A Boon to ‘Fake News’

Here they go again — the news media, that is, racing to run stories meant to discredit President Trump’s 2016 election victory, only to wind up with egg on their faces.

Friday, it was CNN’s turn to be caught spreading a false yarn — this one trying to link Team Trump with WikiLeaks and its supposed efforts, along with the Russians, to throw last year’s election to Trump.

On Sept. 4, 2016, CNN said, Donald Trump Jr. got an e-mail tipping him off to WikiLeaks material that wasn’t yet public. That sure sounds like an effort to collude.

Trouble is, the e-mail was actually dated Sept. 14 — a full 10 days later and after WikiLeaks had made the documents public. So the message might have been harmlessly intended to flag already-public info for Team Trump. CNN was forced to post a correction.

This wasn’t the first such mistake by a press obsessed with trying to prove Trump’s election was tainted. Just last week, ABC’s Brian Ross reported that former Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn revealed that he’d been ordered to contact Russian officials during the campaign. Oops: Turns out Flynn’s instructions came

during the transition period — when it was perfectly appropriate for incoming Trumpies to reach out to their counterparts abroad. ABC admitted the error and suspended Ross.

We certainly understand the rush to be first in this business. But the increasingly desperate attempts by an anti-Trump press to prove Russian collusion are leading to gaffes that make readers question even legitimate stories. They offer ammo to Trump and others who bash the press for its “fake news.” It all backfires spectacularly.