BuzzFeed was once notorious for traffic-generating "listicles," simply has since become an impressive outlet for deep investigative journalism under editor-in-chief Ben Smith. That outlet was prominently in the news this week thanks to its "bombshell" story near President Trump and Michael Cohen: a story that, like so many others of its kind, blew upwards in its face, this time when the typically mute Robert Mueller's office took the extremely rare pace to label its fundamental claims "inaccurate."

But in homage to BuzzFeed'southward past viral celebrity, following are the acme ten worst media failures in ii-plus-years of Trump/Russian federation reporting. They are listed in reverse order, as measured by the magnitude of the embarrassment, the hysteria they generated on social media and cablevision news, the level of journalistic recklessness that produced them, and the amount of impairment and danger they caused. This list was extremely difficult to compile in office because news outlets (specially CNN and MSNBC) ofttimes delete from the internet the video segments of their most embarrassing moments. Even more challenging was the fact that the number of worthy nominees is so large that highly meritorious entrees had to be excluded, but are best-selling at the finish with (dis)honorable mention status.

Note that all of these "errors" go just in one direction: namely, exaggerating the grave threat posed by Moscow and the Trump circumvolve's connexion to it. It'southward inevitable that media outlets will make mistakes on complex stories. If that's being washed in proficient faith, one would expect the errors would exist roughly 50/l in terms of the calendar served by the imitation stories. That is most definitely not the example here. Just equally was truthful in 2002 and 2003, when the media clearly wanted to exaggerate the threat posed by Saddam Hussein and thus all of its "errors" went in that direction, virtually all of its major "errors" in this story are devoted to the same calendar and script:

x. RT Hacked Into and Took Over C-Span (Fortune)

On June 12, 2017, Fortune claimed that RT had hacked into and taken over C-Bridge and that C-SPAN "confirmed" it had been hacked. The whole story was false:

9. Russian Hackers Invaded the U.Due south. Electricity Grid to Deny Vermonters Rut During the Wintertime (WashPost)

On Dec 30, 2016, the Washington Postal service reported that "Russian hackers penetrated the U.S. electricity grid through a utility in Vermont," causing anticipated outrage and panic, forth with threats from U.S. political leaders. But and so they kept diluting the story with editor's notes – to acknowledge that the malware was constitute on a laptop not connected to the U.S. electric grid at all – until finally acknowledging, days afterward, that the whole story was simulated, since the malware had naught to practise with Russian federation or with the U.S. electric filigree:

8. A New, Deranged, Anonymous Group Declares Mainstream Political Sites on the Left and Right to be Russian Propaganda Outlets and WashPost Touts its Written report to Merits Massive Kremlin Infiltration of the Internet (WashPost)

On Nov 24, 2016, the Washington Post published ane of the most inflammatory, sensationalistic stories to date nigh Russian infiltration into U.S. politics using social media, accusing "more 200 websites" of existence "routine peddlers of Russian propaganda during the election season, with combined audiences of at least 15 million Americans." Information technology added: "stories planted or promoted by the disinformation campaign [on Facebook] were viewed more than than 213 million times."

Unfortunately for the paper, those statistics were provided by a new, bearding group that reached these conclusions past classifying long-time, well-known sites – from the Drudge Report to Clinton-critical left-wing websites such as Truthout, Blackness Agenda Study, Truthdig, and Naked Commercialism, also as libertarian venues such as Antiwar.com and the Ron Paul Plant. – equally "Russian propaganda outlets," producing ane of the longest Editor's Note in retentivity appended to the top of the article (but non until two weeks after, long after the story was mindlessly spread all throughout the media ecosystem):

vii. Trump Aide Anthony Scaramucci is Involved in a Russian Hedge Fund Nether Senate Investigation (CNN)

On June 22, 2017, CNN reported that Trump adjutant Anthony Scaramucci was involved with the Russian Direct Investment Fund, under Senate investigation. He was not. CNN retracted the story and forced the three reporters who published it to leave the network.

