Netizens were up in arms this week grilling CNN boss Jeff Zucker who awkwardly defended his network’s coverage of the Mueller probe, saying their job was to report facts “as we know them,” rather than, you know, investigating.
“We are not investigators. We are journalists, and our role is to report the facts as we know them, which is exactly what we did,” Zucker said in light of the fact that the Robert Mueller investigation which CNN had harped on for the last two years found no evidence that Trump’s 2016 campaign colluded with Russia.
“A sitting president’s own Justice Department investigated his campaign for collusion with a hostile nation,” Zucker added in an apparent reference to Moscow. “That’s not enormous because the media says so. That’s enormous because it’s unprecedented,” he continued, seemingly moving back the network’s goalposts with any hope of an actual conviction smashed.
Also on rt.com CNN roasted for warning US voters to stay off Twitter if they want to understand 2020 electionsTwitter users were relentless in commenting on Zucker’s remark, mocking the company’s lack of journalistic integrity along with their less than convincing excuse for it.
Others were actually impressed with CNN: at least they had enough courage to admit they simply parrot information they are given without checking their facts… although it does seemingly undermine their claim to be the “most trusted name in news.”
CNN chief correspondent Brian Stelter tried to contain some of the attacks, writing that “the meaning of the Zucker quote is obvious: He's contrasting federal investigators, who were charged with investigating Russia's 2016 attack, with journalists who were COVERING the federal investigation.”
His rescue effort was mostly in vain, however, as commenters began to dog-pile on him as well for defending the network’s ill-advised backpedaling effort.
As a matter of fact, instead of taking the fall-out as a sign to make some changes, the network has seemingly decided to double-down on their accusations. They are now joining a cavalcade of #Resistance voices let down by the report in calling for it to be published in full, suggesting that the text could “still inflict significant political damage.”
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