Media

Reporters Conclude That Reporters Succeeded In Covering The Mueller Investigation

Virginia Kruta Associate Editor
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As media, pundits, Congress and the American people begin to digest the Mueller report released Thursday, a number of reporters have already raised their own hands to declare victory.

Washington Post correspondent Philip Bump argued that Mueller’s report made it “clear that the vast amount of reporting by mainstream outlets about Trump and Russia was on the mark.” (RELATED: Washington Post’s Preview Of Friday Front Page Leaves Out Principal Conclusion: No Collusion)

He then dismissed criticisms of his assessment as proof that many people live in alternate universes:

Karen Tumulty, Washington Post political columnist, called the report “an exoneration of the mainstream media”:

Washington Post media reporter Paul Farhip claimed that “the press reports were accurate,” and the fake news “came from Trump and his aides”:

GQ Magazine correspondent Julia Ioffe claimed that it proved the “vast majority” of reporting on Trump and Russia to be “extremely accurate”:

CNN’s Brian Stelter and Oliver Darcy teamed up to write the following:

Over in one world, established news organizations reported the news. 1) The Mueller report detailed the Russian contacts with the Trump campaign, but did not establish a criminal conspiracy, and 2.) That Trump repeatedly attempted to curtail the investigation. Journalists also pointed out that the Mueller report corroborated much of the reporting that’s been done for the last two years.

But over in the other world, the one dominated by pro-Trump, right-wing media personalities, a completely different narrative unfolded. Commentators exclaimed “NO COLLUSION” while willfully drowning out the other findings of the report. The focus was on revenge. This universe also favored the demeaning of journalists, asserting the report had forever tarnished the reputation of the press.

CNN guest Shimon Prokupecz claimed that Mueller had “corroborated a lot of the good journalism that was done.” (RELATED: CNN Contributer Hopes ‘Nobody Missed Leg Day’ Because ‘Goalposts Are Going To Be Heavy’)

CNN analyst Bill Carter praised the media for its stalwart refusal “to let go of the tail of the real narrative”:

Daniel Dale of the Toronto Star agreed:

What none of them appeared to acknowledge was the fact that a number of their own Trump-Russia “bombshells” had been disproven — some even before the Mueller report was made public. And the collusion narrative they had pushed for months on end died without so much as a nod to its passing.

Former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer quoted Wall Street Journal opinion writer Holman W. Jenkins Jr., who argued that the larger outlets had failed so miserably that they may have “sewn themselves into a moral straitjacket.”

Former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich offered an open challenge to media, saying they should, “analyze the Mueller report and compare it to their own fake news reports over the last two years. They [don’t] have the courage to be honest about how wrong they were.”

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