Journalist Glenn Greenwald criticized the media’s “misleading playbook”, confirming each other’s stories from anonymous sources after a Washington Post single-source story had to be massively corrected for misquoting former President Donald Trump.
Questioning how the media often independently confirm unsuccessful stories, Greenwald criticized them for continuing to employ the “shoddy tactic” of Russia’s years of investigation, the so-called bombs in the Trump era.
“With the liberal media deliberately adopting a profit model of speaking overwhelmingly to party democrats who use them as a primary source of news, there is no zero cost to publish false claims about people and groups hated by that liberal public, “he wrote.
In its January 9 report, the Post originally quoted Trump as telling a Georgia election investigator to “find fraud” in the state, saying she would be a “national hero.” However, a newly emerged audio tape revealed that Trump did not use those words, leading to a 130-word correction affixed to the top of his original article.
WASHINGTON POST ‘FIND FRAUD’ CORRECTION POINTS FOR A GREATER PROBLEM WITH ANONYMOUS SOURCES INDICATED BY AGENDA
Several media outlets confirmed the Post’s story at the time, including CNN, NBC News and ABC News. Instead, Trump urged her to examine Fulton’s county ballot papers and continued to erroneously insist that she had won Georgia by “hundreds of thousands of votes”, which he also did in a separate phone call with the secretary of state. from Georgia, Brad Raffensperger.
The Post’s mea culpa has triggered a storm of criticism as it has publicized things that Trump never said as direct quotes. But it also raised questions about why so many other vehicles “confirmed” Trump’s language.
Greenwald compared the episode to the story portrayed on CNN in 2017, that Donald Trump Jr. had received hacked emails from the WikiLeaks Democratic National Committee before they were made public.
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The story was wrong, however. Although two sources tell CNN that Trump Jr. received an email providing access to emails on September 4, 2016, he actually received the email on September 14, the day after they were released to the public, making the scoop debatable.
Still, NBC News intelligence reporter Ken Dilanian said he could independently confirm the report before it failed, also citing two sources who said Congressional investigators discovered the email. CBS News also independently confirmed the story, and it exploded in the liberal media before the actual date of the email was revealed.
The implication is worrying, wrote Greenwald. Instead of actually providing “corroborating” evidence for the assertion of another medium, other mediums simply reached out to the same ill-informed source and provided it to the public. The effect is to deceptively increase the credibility of the original report.
“How ‘multiple sources’ missed the date of the email – misinterpreting it as September 4 instead of the actual date of the email: September 14 – has never been explained by CNN. That’s because corporate media believe they should the public no explanation or responsibility for the massive mistakes they make, “wrote Greenwald.
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“The reason for this is that the term ‘independently confirm’ significantly increases the credibility of the initial report, because it makes it appear that other credible news organizations have conducted their own investigations and found more evidence that proves it to be true. This is the objective of the exercise: to give more credibility to the public’s history ”, he added.
Leftist Greenwald, best known for his coverage of Edward Snowden’s data breach, has emerged as a staunch critic of the liberal corporate media. He resigned from The Intercept last year and now writes independently on Substack.
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Media experts told Fox News on Tuesday that the Washington Post saga showed the dangers of relying on anonymous sources, possibly based on agendas.
“This ‘fix’ is more than a fix, it questions the widespread dependence of the liberal media on anonymous sources to attack and undermine Republicans,” Cornell Law School professor and media critic William A. Jacobson told Fox News. “Almost all of Russia’s collusion media effort was based on anonymous sources that turned out to be exaggerated at best, and false at worst, after the Mueller Report was released.”
Brian Flood of Fox News contributed to this report.