I disagree that Berliner explained exactly what NPR did wrong with its reporting via Russiagate or Hunter Biden's Laptop. For one, is he stating that the media shouldn't have been reporting about an active special counsel's investigation of a sitting US POTUS at the time? Let alone that particular POTUS kept the story almost daily in the…
I disagree that Berliner explained exactly what NPR did wrong with its reporting via Russiagate or Hunter Biden's Laptop. For one, is he stating that the media shouldn't have been reporting about an active special counsel's investigation of a sitting US POTUS at the time? Let alone that particular POTUS kept the story almost daily in the news cycle because it was his Tweets and public statements attacking the investigation that provided almost all of the daily news cycle fodder on this story than anything coming from Mueller's team, which was decidedly tight lipped during. Second, it's not clear that Schiff's alluded to evidence doesn't exist, - after all there has yet to be a House led investigation into "Russiagate" - but the Senate Intelligence Committee's investigation revealed even more than Mueller's Report did, and actually did connect more dots directly to Trump than Mueller did, so perhaps that's what Schiff was alluding to if he had access to the same intel, which is not unreasonable to assume he did given his position.
Regardless, the "real failure" (IMO) was the media's apparent unanimous lack of curiosity to actually parse the details of the Mueller Report beyond the summary conclusion and suggested indictment count on anything "Russia related" (we keep "forgetting" the Obstruction of Justice charge recommendations made though!) - notably with the inability to discern "lack of evidence of a criminal conspiracy (which Mueller clearly stated was at least partially due to witness lying, tampering and destruction of evidence") as "total exoneration" against the colloquial and non-legal term of "collusion", of which Mueller's Report detailed quite a bit of, but which the media had lazily conflated the two terms for the year long investigation leading up to, and continued that lazy conflation with the actual report findings - and maybe it's my "bias", but my biggest frustration of the post-Mueller media reporting bent was of the former being predominantly reported as the conclusion, and not the latter, as in "No criminal conspiracy = No collusion" - sorry, that just wasn't the actual findings which is more accurately summed up as "not enough evidence to prove a criminal conspiracy, which btw was not in a small way due to witnesses lying and destroying evidence, but plenty of evidence of plain ole' collusion, and maybe we should consider non-criminal routes to assess a sitting POTUS who engaged in such collusion and lied about it repeatedly to the public and hid it from national security authorities". I guess that doesn't fit on a headline or in the 5 minute nightly news round up of the story though.
IMO, the post-Mueller reporting was super favorable to Trump's propaganda that he was a victim of a "rigged prosecution" etc because a large segment of the media lost interest in the details of the report when there wasn't a big headliner about criminal charges and salacious dealings to report on instead of having to dig through hundreds of pages of reporting and summarize what still remains to be *at best* pretty questionable practices of the Trump Campaign - *at best*, the Trump Campaign was aware of Russian attempts to interfere in our election and they lied about it to the public. Recall Trump's "supposition" that the DNC was hacked by a "400 pound fat guy in a basement" or "Chy-nuh" - the Senate Intelligence Committee report as well as the Roger Stone trial revealed Trump was very much involved in Stone's activities with Wikileaks and the timing and coordination, "collusion", shall we say, of the hacked data with his campaigning - and declined to report what they did know to authorities at the time (that the DNC was hacked by Russian operatives and distributed to Wikileaks to "launder the sources" and the Trump Campaign was aware of it all at every step). It's hard to look at any of that and conclude that Trump was unfairly set up by "The Media", much less any other agency - and while I am a Free Press subscriber, this default to coddle a right wing preferred view of these matters as part of their "jihad" against the mainstream media is getting very, very annoying and stale - but more seriously than my annoyance is the fact that supposed "centrist" outlets, like, say, "The Free Press", which is operated by "heterodox liberals", who however are coded as "liberals" entirely to their right leaning audience, are also laundering Trump's dirty drawers with this capitulation on these stories and disinterest in parsing the details with more nuance and critique towards Trump as should be warranted. It's giving him a free pass on yet another total lie and deception to his supporters, and it gets his lies and deceptions even more validated because now it's coming from supposed "liberals" who are "telling the truth about liberal media" and not just from right wing pro-Trump outlets.
Berliner wasn't suggesting there shouldn't have been reporting of the Russia collusion investigation, of course. He was saying what he actually said: NPR repeatedly let Schiff claim without challenge that there was evidence of collusion that, it turned out, didn't exist. And when that emerged, NPR didn't proportionately publicize that and apologize as it should have, in his view.
It's clear Schiff's evidence doesn't exist in the sense that he didn't have any evidence himself for what he said. He changed his tune after the Mueller Report came out. No one including the Senate has found clear evidence of collusion.
