Rob Lever -
Donald Trump’s inner circle piled on the US news media, which was plunged into soul-searching over coverage of a two-year probe that failed to show collusion between the president’s 2016 campaign and Russia. With America’s political landscape reset by the bombshell findings, some continued to defend aggressive reporting of a story still unfolding — but other observers warned a “reckoning” was in store over potentially biased coverage.
The White House wasted little time in sharpening its attacks.
“I think Democrats and the liberal media owe the president, and they owe the American people an apology,” Trump’s spokeswoman Sarah Sanders charged on NBC, echoing similar demands from the president’s sons, Donald Jr and Eric.
But well beyond the Trump camp, there was an acknowledgement that the summary of Robert Mueller’s conclusions released on Sunday risked badly damaging the credibility of many news outlets in the eyes of the public.
“It’s official: Russiagate is this generation’s WMD,” ran the headline of a damning analysis by Rolling Stone editor and author Matt Taibbi — alluding to flawed coverage of Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction arsenal in the run-up to the Iraq war.
Taibbi called the special counsel’s findings a “death-blow for the reputation of the American news media.” “Nothing Trump is accused of from now on by the press will be believed by huge chunks of the population,” he wrote.
Glenn Greenwald, co-founder of The Intercept, argued cable news outlets in particular need to face up to errors of judgement.
“Check every MSNBC personality, CNN law ‘expert,’ liberal-centrist outlets and #Resistance scam artist and see if you see even an iota of self-reflection, humility or admission of massive error,” Greenwald said on Twitter. “If there’s no media reckoning for what they did, don’t ever complain again when people attack the media as ‘Fake News.’” — ‘No time to retreat’ — Many media analysts were more nuanced, arguing it was too soon to make judgements on coverage of the Russia probe based on Attorney General Bill Barr’s letter to Congress summarising Mueller’s still-secret report.
“I don’t think the media can be charged with being unfair to Donald Trump,” said Stephen Ward, a media ethicist and former director of the University of Wisconsin’s Center for Journalism Ethics.
“With a president so aggressive and so challenging the constitution, the media had to report on him.” Instead of being cowed, Ward argued media outlets should do their job to get the full report to the public.
“They’ve got to get their hands on a copy and publish it immediately,” he said. — AFP
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