Fox News was taken to task by one of its own guests during an interview involving the mainstream media’s coverage of President Trump after its cable news competitors propagated an erroneous report last week falsely linking the White House to WikiLeaks.
“I don’t want it implied that this is a problem unique to CNN and MSNBC,” Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald told Fox News host Laura Ingraham during Monday evening’s episode of “The Ingraham Angle.”
“Fox has had its share of incredibly embarrassing mistakes also in the direction of its own political agenda. The problem is that media outlets are vulcanized. They talk only to their audiences and they don’t have any transparency or accountability duties, and that I think is what is ruining journalism,” Mr. Greenwald said.
An attorney-turned-journalist, Mr. Greenwald, 50, was among a small group of reporters given access to the trove of classified documents leaked by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden in 2013. He helped launched The Intercept in 2014, the same year he received a Pulitzer Prize for his work reporting on the NSA leaks for The Guardian.
Outlets including CNN falsely reported Friday that Mr. Trump and his oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., were told in advance about hacked Democratic National Committee emails obtained by WikiLeaks during the 2016 presidential election and ultimately published on the antisecrecy group’s website. The Washington Post later reported that the email was actually sent after the DNC message were public, and CNN has since issued a correction.
Opining for The Intercept. Mr. Greenwald called the debacle “one of the most embarrassing days for the U.S. media in quite a long time.” While he declined to name Fox News in Friday’s article, however, he had no problem calling out the network during Monday’s “Ingraham” appearance.
“Virtually 100 percent of the mistakes that outlets like CNN and The Washington Post and MSNBC make are designed to undermine and subvert Donald Trump and bolster the Russia-Trump story like all of Fox’s mistakes are in the opposite direction,” he told Ms. Ingraham.
“I don’t mean your show, which is only a couple of months old. I mean, the two that Donald Trump loves to watch most, which is the morning show full of disinformation and the evening show that precedes yours,” Mr. Greenwald added, referring to “Fox and Friends” and “Hannity,” respectively.
“That’s the problem in journalism,” Mr. Greenwald said. “These mistakes stop looking like mistakes when they always go in the same direction and are always bolstering the same political agenda. You’re seeing that around most media outlets and not just the ones that we are discussing.”
Russian state-sponsored hackers breached the DNC and other Democratic targets and obtained sensitive emails and documents subsequently published by WikiLeaks and other outlets prior to the 2016 U.S. presidential election, according to U.S. intelligence officials. Federal investigators are examining Moscow’s alleged role in the race as well as any ties between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has denied interfering Mr. Trump’s election, and the White House has denied colluding with Russia.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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