Written by a liberal
It's official: Russiagate is this generation's WMD
The Iraq war faceplant damaged the reputation of the press. Russiagate just destroyed it
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/russiagate-is-wmd-times-a-million
For those anxious to keep the dream alive, the
Times published its usual graphic of Trump-Russia “contacts,” inviting readers to keep making connections. But in a
separate piece by Peter Baker, the paper noted the Mueller news had dire consequences for the press:
It will be a reckoning for President Trump, to be sure, but also for Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, for Congress, for Democrats, for Republicans, for the news media and, yes, for the system as a whole…
This is a damning page one admission by the
Times. Despite the connect-the-dots graphic in its other story, and despite the astonishing, emotion-laden editorial the paper also ran suggesting “
We don’t need to read the Mueller report” because we
know Trump is guilty, Baker at least began the work of preparing
Times readers for a hard question: “Have journalists connected too many dots that do not really add up?”
The paper was signaling it understood there would now be questions about whether or not news outlets like itself made galactic errors by betting heavily on a
new, politicized approach, trying to be true to “history’s judgment” on top of the hard-enough job of just being true. Worse, in a brutal irony everyone should have
seen coming, the press has now handed Trump the mother of campaign issues heading into 2020.
Nothing Trump is accused of from now on by the press will be believed by huge chunks of the population, a group that (perhaps thanks to this story) is now larger than his original base. As Baker notes, a full 50.3% of respondents in
a poll conducted this month said they agree with Trump the Mueller probe is a “witch hunt.”
It's truly remarkable to see the constant freakouts from right-wingers here while they're desperately trying to insist that it's some kind of victory.
