“If credibility is the lifeblood of journalism, the Mainstream Media is dead.”
Ashley Rindsberg, investigative journalist and author of “The Gray Lady Winked: How the New York Times’s Misreporting, Distortions and Fabrications Radically Alter History,” outlined the broad strokes of the Russian Collusion narrative that was manically propagated by the mainstream media and then quietly ignored after its claims were categorically discredited.
In January 2023, the Columbia Review, a highly respected journalistic publication, published an in-depth review of the “Russiagate” scandal written by industry veteran Jeff Gerth. Gerth concluded that every major claim made about the Trump campaign’s alleged collusion was false. “Let’s step back and consider what this means: for some five years, the Mainstream Media, the New York Times, The Washington Post, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN fed a grotesque lie to the public, that Donald Trump colluded with Russia to subvert an American election.”
A similar fact pattern would emerge in many of the allegations — initial sourcing from opposition research or highly disreputable sources would be referenced by the FBI or other government agents in anonymous statements to the media, who would then parrot the claims as if they were credible because the FBI was investigating them.
These claims include:
- Allegations that Trump campaign advisors George Papadopoulos and Carter Page were Russian agents
- Allegations that Trump had close ties to Russia and Vladimir Putin
- Allegations that Trump was financially connected to the Russian Alfa-Bank
“There were 533,000 articles published about Russia and Trump during just the 22 months of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Trump’s alleged involvement with Russia,” Rindsberg noted.
The Washington Post and The New York Times were both awarded Pulitzer Prizes for their reporting on the Russian Collusion story, reporting that was later revealed to be poorly sourced from ideologically motivated actors or completely fabricated evidence such as the Steele Dossier. Neither organization returned their prizes, and there has been little coverage of Gersh’s exposé in the mainstream press.
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“Journalism is no longer about gathering the facts and presenting an accurate picture of reality,” Rindsberg said. “It’s about choosing sides.”
Rindsberg notes that this approach is the opposite of good journalism and it has completely destroyed the credibility of once-venerated outlets and institutions.
“The only Trump era collusion that has been proven was between the Mainstream Media, the Hillary Clinton Campaign, the Democratic Party, and elements within government agencies,” Rindsberg said. “Together, they did more to sow discord between Americans than Russia could have ever dreamed of doing on its own.”
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