6. Russia Attacked U.Due south. "Diplomats" (i.eastward. Spies) at the Cuban Diplomatic mission Using a Super-Sophisticated Sonic Microwave Weapon (NBC/MSNBC/CIA)

On September 11, 2017, NBC News and MSNBC spread all over its airwaves a merits from its notorious CIA boob Ken Dilanian that Russia was behind a series of dastardly attacks on U.Due south. personnel at the Embassy in Republic of cuba using a sonic or microwave weapon so sophisticated and cunning that Pentagon and CIA scientists had no idea what to make of it.

But then teams of neurologists began calling into incertitude that these personnel had suffered any brain injuries at all – that instead they announced to have experienced collective psychosomatic symptoms – and and so biologists published findings that the "strange sounds" the U.S. "diplomats" reported hearing were identical to those emitted by a common Caribbean area male cricket during mating season.

v. Trump Created a Secret Internet Server to Covertly Communicate with a Russian Banking company (Slate)

4. Paul Manafort Visited Julian Assange Three Times in the Ecuadorian Embassy and Nobody Noticed (Guardian/Luke Harding)

On November 27, 2018, the Guardian published a major "bombshell" that Trump entrada director Paul Manafort had somehow managed to sneak inside one of the earth'southward near surveilled buildings, the Ecuadorian Diplomatic mission in London, and visit Julian Assange on three unlike occasions. Cable and online commentators exploded.

Seven weeks later, no other media outlet has confirmed this; no video or photographic show has emerged; the Guardian refuses to answer whatever questions; its leading editors take virtually gone into hiding; other media outlets have expressed serious doubts about its veracity; and an Ecuadorian official who worked at the diplomatic mission has called the story a complete false:

three. CNN Explicitly Lied Nigh Lanny Davis Being Its Source – For a Story Whose Substance Was Also False: Cohen Would Testify that Trump Knew in Advance Well-nigh the Trump Tower Meeting (CNN)

On July 27, 2018, CNN published a blockbuster story: that Michael Cohen was prepared to tell Robert Mueller that President Trump knew in advanced almost the Trump Tower coming together. At that place were, notwithstanding, two problems with this story: get-go, CNN got caught blatantly lying when its reporters claimed that "contacted past CNN, one of Cohen's attorneys, Lanny Davis, declined to annotate" (in fact, Davis was one of CNN'south central sources, if non its only source, for this story), and 2nd, numerous other outlets retracted the story after the source, Davis, admitted it was a prevarication. CNN, however, to this engagement has refused to do either:

two. Robert Mueller Possesses Internal Emails and Witness Interviews Proving Trump Directed Cohen to Lie to Congress (BuzzFeed)

1. Donald Trump Jr. Was Offered Avant-garde Access to the WikiLeaks Email Annal (CNN/MSNBC)

The forenoon of December 9, 2017, launched one of the nearly humiliating spectacles in the history of the U.Southward. media. With a tone so grave and bombastic that it is impossible to overstate, CNN went on the air and appear a major exclusive: Donald Trump, Jr. was offered by emailadvanced accessto the trove of DNC and Podesta emails published by WikiLeaks – meaning before those emails were made public. Within an hour, MSNBC'due south Ken Dilanian, using a tone somehow fifty-fifty more unhinged, purported to have "independently confirmed" this mammoth, blockbuster scoop, which, they said, would have been the smoking gun showing collusion between the Trump entrada and WikiLeaks over the hacked emails (while the YouTube clips have been removed, you lot tin withal watch 1 of the astonishing MSNBC videos here).

There was, alas, just one minor problem with this massive, blockbuster story: it was totally and completely faux. The e-mail which Trump, Jr. received that directed him to the WikiLeaks archive was sentlater on WikiLeaks published it online for the whole globe to see, not before. Rather than some super secretive operative giving Trump, Jr. advanced admission, as both CNN and MSNBC told the public for hours they had confirmed, it was instead just some totally pedestrian message from a random member of the public suggesting Trump, Jr. review documents the whole earth was already talking about. All of the anonymous sources CNN and MSNBC cited somehow all got the date of the email incorrect.

