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Master Liars – There is a reason it’s called the Clinton News Network

https://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/08/28/glenn-greenwald-cnn-dodging-serious-ethical-journalistic-questions-lanny-davis-fake-news-scandal/

by Matthew Boyle

In an explosive piece laying out the landscape of an ethical minefield through which CNN is navigating poorly, Greenwald in the headline of the story accuses CNN of lying to its audience in a piece authored by Bernstein; former Barack Obama administration official and CNN chief national security correspondent Jim Sciutto, and CNN researcher Marshall Cohen: “CNN, Credibly Accused of Lying to its Audience About a Key Claim in its Blockbuster Cohen Story, Refuses to Comment.”

As Breitbart News has reported, the entire core of the piece from July from Bernstein, Sciutto, and Cohen is entirely fake news. CNN reported, using anonymous sources, that Michael Cohen–President Trump’s former personal attorney who just pleaded guilty to a number of charges brought by the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York–was willing to testify that President Trump knew in advance of a summer 2016 meeting between several senior Trump officials and a Russian attorney with Kremlin links. Cohen’s own attorney, Lanny Davis, later undercut that narrative, publicly claiming on the record nearly a month later that it was not true. Then Davis admitted he was a source for the CNN story–and that he had provided inaccurate information to the network.

Here’s how Greenwald puts it:

Nonetheless, it’s possible that other sources did tell CNN that Cohen does have this information and intends to share it with Mueller, and that Cohen’s own lawyer is either unaware of this or is lying about it. It’s not likely, obviously, but it’s theoretically possible. Unfortunately, CNN refuses to tell us anything about what it itself said was a “blockbuster” story, so it’s impossible to know.

But there’s an entirely separate, and more significant, question about CNN’s behavior here; namely, the very specific claim they made about their sourcing for that blockbuster story. Last night, BuzzFeed reported that Davis explicitly confessed that he was one of the anonymous sources for CNN’s July 26 story, just as he was for the stories from the Washington Post and the New York Post. Last week, CNN put Davis on the air with Anderson Cooper to deny that he was the source for that CNN story – a denial Cooper did not contest – but Davis now admits he was one of CNN’s sources, if not their main source.

Yet remarkably, CNN, in its July 26 story, specificaly claimed that Davis refused to talk to CNN about the story or provide any comment whatsoever.

What’s more, Greenwald says, this means only one of two things can be true: Either Davis is lying to BuzzFeed when he claims he was the anonymous source for the CNN piece or, perhaps more likely, “CNN deliberately lied to its audience about Davis refusing to comment on the story when, in fact, Davis was one of the anonymous sources on which the CNN report depended, and CNN claimed Davis refused to comment in order to hide Davis’ identity as one of their anonymous sources.”…

Greenwald goes on to write that if CNN did, in fact, lie about Davis refusing to comment when he was an anonymous source for the piece, which appears to be the case, this is “obviously a major journalism scandal.”

Greenwald adds:

If, by contrast, Davis – who has been treated by the U.S. media as a reliable source despite decades of lying (and who leveraged that treatment to raise more than $150,000 in a GoFundMe “Truth Fund” campaign for Cohen to pay Davis) – is lying about having spoken to CNN about the July 26 report, that is also a major story.

The piece goes on to explain that despite CNN’s being the only place that can truly inform the public, the network is silent on this matter.

“Yet CNN, the only ones with the ability to inform the public about what happened here, is silent,” Greenwald writes. “This despite the incomparable importance which CNN breathlessly told its viewers the story carried.”…