected to rely on your sources.
I don't know who your sources are.
BuzzFeed had two law enforcement sources to confirm their story.
What happened to three?
What happened to three?
Most local news outlets require three sources.
Well, BuzzFeed didn't have that, ran the story, got refuted by the office of Robert Mueller itself, and still stuck by their reporting.
Cohen testified to Congress it wasn't true, and BuzzFeed stuck by their reporting.
This is absurd.
And again, I'll say respect for correcting now, but they should have corrected a long, long time ago.
And I'm just gonna have to point out how funny it is that BuzzFeed is even bothering to report on this at this point.
Two stories that were rather absurdly incorrect, and now they have a read the Mueller report, not the spin.
Or how about this one?
Hoaxes and misinformation about the Mueller Report are already spreading.
Do you know what this story from BuzzFeed shows?
Fake accounts, false headlines, and joke screenshots are already spreading.
Sure.
Let's scroll down and see what you got.
In this instance, it is a hyper-partisan website that's claiming Bill Barr walked off stage after being asked a question.
Misleading hyper-partisan content.
Okay, that's number one.
What's number two?
A Twitter account with eight followers that, for some reason, BuzzFeed thought was newsworthy and got banned.
I have no idea why.
Or how about someone who said this?
They posted a joke screenshot and BuzzFeed said fake.
There you go.
Three stories.
This is what BuzzFeed's reporting on.
Oh, how the mighty have fallen.
Why is BuzzFeed bothering me with a screenshot of a Twitter account with eight followers?
BuzzFeed, you really have fallen a long way.
You should have corrected in the first place.
You shouldn't be putting out these ridiculous stories, but they keep doing it.
And it's a big letdown.
Because in the past, I've defended BuzzFeed.
I have.
Because I feel like they're at least trying to reach out to people.
When I talk to them, they respond.
They're not as bad as some of these other news outlets that will just ignore it and let the fake news keep spreading.
But now BuzzFeed has done this.
They wanted to put out a story debunking some hoaxes.
You're in no position, unfortunately.
But the hoaxes they put up are just absurd nonsense.
Hyper-partisan framing, a Twitter account with 8 followers, and someone posting a joke tweet?
That's it?
Why should anyone even bother with BuzzFeed at this point?
And here's a tweet that aged very poorly from CNN's reliable sources.
The same fundamentals that I learned covering City Hall, covering the police, covering courthouses, that stands today.
I use those same skills, the same rigor to cover the White House.
This is going to be borne out.
This story is accurate, BuzzFeed reporter says.
Unfortunately, it wasn't, and they should have corrected a long time ago.
Michael Tracy responded to the update, saying, But what now?
Everyone just sits back and accepts that a falsehood was allowed to stand for four months?
Michael Cohen story, which had the entire media melting down in a raging frenzy for
48 hours.
Good start, I guess.
But what now?
Everyone just sits back and accepts that a falsehood was allowed to stand for four months?
But Glenn Greenwald throws a little respect, saying, BuzzFeed and BuzzFeed Ben deserve credit.
They did what a responsible media outlet does in such cases.
It's the rest of the media celebrating themselves and their vindication as though they've spent three years warning no evidence can establish collusion and blackmail.
That's the problem.
As a reminder, even vehement anti-Trump insiders in the intelligence community were trying to warn Democrats as early as March 2017 that there would be no evidence of Trump-Russia conspiracy over the election.
But humans often believe what they wish were true.
Even more revealing than the warnings from Morrell, who endorsed Hillary, not to expect Trump-Russia conspiracy evidence, James Clapper stated definitively in March 2017 that he never saw any such evidence either.
He was Director of National Intelligence.
Journalists don't hold each other accountable.
CNN has BuzzFeed reporters on the air to defend their reporting, In the wake of it being refuted.
Where was the rest of the media fact checking?
Where were these journalists who are now claiming vindication?
Where were they to call out the other fake news?
Nowhere to be found.
Now, of course, I'm being a bit hyperbolic.
Yes, there were many journalists who came out and said some things.
But for the most part, the industry as a whole has its own back.
They protect each other.
No one's going to call out another news organization unless it's along partisan lines.
Of course the Daily Caller is going to point the finger at McClatchy's and say, this is just not true because it's a partisan issue.
And this is where we are.
CNN invites Buzzfeed on to defend a fake story, while CNN decries the rise of fake news.
I'm sick of it.
I seriously am sick of it.
And now in the wake of all this, what do we see?
It's time to impeach Trump, they say.
I'm just completely over this.
Can we have politicians, for the love of God, that legislate?
that try and solve problems instead of bickering over partisan lines.
Can we have a news media that challenges the government and doesn't just believe whatever they hear from a group they choose to trust?
Think about it.
They're accusing Sarah Sanders now of lying.
In the Mueller report, it said Sarah Sanders lied and she called it a slip of the tongue.
The media will immediately scream she should resign, she's a liar, we shouldn't trust the Trump government.
But then what happens when it comes to Mueller?
What happens when it comes to the FBI?
If it benefits someone politically, they choose to believe it.
And that's complete and utter nonsense.
And it's not what anyone should do.
Now, I don't blame the pundits.
But unfortunately, most media is just becoming punditry.
And I'm guilty of it myself.
I understand.
But I will say to my defense, I am trying to be rational.
I am trying to say, calm down.
Don't push the conspiracies and don't just blindly believe everyone all the time.
I certainly don't believe Sarah Sanders or Trump.
I think they're full of it.
And I think any journalist who's going to outright believe any politician that what they're saying is true is not doing their job.
But this is what we get.
We get a group of journalists who think they're right and they're smarter, and they refuse to walk back anything to defend themselves.
Well, it's kind of obvious.
If their credibility is shot, they can't make money and they'll lose viewership, so they won't walk it back unless they absolutely have to.
And even then, they'll just claim, we were vindicated!
Well, I'll tell you what, to use the analogy one more time, sure, you did a good job mowing the lawn, but you mowed the wrong goddamn lawn.
Could you have at least debunked the fake news at the time?
There were a lot of good journalists that actually did debunk the nonsense, that challenged these stories time and time again.
But the mainstream media, as it were, was so hell-bent on being sure of themselves, and they're so hell-bent on opposing Trump, they push nonsense.
Yep.
This is where we are today, and it's rather disappointing, but I'll leave it there.
Let me know what you think in the comments below.
We'll keep the conversation going.
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