The Patriot Post® · CNN's Credibility Crisis

CNN, in an effort to restore some semblance of journalistic integrity, accepted resignations from three seasoned reporters after it had to retract their latest Trump/Putin collusion fake news report. Claiming a single anonymous source, the “CNN Investigative Unit” report alleged a “meeting” between a Russian state bank executive and an one of Donald Trump’s campaign advisors, Anthony Scaramucci CNN asserted that Scaramucci “promised to lift sanctions” if Trump was elected. The meeting, as it turned out, was nothing more than somebody saying hello to Scaramucci at a conference – a now-familiar theme for such Demo/MSM propaganda machine hit pieces. CNN removed the front-page story from its website, and only later, after an inquiry why the story was removed, did CNN issue an apology to Scaramucci. The three CNN employees who resigned are reporter Thomas Frank (a Pulitzer nominee), editor Eric Lichtblau (a Pulitzer recipient) and executive editor Lex Haris.

CNN didn’t admit that the story was bogus, but only that it “did not meet CNN’s editorial standards and has been retracted” and that “an internal investigation by CNN management found that some standard editorial processes were not followed…” Really? “Some standard editorial processes”? After CNN retracted the article, it circulated an internal email explicitly warning reporters to gain approval before publishing anything “involving Russia.” CNNMoney executive director Rich Barbieri warned, “No one should publish any content involving Russia without coming to me and Jason [Farkas].” He continued “This applies to social, video, editorial and MoneyStream. No exceptions.”

In an unusually candid admission, longtime CNN producer John Bonifield admitted recently that the Trump/Putin collusion reports are “mostly bullsh-t right now,” but he adds, “Our ratings are incredible right now! Trump is good for business.” Actually, the collusion conspiracy theory has been nothing more than that since CNN’s first report. Of course, the real “collusion” posing the greatest threat to Liberty is between the Democrat Party and its mainstream media outlets (the Demo/MSM) in their thinly veiled effort to derail Trump’s agenda. And CNN is leading that charge — as you recall, a recent Harvard study on media bias found that 93% of CNN’s coverage of Donald Trump was negative. (Oh as for CNN’s “incredible ratings,” not so incredible.)

So what’s going on here? Apparently, CNN is facing an escalating credibility crisis, and that may eat into its advertising revenue. As a leading news network that claims its brand upholds objective journalistic standards, the exposure of a plethora of fake news reports is seriously threatening that brand. Some media observers have sarcastically referred to CNN as the “Communist News Network,” but clearly CNN has a lot of “journalists” who have proven to be effective propagators of Russia’s “dezinformatsiya” campaign against Trump’s agenda.