Many of the mainstream news outlets—broadcast, cable and print—are being criticized by conservative outlets (and also by some on the left) for how they covered the 22-month Mueller investigation, after Attorney General Bill Barr released a four-page summary stating that Mueller did not find collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia in the 2016 presidential election in his report.
CNN was one outlet seemingly having to defend itself against attacks against external forces, as often seems to be the case these days.
The New York Times’ Amy Chozick spoke with top news execs and editors amid scrutiny on the media’s handling of the Mueller investigation.
“We are not investigators,” CNN president Jeff Zucker told Chozick. “We are journalists, and our role is to report the facts as we know them, which is exactly what we did. A sitting president’s own Justice Department investigated his campaign for collusion with a hostile nation. That’s not enormous because the media says so. That’s enormous because it’s unprecedented.”
“The special counsel investigation documented, as we reported, extensive Russian interference in the 2016 election and widespread deceit on the part of certain advisers to the president about Russian contacts and other matters,” said Washington Post executive editor Marty Baron. “Our job is to bring facts to light. Others make determinations about prosecutable criminal offenses.”
President Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani went on Chris Cuomo‘s 9 p.m. show on CNN last night, and hopped on the anti-media bandwagon, calling on CNN to apologize. Cuomo remarked that he would never do that because he didn’t do anything wrong. Giuliani also called on other mainstream outlets to apologize for their coverage of the investigation.
As did the commander-in-chief himself this morning:
The Mainstream Media is under fire and being scorned all over the World as being corrupt and FAKE. For two years they pushed the Russian Collusion Delusion when they always knew there was No Collusion. They truly are the Enemy of the People and the Real Opposition Party!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 26, 2019