The rest of what you say about the coverage of the Mueller Report doesn't affect Berliner's arguments. He might well agree that it wasn't as well covered as it should have been in other ways. His references to Trump aren't in any way to defend Trump or portray him as a victim of media but to explain how the response to him changed NPR.
I disagree that Berliner explained exactly what NPR did wrong with its reporting via Russiagate or Hunter Biden's Laptop. For one, is he stating that the media shouldn't have been reporting about an active special counsel's investigation of a sitting US POTUS at the time? Let alone that particular POTUS kept the story almost daily in the news cycle because it was his Tweets and public statements attacking the investigation that provided almost all of the daily news cycle fodder on this story than anything coming from Mueller's team, which was decidedly tight lipped during. Second, it's not clear that Schiff's alluded to evidence doesn't exist, - after all there has yet to be a House led investigation into "Russiagate" - but the Senate Intelligence Committee's investigation revealed even more than Mueller's Report did, and actually did connect more dots directly to Trump than Mueller did, so perhaps that's what Schiff was alluding to if he had access to the same intel, which is not unreasonable to assume he did given his position.
Regardless, the "real failure" (IMO) was the media's apparent unanimous lack of curiosity to actually parse the details of the Mueller Report beyond the summary conclusion and suggested indictment count on anything "Russia related" (we keep "forgetting" the Obstruction of Justice charge recommendations made though!) - notably with the inability to discern "lack of evidence of a criminal conspiracy (which Mueller clearly stated was at least partially due to witness lying, tampering and destruction of evidence") as "total exoneration" against the colloquial and non-legal term of "collusion", of which Mueller's Report detailed quite a bit of, but which the media had lazily conflated the two terms for the year long investigation leading up to, and continued that lazy conflation with the actual report findings - and maybe it's my "bias", but my biggest frustration of the post-Mueller media reporting bent was of the former being predominantly reported as the conclusion, and not the latter, as in "No criminal conspiracy = No collusion" - sorry, that just wasn't the actual findings which is more accurately summed up as "not enough evidence to prove a criminal conspiracy, which btw was not in a small way due to witnesses lying and destroying evidence, but plenty of evidence of plain ole' collusion, and maybe we should consider non-criminal routes to assess a sitting POTUS who engaged in such collusion and lied about it repeatedly to the public and hid it from national security authorities". I guess that doesn't fit on a headline or in the 5 minute nightly news round up of the story though.
IMO, the post-Mueller reporting was super favorable to Trump's propaganda that he was a victim of a "rigged prosecution" etc because a large segment of the media lost interest in the details of the report when there wasn't a big headliner about criminal charges and salacious dealings to report on instead of having to dig through hundreds of pages of reporting and summarize what still remains to be *at best* pretty questionable practices of the Trump Campaign - *at best*, the Trump Campaign was aware of Russian attempts to interfere in our election and they lied about it to the public. Recall Trump's "supposition" that the DNC was hacked by a "400 pound fat guy in a basement" or "Chy-nuh" - the Senate Intelligence Committee report as well as the Roger Stone trial revealed Trump was very much involved in Stone's activities with Wikileaks and the timing and coordination, "collusion", shall we say, of the hacked data with his campaigning - and declined to report what they did know to authorities at the time (that the DNC was hacked by Russian operatives and distributed to Wikileaks to "launder the sources" and the Trump Campaign was aware of it all at every step). It's hard to look at any of that and conclude that Trump was unfairly set up by "The Media", much less any other agency - and while I am a Free Press subscriber, this default to coddle a right wing preferred view of these matters as part of their "jihad" against the mainstream media is getting very, very annoying and stale - but more seriously than my annoyance is the fact that supposed "centrist" outlets, like, say, "The Free Press", which is operated by "heterodox liberals", who however are coded as "liberals" entirely to their right leaning audience, are also laundering Trump's dirty drawers with this capitulation on these stories and disinterest in parsing the details with more nuance and critique towards Trump as should be warranted. It's giving him a free pass on yet another total lie and deception to his supporters, and it gets his lies and deceptions even more validated because now it's coming from supposed "liberals" who are "telling the truth about liberal media" and not just from right wing pro-Trump outlets.
Berliner wasn't suggesting there shouldn't have been reporting of the Russia collusion investigation, of course. He was saying what he actually said: NPR repeatedly let Schiff claim without challenge that there was evidence of collusion that, it turned out, didn't exist. And when that emerged, NPR didn't proportionately publicize that and apologize as it should have, in his view.
It's clear Schiff's evidence doesn't exist in the sense that he didn't have any evidence himself for what he said. He changed his tune after the Mueller Report came out. No one including the Senate has found clear evidence of collusion.
The rest of what you say about the coverage of the Mueller Report doesn't affect Berliner's arguments. He might well agree that it wasn't as well covered as it should have been in other ways. His references to Trump aren't in any way to defend Trump or portray him as a victim of media but to explain how the response to him changed NPR.