This dramatic story puts the news media in a jackpot. Absent independent verification, reporters will have to rely upon the secret assessments of intelligence agencies to cover the story at all.
Many reporters I know are quietly freaking out...
Adding to the problem is that in the last months of the campaign, and also in the time since the election, we've seen an epidemic of factually loose, clearly politically motivated reporting about Russia. Democrat-leaning pundits have been unnervingly quick
to use phrases like "Russia hacked the election."
Then there was the episode in which the Washington Post ran that
breathless story about Russians aiding the spread of "fake news." That irresponsible story... largely based on one highly dubious source...
There have been other excesses. An interview with Julian Assange by an Italian newspaper
has been bastardized in Western re-writes...
And reports by some Democrat-friendly reporters – like Kurt Eichenwald, who has birthed some real head-scratchers this year, including what he admitted was a
baseless claim that Trump spent time in an institution in 1990 – have attempted to argue that
Trump surrogates may have been liaising with the Russians... has been based entirely on unnamed security sources.
Now we have this sanctions story, which presents a new conundrum... a large segment of the press is biting hard on the core allegations... emanating from the Obama administration.
But this could also just be a cynical ass-covering campaign, by a Democratic Party that has seemed keen to deflect attention from its own electoral failures.
