CNN’s rationalization that what they did was not at all similar to what Buzzfeed did re ‘the dossier’ is bull shit, right? Yes, they didn’t report the details like Buzzfeed - and that certainly mitigates their guilt - but clearly, like most of the media, they were chomping at the bit to report this story, dearly hoping for it to be true and therefore ready to jump at the first indication seeming to suggest it was true - they found out that Trump and Obama had been supposedly briefed on the dossier [which now appears to be false], interpreted that as ‘proof enough’ that the intelligence community saw the allegations as being at least somewhat legitimate, and they were off to the races. They didn't give the details, sure, but in the way they treated and hyped the story they demonstrably insinuated the very point the ‘details’ were merely more dramatically meant to expose - that Trump is done. All these people were dying to be the left wing hero who scooped the story that brought down Trump and their near obsessive hunger to get that story led them down a very dark and disturbing road.
Jack Tapper must hate that he’s been sucked up into this mess - I like Tapper, sure he clearly leans left but always seems to me to make a sincere effort to be objective. The reason I started following the story in the first place was because I saw that he was reporting on it. Gotta believe he realised that pushing this story - and they definitely pushed it - on such a flimsy pretext, was extremely questionable behavior. Does anyone believe Buzzfeed does what it did if CNN hadn’t started the ball rolling? They were all dying to scoop this story and it drove them into a kind of madness - a madness that has overtaken the left since Trump’s win and reduced it to a pathetic, addled state of whingeing hysteria. Very troubling.
Jack Tapper must hate that he’s been sucked up into this mess - I like Tapper, sure he clearly leans left but always seems to me to make a sincere effort to be objective. The reason I started following the story in the first place was because I saw that he was reporting on it. Gotta believe he realised that pushing this story - and they definitely pushed it - on such a flimsy pretext, was extremely questionable behavior. Does anyone believe Buzzfeed does what it did if CNN hadn’t started the ball rolling? They were all dying to scoop this story and it drove them into a kind of madness - a madness that has overtaken the left since Trump’s win and reduced it to a pathetic, addled state of whingeing hysteria. Very troubling.
