‘A Major Black Eye’: CNN’s Stelter Calls Out Washington Post, NY Times, NBC Over Giuliani Retractions

CNN’s Brian Stelter knocked the Washington Post, New York Times and NBC over their retracted stories about Rudy Giuliani following the raid on his apartment by federal investigators.

The three outlets were forced to make public corrections over the weekend after falsely reporting that the FBI warned Giuliani and One America News Network they were being targeted by a scheme to spread Russian disinformation. Stelter called it “a major black eye” on Sunday’s Reliable Sources as he broke down how the three outlets were misled by their sources and retracted their reports shortly after.

“The new story is that FBI planned to warn Rudy and OAN they might be used as Russian puppets, but they didn’t actually deliver the warning,” Stelter summed up.

Stelter was joined by CNN senior media reporter Oliver Darcy, who outlined the screening process newsrooms use when deciding whether to publish information from anonymous sources. Darcy acknowledged that these safeguards are vulnerable to “human error,” and “sometimes, sources will get something wrong.”

“In this case, that appears to be what has happened with all of these news organizations,” Darcy said. “The bottom line is there are safeguards in place, unfortunately, human error is still at play and news organizations sometimes do get burned like this.”

Stelter picked up the conversation from there, lamenting that “a bogus report of this magnitude” will allow “bad faith actors” to delegitimize the media in spite of the oversight news sources typically use to get their reporting right. Darcy also found the New York Post’s coverage interesting when they just came off their false story about Vice President Kamala Harris’ book being given to migrant children at the U.S. border.

“The bottom line is the organizations, they were responsible when they learned that they made an error,” Darcy said. “They owned up to it. They issued corrections, and outlets like the New York Post and others in MAGA media, they often do everything they can to avoid issuing corrections, to own up to their mistakes, and sometimes it seems like they are intentionally promoting falsehoods and moving on.”

Watch above, via CNN.