CNN quickly flew into damage control after they botched a major story on Donald Trump Jr. and his alleged ties to Russia.
CNN claimed that a Wikileaks surrogate shopped stolen Democratic documents to Trump Jr. in a September 4, 2016 email, essentially giving the Trump campaign special access. However, the email — which was obtained by The Daily Caller — was clearly not sent until September 14, a full day after the documents had already been released to the general public. (RELATED: CNN Botches Major ‘Bombshell’ Alleging Contacts Between Don Jr. And WikiLeaks)
WATCH:
Video: Here’s how @MKRaju corrected his reporting on @CNNNewsroom https://t.co/zy33tA3NIa
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) December 8, 2017
Raju also corrected himself on Twitter after spending the day tweeting about Wikileaks’ Julian Assange and Trump Jr. denying the story.
CORRECTION: Email to Trump and Trump Jr. from individual offering Wikileaks documents came Sept. 14 — not Sept. 4 — as we reported earlier. Email pointed to docs Trump camp could get publicly. https://t.co/4FOdCebgQL
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) December 8, 2017
Throughout Twitter, CNN employees were clearly working overtime trying to minimize the damage of reporting a fake story.
Brian Stelter, a senior media correspondent and host of the show “Reliable Sources,” tweeted several times about the mistake.
CNN has published a CORRECTION and updated this story. Originally CNN said the email was dated Sept. 4, based on “accounts from two sources who had seen the email.” CNN now has a copy of the email, and it’s dated Sept. 14, not Sept. 4. https://t.co/EpvrB43jyU
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) December 8, 2017
Stelter said the fault was on the “multiple sources” who gave false information to Raju. The tweet does not address the fact that CNN was read the email by sources and did not obtain their own copy before running the story.
A CNN spokeswoman says there will not be disciplinary action in this case because, unlike with Brian Ross/ABC, @MKRaju followed the editorial standards process. Multiple sources provided him with incorrect info.
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) December 8, 2017
Oliver Darcy, a senior media reporter, declined to comment to a Daily Caller News Foundation reporter. He did tweet out a statement from CNN PR.
Statement from CNN PR pic.twitter.com/H7XZ8Fuzdi
— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) December 8, 2017
CNN’s @mkraju just corrected this on-air
— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) December 8, 2017
Jake Tapper, who hosts “The Lead,” retweeted Raju’s correction but did not address the error or anything to do with the Trump Jr. email on his 4 pm show.
While CNN’s communications account tweeted out the correction, they did not tweet it on their main account.
CNN’s initial reporting of the date on an email sent to members of the Trump campaign about Wikileaks documents, which was confirmed by two sources to CNN, was incorrect. We have updated our story to include the correct date, and present the proper context for the timing of email
— CNN Communications (@CNNPR) December 8, 2017