An early morning Tweet posted by Anthony Scaramucci, an adviser to Trump during the presidential campaign and a member of his transition team's executive committee, after CNN removed from its website, scrubbing all links from its social media accounts, a story involving an investigation of a Russian investment fund with potential ties to several associates of President Donald Trump:
@CNN did the right thing. Classy move. Apology accepted. Everyone makes mistakes. Moving on.
.@CNN did the right thing. Classy move. Apology accepted. Everyone makes mistakes. Moving on. https://t.co/lyVajCKNHx
— Anthony Scaramucci (@Scaramucci) June 24, 2017
"But by Friday night, the story was removed from CNN's website and all links were scrubbed from the network's social media accounts.
"That story did not meet CNN's editorial standards and has been retracted," CNN said in an editors note posted in place of the story. "Links to the story have been disabled."Surely that statement begs the question: If the story did not meet CNN's "editorial standards", why was it posted in the first place?" CNN's editorial standards, suspect for some time, peaked during the 2012 Obama-Romney presidential debate, when moderator Candy Crowley injected herself into the debate by real time 'fact-checking' in Obama's favor his dishonest account of the motives behind the Benghazi attack, correcting Romney's correct assertion: "For fourteen days he refused to call it an act of terror." CNN editorial standards went downhill from there, peaking in the Trump campaign/Russian collusion fiction during the 2016 presidential election campaign.
"Neither Frank or CNN immediately responded to requests for comment, and a spokesperson for the Senate Intelligence Committee wasn't available to comment. (Philly)
"Frank, a Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist, had reported that the Senate Intelligence Committee was investigating a "$10-billion Russian investment fund whose chief executive met with a member of President Donald Trump's transition team four days before Trump's inauguration." "In addition to retracting its story, CNN also apologized to Anthony Scaramucci, an adviser to Trump during the presidential campaign and a member of his transition team's executive committee, who was mentioned in the story as having met Kirill Dmitriev, the head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) that the network said is overseen by Vnesheconombank, a state-run bank that is currently under U.S. sanctions. "According to the report, the meeting between Scararmucci and Dmitriev could have included the issue of sanctions being lifted, but a spokesperson for the RDIF told Sputnik News, a state-run Russian news channel, that the fund is not a part of Vnesheconombank. "RDIF always operates in full compliance with relevant regulations and legislation and its operations do not violate sanctions," the spokesperson said. "Multiple news outlets have reported on the meeting, which took place at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland just four days before Trump's inauguration. As Bloomberg noted, it was "the first public contact between the incoming administration and Kremlin-backed business."
"CNN's retraction comes about a month after Fox News was also forced to pull a potentially explosive political story involving the death of former Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich. "Rich was shot to death in Washington, D.C., on the morning of July 10, 2016. Local police said the crime was likely a botched robbery, but that hasn't stopped figures like Sean Hannity and former Republican House speaker Newt Gingrich from suggesting Rich was murdered for leaking DNC emails to Wikileaks."Who are CNN to ridicule the efforts of Hannity and Gingrich from trying to get to the bottom of Seth Rich's death? The network should be apologizing to the American population who voted for President Trump, not just to the guy the media dubbed as "Mooch".
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Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years’ experience in the print media. A former Toronto Sun columnist, she also worked for the Kingston Whig Standard. Her work has appeared on Rush Limbaugh, Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com.
