Carl Bernstein Defends Media’s Russia Coverage: ‘One Of the Great Reporting Jobs’ In History

Carl Bernstein defended the media’s coverage of the investigation into whether President Donald Trump colluded with Russia during the 2016 election, before the results of the probe were revealed.

Hours after Bernstein made his comments on CNN Sunday, Attorney General William Barr said the special counsel did not find evidence Trump of his campaign colluded with Russia.

“40 percent, 45 percent of the most intense Trump supporters would say that we have been terrible and then I think the rest of probably of the majority would say we’ve done a good job of it,” Bernstein told Brian Stelter on Reliable Sources. “I think the media, the press has done one of the great reporting jobs in the history especially covering a presidency by the most news organizations. Look, let’s look where the disinformation and mistakes and lying have come from. It hasn’t come from the press, it has come from the president of the United States.”

“If it turns out that there was a lot of smoke, but no fire is that a failure on the press to focus so much on the smoke,” Stelter asked.

“First of all I think there has been plenty of fire regardless of whether or not there’s a finding, of whether or not Donald Trump is guilty of a crime and remember, under the Justice Department guidelines he cannot be found guilty while in office. So that’s why we need these underlying facts,” Bernstein replied.

“First of all there has been such fabulous reporting by, especially The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal. In cable there has been great reporter reporting,” he later added.

Watch above, via CNN.