To date, when asked how they both could have gotten such a massive story then completely wrong in the same mode, both CNN and MSNBC have adopted the posture of the CIA past maintaining complete silence and refusing to explain how it could possibly exist that all of their "multiple, independent sources" got the date wrong on the electronic mail in the aforementioned manner, to be every bit incriminating – and false – as possible. Nor, needless to say, will they place their sources who, in concert, fed them such inflammatory and utterly false data.

Sadly, CNN and MSNBC have deleted most traces of the most humiliating videos from the net, including enervating that YouTube remove copies. Only enough survives to document just what a monumental, horrifying, and utterly inexcusable debacle this was. Particularly amazing is the clip of the CNN reporter (run across beneath) having to admit the error for the first time, equally he awkwardly struggles to pretend that it's non the massive, horrific debacle that it and then obviously is:

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Dishonorable Mention:

  • ABC News' Brian Ross is fired for reporting Trump told Flynn to make contact with Russians when he was notwithstanding a candidate; in fact, Trump did that after he won.
  • The New York Times claimed Manafort provided polling data to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, a person "close to the Kremlin"; in fact, he provided them to Ukrainians, not Russians.
  • Crowdstrike, the firm hired by the DNC, claimed they had evidence that Russian federation hacked Ukrainian artillery apps; they then retracted it.
  • Bloomberg and the WSJ reported Mueller subpoenaed Deustche Banking concern for Trump's financial records; the NYT said that never happened.
  • Rachel Maddow devoted 20 minutes at the start of her show to very melodramatically challenge a highly sophisticated party tried to fob her by sending her a simulated Top Secret document modeled after the i published by the Intercept, and said information technology could only accept come from the U.Southward. Government (or the Intercept) since the person obtained the certificatebefore information technology was published past usa and thus must accept had special access to it; in fact, Maddow and NBC completely misread the metadata on the document; the imitation sent to Maddow was createdafter we published the document, and was sent to her by a random fellow member of the public who took the document from the Intercept's site and doctored information technology to encounter if she'd fall for an obvious scam. Maddow's entire timeline, on which her whole melodramatic conspiracy theory rested, was fictitious.
  • The U.S. media and Democrats spent six months claiming that all "17 intelligence agencies" agreed Russia was behind the hacks; the NYT finally retracted that in June, 2017: "The assessment was made by four intelligence agencies — the Office of the Managing director of National Intelligence, the Fundamental Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Bureau. The assessment was non approved by all 17 organizations in the American intelligence community."
  • AP claimed on February 2, 2018, that the Free Beacon commissioned the Steele Dossier; they thereafter best-selling that was false and noted, instead: "Though the former spy, Christopher Steele, was hired past a firm that was initially funded by the Washington Gratis Beacon, he did non begin work on the project until later Autonomous groups had begun funding it."
  • The national media have offered multiple, conflicting accounts of how and why the FBI investigation into Trump/Russia began.
  • Widespread government and media claims that accused Russian agent Maria Butina offered "sexual activity for favors" were totally false (and scurrilous).
  • After a Russian regional jet crashed on February 11, 2018, shortly after information technology took off from Moscow, killing all 71 people aboard, Harvard Law Professor and frequent MSNBC contributor Laurence Tribe strongly implied Putin purposely caused the plane to get down in order to murder Sergei Millian, a person vaguely linked to George Papadopoulos and Jared Kushner; in fact, Millian was non on the plane nor, to appointment, has anyone claimed they had any evidence that Putin ordered his ain country's noncombatant passenger jet brought downwardly.

Special mention:

As I've said many times, the U.S. media has become quite skillful at expressing extreme indignation when people criticize them; when politicians conclude that it is advantageous to turn the U.Southward. media into their main adversary; and when people turn to "faux news" sites.

If, even so, they were willing to devote just a small fraction of that free energy to examining their own comport, perchance they would develop the tools necessary to combat those bug instead of just denouncing their critics and angrily demanding that politicians and news consumers accord them the respect to which they believe they are entitled.