Brian Stelter Addresses Botched WikiLeaks Report: ‘Obviously Caused a Black Eye For CNN’

Last week, CNN had to issue a correction to what had initially appeared to be a bombshell story about then-candidate Donald Trump and Donald Trump Jr. receiving access to hacked content from WikiLeaks before it was made publicly available. Eventually, it was revealed that the email in question was actually sent after the documents had been released to the public, leading CNN correcting its story hours later.

On this morning’s broadcast of CNN’s Reliable Sources, senior media correspondent Brian Stelter recapped the situation, noting that he asked the network if CNN’s reporters would face disciplinary action in the wake of ABC News’ Brian Ross’s suspension.

“A spokeswoman said no,” Stelter explained. “Because the reporters followed CNN’s standards process which means the sources they were using were vetted and okayed ahead of time. Now the sources have been reliable in the past. But they were not this time.”

He added that the spokesperson told him that the network had no reason to believe that the sources were being “malicious” when providing the erroneous information to the reporters but instead were just merely mistaken. However, in Stelter’s opinion, this still caused damage to the outlet.

“That mistake obviously caused a black eye for CNN,” he noted, pointing out that Trump seized on it during his Friday night rally.

He went on to lead a discussion on other major corrections that have been made in major stories related to the Russia probe.

Watch the clip above, via CNN.

[image via screengrab]

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