Wednesday on Fox News Channel’s “Special Report,” Howard Kurtz, anchor of the network’s Sunday program “MediaBuzz,” castigated BuzzFeed for releasing an unsubstantiated dossier that detailed President-elect Donald Trump’s relationship with Russia.
Kurtz described the move by BuzzFeed as a “perversion of journalism.”
“Let’s be clear, this is a perversion of journalism for BuzzFeed to put out this bubbling stew of unverified rumor and allegations, while editor Ben Smith says serious doubt about these allegations,” he continued. “The editor also called Trump a mendacious racist during the campaign. [It] flies in the face of any notion of fairness or standard of proof.”
Kurtz also weighed in CNN’s decision to air a report on the dossier, but without the level of detailed offered in the BuzzFeed report, which he said he would not have put on air as well.
“Now, CNN, which we saw CNN correspondent Jim Acosta trying to get a question from Trump and getting slapped down in that news conference — in a different category in this respect: It did publish a story, it did air a story saying it was embarrassing information that may have compromised Donald Trump in the eyes of Russia,” he continued. “But it held back the salacious details. So come I think it there was some restraint there. But I still don’t think I would’ve put that on the air, either.”
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