The fact that the news organizations are working in tandem on narratives blows up in their hands.

It was another example of an important news outlet having to retract a major news story, as Bonchie reported yesterday, when The Washington Post had to retract its prior claim that both Rudy Giuliani and the news network One America News had been informed by the FBI that they had part of a Russian disinformation campaign. “This version has been corrected to remove assertions that OAN and Giuliani received the warnings,” the outlet says in part of its retraction.

This was clearly a coordinated hit being made by WaPost, evidenced by the timing; the initial report was made midweek to land in busy news cycles, while the correction is made in the weekend lull of low news consumption. Now, there have been follow-up retractions seen, one coming from the New York Times, and a second being made by NBC News. These are deeply revealing, because both outlets are not dismissing their culpability by saying their position was based on the WaPost report.

Both The Times and NBC have to walk back their claims of independently corroborating the report with their own sourcing and investigation. This exposes the game being played with more frequency in the press, as major outlets gather up in tandem being a breaking story and provide what are claimed to be independently verified versions of the same account, when the probability is they are operating off of the same source(s). This is not corroboration, it is coordination, which leads instead to a collective version of Wiley E. Coyote bombs exploding in their faces.

The Times had to admit, “An earlier version of this article misstated whether Rudolph W. Giuliani received a formal warning from the F.B.I. about Russian disinformation. Mr. Giuliani did not receive such a so-called defensive briefing.” 

As for NBC, they too had to tuck a tail under their hindquarters, saying their report, “was based on a source familiar with the matter, but a second source now says the briefing was only prepared for Giuliani and not delivered to him, in part over concerns it might complicate the criminal investigation of Giuliani.”

To get a sense of just how significant this fraudulent effort becomes, we rely on none other than Brian Stelter. CNN’s media analyst is always reticent to be overly critical of major news outlets engaging in false information. If it is not Fox News delivering fake news then he is more apt to either play defense, or not acknowledge the issue at all. For him to note this media malpractice means it is too big of a problem for even him to ignore.

The @washingtonpost, the @nytimes, and @nbcnews have issued "significant corrections, retracting earlier reporting that said Rudy Giuliani had been directly warned by the FBI that he was the target of a Russian disinformation campaign," @oliverdarcy writes https://t.co/7zeYWnVl4t

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) May 2, 2021

This has become the methodology seen from the news leaders over the past year, where multiple outlets claim to have separately verified a story. Recall when The Atlantic came out during the campaign with the story of the president allegedly calling dead soldiers ‘’losers’’ during a European trip. A number of sources backed up this bogus story with shameful results. In January The WaPost again looked ridiculous when it was exposed to have lied about Trump’s phone call to Georgia election officials. CNN also had to backtrack from the story, as they claimed to have also corroborated the falsified claims.

This is not a case of a lone outlet making a “mistake”, and rectifying an error later, with follow up stories from others correcting the record. Each case of these outlets altering their story is a major retraction, as they all claimed to have done the work and nailed down the facts on the story — and all are now exposed for having engaged in a coordination to push out a false story, bolstering the “facts” by lending their names behind the story. 

This is not a major news retraction — it is numerous major retractions. It is also exposing the desire to push false narratives through a game plan from which they all work. We are looking at a classic case of the press manufacturing a news story across numerous outlets.