THE MEDIA MALPRACTICE ON THE TRUMP-GEORGIA STORY KEEPS GETTING WORSE: Audio shows the media got the Trump-Georgia story all wrong.
If you can believe it, the Washington Post’s dud of a “bombshell” isn’t even the most scandalous thing about this episode in media malfeasance. No, the most scandalous thing is: Several newsrooms claimed they independently “confirmed” the original “scoop” with anonymous sources of their own.
NBC News reported it “confirmed The Post’s characterization of the Dec. 23 call through a source familiar with the conversation.”
USA Today claimed a “Georgia official speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters confirmed the details of the call.”
ABC News reported: “President Donald Trump phoned a chief investigator in Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office asking the official to ‘find the fraud’ and telling this person they would be a ‘national hero’ for it, an individual familiar with the matter confirmed to ABC News.”
PBS NewsHour and CNN likewise appeared to claim they independently “confirmed” the story through their own anonymous sources.
But Trump never said those things. The sources either were terribly mistaken or lying.
The most likely scenario is ABC, the Washington Post, and others talked to the same person or group. It’s either that or a bunch of people managed somehow to be wrong about a very specific claim, which is highly unlikely.
The uncomfortable questions we are left with now are: Whom were they all speaking to? How did this person or these persons get the details of Trump’s private phone call wrong? Are there additional examples of the media reporting bad information provided by anonymous sources we don’t know about, merely because there’s no contradictory audio or video? Just how many anonymously sourced stories are fraudulent? If it can happen this easily, who is to say it doesn’t happen often? Further, how many of these bogus stories have enjoyed the backing of supposed independent corroboration when, in fact, newsrooms most likely talked to the same person or people?
But wait, it gets even worse: CNN’s correction to the imploded Trump/Georgia story leaves something to be desired. As our sister-site Twitchy notes, “The quote marks in the original story certainly seem to more than imply that it was a direct quote, but since it’s CNN none of this should be surprising:”
According to CNN today: Officials located December recording of Trump call in a trash folder on Georgia investigator’s device.
Officials in the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office located a recently released recording of former President Donald Trump‘s call to a state investigator in a trash folder on her device, a state official familiar with the situation confirmed to CNN.
The discovery of the call comes after state officials originally told CNN that they did not think audio of the call existed. The call added to the examples of Trump’s extraordinary efforts to push false claims of widespread voter fraud and influence Georgia election officials as they certified the state’s election results.
Yeah, virtually the entire DNC-MSM screwed the pooch on the story, and a recording wound up in a PC’s recycling folder, but its real takeaway is Orange Man Bad. Keep flucking that chicken, CNN.