The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
CNN resignations buoy Trump
Tweets celebrate retracted story on Russia ties as a victory.
After three employees on CNN’s new investigative unit resigned following a retracted online story regarding the Senate’s Russian investigation, President Donald Trump tweeted attacks Tuesday on “fake news.”
Thomas Frank, a veteran reporter who wrote the story; his editor Eric Lichtblau, who recently came from The New York Times; and Lex Haris, the man who oversaw the CNN Investigates unit and has worked at CNN since 2001, chose to depart Monday. Frank and Lichtblau worked out of the CNN D.C. bureau; Haris was based in New York.
“In the aftermath of the retraction of a story published on CNN.com, CNN has accepted the resignations of the employees involved in the story’s publication,” the network released in a statement.
Trump rejoiced on Twitter Tuesday morning, noting, “Fake News CNN is looking at big management changes now that they got caught falsely pushing their phony Russian stories. Ratings way down!”
CNN’s public relations team tweeted back at him that the Atlanta-based network is on pace to record its most-watched second quarter in history, adding: “Those are the facts.”
The story, which linked Anthony Scaramucci, a hedge-fund manager close to Trump, to a Russian investment fund allegedly being investigated by a Senate intelligence committee, did not go through the proper fact-checking process, CNN said. The retracted story cited a single anonymous source.
“The story wasn’t solid enough to publish as-is,” one of the people briefed on the investigation told CNN media writer Brian Stelter.
Scaramucci, the subject of the story, was kinder than Trump on Twitter after the resignations: “@CNN did the right thing. Classy move. Apology accepted. Everyone makes mistakes. Moving on.”
Michael Castengera, a senior lecturer for journalism at the Grady School of Journalism at the University of Georgia, said he read the original CNN story and ended up “confused to a degree. When you look at it, there was actually some validity to what they were saying. They just crossed the line, making connections between Russian firms that may not have been there.”
He said nuance in this media world is out the window. ‘They did the honorable thing by resigning,” he said. “You do something wrong, you take it. Unfortunately, this is just more evidence for people on the extreme ends to say, ‘I told you so.’”
Indeed, this retraction provided right-wing media easy fodder that feeds into the perception that CNN is improperly going after Trump on a non-story. Breitbart dubbed the story “Very Fake News” in a headline. Fox News evening host Sean Hannity called for CNN to fire President Jeff Zucker and questioned the spin that the three employees had voluntarily resigned.
James O’Keefe, a conservative political activist, also posted undercover video Tuesday of CNN producer John Bonifield questioning his network’s heavy coverage of possible collusion between Russia and the Trump administration: “I haven’t seen any good enough evidence to show that the president committed a crime.”
As ratings have skyrocketed and revenue has poured in, CNN has aggressively beefed up its investigative operation. In recent months, CNN has broken several stories related to Trump’s administration and Russia, inciting the ire of Trump.
“CNN needs to be an organization that breaks news, not just an organization that covers breaking news or talks about breaking news on television,” Andrew Morse, the executive vice president of editorial for CNN/U.S. and general manager of CNN digital worldwide, told NPR in January. “There’s no better way to do that than to invest in investigative reporting,” he said.