Glenn Greenwald Slams Mainstream Media’s ‘Recklessness’ on Russia in Wake of CNN Fake News Scandal

The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald slammed mainstream media outlets Tuesday for their “recklessness” in pushing false and inaccurate Russia stories — his criticisms coming as CNN is frantically dealing with the fallout of its very own fake news scandal.

CNN was forced to retract a story Friday connecting a Russian investment firm to associates of President Trump. After a Breitbart News investigation, CNN yanked the article from its website and published an editor’s note. On Monday it fired three employees associated with the article.

But in an article for the Intercept, Greenwald points out that CNN’s is only the latest in a string of fake news bloopers by the mainstream media when it comes to Russia-Trump stories. Greenwald points to a prior correction CNN was forced to make about its coverage of the testimony of fired FBI Director James Comey, as well as a number of botched Russia-related stories by the Washington Post —most notably a false claim that Russian hackers had broken into “the U.S. electricity grid.”

Greenwald says that these retractions and errors are not merely errors in and of themselves, but are all mistakes made in attempting to advance a narrative about the threat from Russia:

What is most notable about these episodes is that they all go in the same direction: hyping and exaggerating the threat posed by the Kremlin. All media outlets will make mistakes; that is to be expected. But when all of the “mistakes” are devoted to the same rhetorical theme, and when they all end up advancing the same narrative goal, it seems clear that they are not the by-product of mere garden-variety journalistic mistakes.

He argues that outlets are motivated by the carrot of viral stories depicting the Kremlin and Putin as “villains and grave menaces” that can produce TV offers, praise, and profit due to the “voracious appetite” of anti-Trumpers and conspiracy theorists for such stories.

Greenwald also criticizes the heavy reliance on anonymous sources in much of the reporting, which encourages those with agendas to leak false claims to the media. He also notes that inflaming tensions between the U.S. and Russia carries significant dangers.

The importance of this journalistic malfeasance when it comes to Russia, a nuclear-armed power, cannot be overstated. This is the story that has dominated U.S. politics for more than a year. Ratcheting up tensions between these two historically hostile powers is incredibly inflammatory and dangerous. All kinds of claims, no matter how little evidence there is to support them, have flooded U.S. political discourse and have been treated as proven fact.

He goes on to note that what he calls “journalistic recklessness” works against them — giving Trump fuel to discredit media outlets that oppose him.

“Given the stakes, reporting on these matters should be done with the greatest care,” he concludes. “As this long line of embarrassments, retractions, and falsehoods demonstrates, the exact opposite mentality has driven media behavior over the last year.”

Adam Shaw is a politics reporter for Breitbart News based in New York. Follow Adam on Twitter: @AdamShawNY