Three CNN journalists have resigned following the retraction
of an article that claimed the US Congress was investigating links between
members of Donald Trump’s administration and a Russian investment fund.
The US president seized on the incident to renew his
repeated attacks on the cable network as a purveyor of “fake news.” Thomas
Frank, the author of the article, editor Eric Lichtblau and Lex Haris, who
headed the newly-created investigative unit that produced the story have all
quit.
The article was posted on CNN’s website on Thursday before
being pulled on Friday. It was not picked up or mentioned on air by the
network.
Trump, who has singled out the channel for criticism since the 2016
election campaign, was quick to react.
“Fake News CNN is looking at big management changes now that
they got caught falsely pushing their phony Russian stories. Ratings way down!”
he tweeted Tuesday morning.
“So they caught Fake News CNN cold, but what about NBC, CBS
& ABC? What about the failing @nytimes & @washingtonpost? They are all
Fake News!” he wrote.
The CNN report had claimed the Senate Intelligence Committee
was investigating ties between the Trump administration and an investment fund
controlled by Russian bank VEB, which has been subject to sanctions by the
United States and Europe since the 2014 annexation of Crimea by Russia.
Citing an anonymous source, the report said the US Treasury
Department was believed to be investigating Anthony Scaramucci, a businessman
and member of the Trump transition team, said to have met the director general
of the fund on January 16.
According to CNN’s media correspondent Brian Stelter
investigative unit members were told in a meeting Monday that the retraction
did not mean the facts of the story were necessarily wrong. Rather, it meant
that “the story wasn’t solid enough to publish as-is.”
All three journalists were highly respected and their
resignations were said to have come as a surprise to their colleagues.
Lichtblau, a New York Times veteran, won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize in
2006.
The development is a blow for CNN, which announced at the
start of the year the creation of a new investigation unit in order to compete
with the New York Times and Washington Post, as well as Politico and the Wall
Street Journal which have beefed up their investigative teams to cover the new
Trump administration.
0 comments:
Post a Comment