How Do Big Media Outlets So Often "Independently Confirm" Each Other's Falsehoods?

There were so many false reports circulated by the dominant corporate wing of the U.S. media as part of the five-year-long Russiagate hysteria that in January, 2019, I compiled what I called "The 10 Worst, Most Embarrassing U.S. Media Failures on the Trump-Russia Story." The only difficult part of that article was choosing which among the many dozens of retractions, corrections and still-uncorrected factual falsehoods merited inclusion in the worst-ten list.

The New York Times' May, 2017 announcement of Robert Mueller as special counsel stated explicitly that his task was "To oversee the investigation into ties between President Trump's campaign and Russian officials" and specifically "Investigate 'any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump.'".

For a few weeks following the issuance of the Mueller report, Democrats and media figures gamely attempted to deny that it obliterated the conspiracy theories to which they had relentlessly subjected the country for the prior four years.

With the crux of the Russiagate conspiracy theory collapsed, U.S. media outlets began acknowledging - because they had to - that none of it was vindicated by Mueller's report.

While the hypocrisy of watching a media that for months demanded reverence for Mueller turn on a dime to accuse him of being a borderline-senile, unpatriotic coward was quite amazing, it was at least some progress toward acknowledging the undeniable reality that the media had collectively failed.

The big huge scoop notably came from its Congressional reporter Manu Raju without independently investigating it, because they knew any anti-Trump story would please their partisan audience - NBC News pretended they had obtained "Independent confirmation" when all they had done was speak to the same sources that fed CNN. This episode is so worth recalling not only because it is one of the most stunning and pathetic media humiliations of the Trump era - though it is that - but also because the shoddy tactic that drove it is still in full use by the same media outlets.

Many liberals defenders of these corporate media outlets insist that these major factual errors do not matter because the basic narrative - Trump and his supporters at the Capitol are bad people who did bad things - is still true.

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/how-do-big-media-outlets-so-often?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoxNDc4NzI4NSwicG9zdF9pZCI6MzM3ODI2MTAsIl8iOiJSVmVQWiIsImlhdCI6MTYxNTkyNDc2OSwiZXhwIjoxNjE1OTI4MzY5LCJpc3MiOiJwdWItMTI4NjYyIiwic3ViIjoicG9zdC1yZWFjdGlvbiJ9.EMivHblk7NJud