Unmasked. Tim Graham

      Yet the New York Times refused to withdraw its claim, noting in its write-up only that “Mr. Comey did not say exactly what he believed was incorrect about the article” and that the paper’s anonymous sources still stood by their claims. “The original sources could not immediately be reached after Mr. Comey’s remarks, but in the months since the article was published, they have indicated that they believed the account was solid.”

      This from the newspaper whose commercials during the 2017 Oscars insisted “The truth is more important than ever.”

      • CNN published an early-morning story claiming that Trump, his son Donald Trump Jr., and other Trump employees received an e-mail containing a “decryption key and website address for hacked WikiLeaks documents” on September 4, 2016, nine days before they were publicly revealed on September 13.

      If true, that would demonstrate a secret collusion between the campaign and WikiLeaks. Ooooops. Actually, the e-mail was dated ten days later, September 14, after the information was made available publicly.

      But this was exposed only after CNN spent most of a day proudly touting a “BREAKING NEWS” banner and “CNN Exclusive” that claimed, “Emails Reveal Effort to Give Trump Campaign Wikileaks Documents.” CNN had to announce an on-air correction but insisted that the cooks of this half-baked story had “followed the editorial standards process.” Some process.

      • Bloomberg News claimed that Special Counsel Robert Mueller had “issued a subpoena” to Deutsche Bank that “zeroed in” on President Trump personally. Their explosive headline: “Mueller Subpoenas Trump’s Deutsche Bank Records, Source Says.” After a cable-news frenzy over the mere thought of Mueller reaching into Trump’s personal finances, Bloomberg had to backpedal, as the request was apparently not for the President’s personal records but more vaguely for “documents and data related to people or entities affiliated with Trump.”

      • NBC News national correspondent Peter Alexander sent the media into a frenzy when he tweeted “BREAKING” news that the U.S. Treasury Department had announced it would, in his words, “allow some companies to do transactions with Russia’s FSB, aka fmr [sic] KGB.” Alexander then phoned in to MSNBC, where the screaming headline claimed that the new administration was “easing U.S. sanctions on Russia.”

      Except that the sanctions weren’t being eased. It was only a “technical fix, planned under Obama, to avoid any unintended consequences of cybersanctions,” as an embarrassed Alexander noted in a follow-up tweet later in the day.

      • Several media outlets made the outrageous claim that the “evidence” for Russian meddling in the election was the unanimous verdict of U.S. intelligence. “All 17 intelligence agencies have agreed Russia was behind the hack of Democratic email systems and tried to influence the 2016 election to benefit Trump,” claimed one Associated Press report. That “17 intelligence agencies” line was repeated ad nauseam.

      The AP and the New York Times eventually were forced to backpedal on those exaggerated claims, admitting that only three agencies (FBI, CIA, and NSA) had reviewed the intelligence, which was then issued by a fourth, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. AP issued a correction that it had spread a false number in four separate articles: “Not all 17 intelligence agencies were involved in reaching the assessment.” Interesting math, that. Less than one-quarter equals “not all.”

      Trump eventually left it to the Republican National Committee to post his list of the most flagrant fiascoes. They had plenty more to add to the bonfire of fake news:

      • Time reporter Zeke Miller falsely tweeted that a bust of Martin Luther King Jr. had been removed from the Oval Office. It turns out Miller’s view had been obscured by a door and a Secret Service agent. Nor did he ever bother to confirm the alleged absence of the MLK bust with anyone in the Trump administration. It was apparently “too good to check.” Miller quickly apologized and said it shouldn’t reflect on the magazine. Which of course it should.

      • Washington Post political scribe Dave Weigel tweeted out a picture of an empty theater, mocking a rally in Pensacola as “packed to the rafters,” but the picture was taken hours before the crowd arrived. He deleted it and apologized and said it shouldn’t reflect on his newspaper. Which of course it did.

      • Newsweek wrongly reported that Polish First Lady Agata Kornhauser-Duda did not shake President Trump’s hand in Warsaw despite videotaped evidence to the contrary. They opted for this all-caps blaring headline: “WATCH DONALD TRUMP HANDSHAKE REJECTED BY POLISH FIRST LADY IN HILARIOUSLY AWKWARD EXCHANGE.” The story began, “On Thursday, the world was once again blessed with an unusual, albeit hilarious, apparent slight, this time involving Trump and the first lady of Poland.” There was no snub. The Polish first lady had passed by the president to shake hands with the American first lady—and then came right back to Trump.

      • CNN deceptively edited a video to make it appear that President Trump bumbled into overfeeding fish during a visit with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. “Trump Feeds Fish, Winds Up Pouring the Entire Box of Food into a Koi Pond,” one CNN headline read, as if he had dumped it out of cultural ignorance. In the original video put out by CNN’s Twitter account, the camera zoomed in tight on the President while he threw food to the fish with a spoon before he dumped his whole box into the water. What wasn’t in CNN’s video? The Japanese leader dumping his box of fish food first, before Trump followed.

      Some of these “scoops” were tiny thimbles on a scale of newsworthiness but still were intended to keep the tone of Trump’s news as negative as possible. Anywhere. Any time. And any way.