CNN Is Just The Latest News Outlet To Prove Deliberate Lying Is Not
An Impediment to Employment
Former Trump DHS official, now CNN analyst, Miles Taylor got caught
blatantly lying on CNN's airwaves to host Anderson Cooper, but The Most
Trusted Name In NewsT doesn't mind at all.
Glenn Greenwald
Nov 2
Former Trump DHS official and current CNN contributor Miles Taylor lies,
live on air, to CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, Aug. 2020.
________________________________________
In September, 2018, The New York Times published an op-ed that became an
instant media sensation. The content of the opinion piece was unremarkable:
banal anti-Trump agitprop. Noting "the president's amorality," the author
wrote that Trump "is not moored to any discernible first principles that
guide his decision making" and his "impulses are generally anti-trade and
anti-democratic" - no different than what one reads virtually every day from
that paper's small army of relentlessly on-script anti-Trump columnists or
that one hears daily on panels assembled by MSNBC or CNN.
But what triggered so much media attention was that the author of the
anti-Trump denunciation was "a senior official in the Trump administration"
who claimed that he and other like-minded dissidents were "resisting" and
"thwarting" the elected president from inside the government. Moreover, the
New York Times took the extraordinary step of granting anonymity to the
author. All of that created an exciting parlor game in which media and
political insiders attempted to guess the mysterious author's identity.
Meanwhile, liberals swooned so ecstatically over the dramatic prospect of a
stalwart band of unelected anti-Trump officials subverting the president
from the inside as they waved the #Resistance banner that, in just over a
year, this self-glorifying coward released a book, entitled "A Warning -
Anonymous," that instantly shot to the top of The New York Times Bestseller
list. Anonymous had not only generated media buzz with his melodramatic
declaration of membership in a subversive #Resistance but also pocketed
quite a tidy profit for himself.
On Thursday, thanks to a statement released by Anonymous to CNN, we finally
learned his identity. He is Miles Taylor, the 33-year-old former chief of
staff to Trump's Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.
Taylor is now a CNN Contributor, having been hired by the network in
September just weeks after he became the first former Trump official to
endorse Joe Biden, the act which - right behind being a former agent of the
national security state - most increases one's chances of being hired by
CNN.
What made this revelation rather awkward was that Taylor, by outing himself,
was admitting that he had blatantly and deliberately lied to CNN, while live
on its airwaves.
In August, just weeks before being hired by the network, CNN anchor Anderson
Cooper directly asked Taylor if he was aware of the identity of Anonymous.
"I'm not," Taylor falsely replied, slyly adding: "I have my own thoughts as
to who that might be." Cooper, evidently not believing his denial, then
asked him: "You're not Anonymous?" Taylor lied again, this time with a
smirk: "I wear a mask for two things, Anderson: Halloweens [sic] and
pandemics. So, no."
So here we have a case of a major news network - one that bill itself as
"The Most Trusted Name in News" and whose anchors routinely sermonize about
the severe dangers of falsehoods being spread by other news outlets -
discovering that one of its analysts whom it pays to disseminate the news to
the public knowingly lied about a major political event just three months
ago. One would assume that the network would promptly fire this commentator
on the ground that a media outlet cannot possibly sustain credibility with
the public if it employs a known liar.
One would be wrong. CNN's report on Taylor's outing himself as Anonymous
casually noted in passing that Taylor "had previously denied that he was
'Anonymous.'" In response to a Washington Post inquiry about whether the
network would take action against him for lying, "CNN spokeswoman Lauren
Pratapas offered a terse statement: 'Miles Taylor will remain a CNN
contributor.'" Even after CNN anchor Chris Cuomo told Taylor on the air that
"now you are a liar, and people will be slow to believe you when you lied,"
CNN continued to insist that Taylor would remain on its payroll and, making
good on its bizarre vow, promptly put him on the air after that.
How could CNN offer any clearer statement of its journalistic ethics? Even
if you lie - unequivocally and deliberately - about a major event, and even
if you do so on their own airwaves, you are still welcome at CNN to help
deliver the news. As The Washington Post's media reporter Paul Farhi put it:
"Miles Taylor, a paid CNN contributor, admits that he lied - while on CNN.
CNN doesn't seem to have a problem with that."
________________________________________
That CNN is willing to hire and employ known liars is not news. This is not
the first time they have demonstrated that. One of the immediate effects of
our reporting on the Snowden archive back with The Guardian back in 2013 -
beginning with our revelation that the National Security Agency was
collecting the telephone records of all American citizens - was it proved
that President Obama's most senior national security official, Director of
Intelligence James Clapper, had lied to Congress, which happens to be a
felony.
In March of that year, Clapper appeared for testimony before the Senate
Intelligence Committee, and was asked directly by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon):
"Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of
millions of Americans?" Clapper's now-notorious answer: "No, sir, not
wittingly." As Slate pointedly put it after its national security
correspondent, Fred Kaplan, called for Clapper's firing: "The Director of
National Intelligence lied to Congress about NSA surveillance. What else
will he lie about?"
That Clapper, like Taylor, got caught lying red-handed about a major
political question and had proven himself an untrustworthy liar, willing to
spout falsehoods when it suits him, was evidently of no concern to CNN.
Just months after his tenure with the Obama administration ended, CNN, in
2017, hired Clapper to be its national security analyst, where this known
liar has spent the last three years helping CNN report national security
news on Russiagate and related matters. In other words, Clapper - after
committing the crime of knowingly and deliberately lying to the Senate - was
not punished or even fired by the Obama administration, and then was
rewarded with a prominent and lucrative job with CNN.
CNN is not, of course, the only news outlet where lying seems to be an asset
rather than a liability. In April, 2018, a Twitter user unearthed years
worth of highly bigoted posts by weekend MSNBC host Joy Reid. While Reid
admitted to authoring some, she publicly fabricated an elaborate tale to
deny authorship of others, claiming that a dastardly hacker had somehow
traveled back in time and altered her words to make them homophobic and
hateful, and even claimed that the FBI was pursuing the hacker.
All of that was a blatant lie. Reid fabricated the whole story, to conceal
authorship of her bigoted writings and deceive people to believe a hacker
had inserted them into her defunct blog.
MSNBC did not fire Reid or even discipline her once she got caught lying to
the public. To the contrary, MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow gushed with praise
and support for her, and the network then promoted her by giving her her own
prime-time show on the network. Her program is now on just a few hours
before the one hosted by MSNBC's Brian Williams, who got repeatedly
fabricated his own false tale about having come under fire while on a
helicopter in Iraq.
What we see here is a trend that repeats itself over and over. Corporate
media outlets never tire of self-victimizing. Nobody trusts them, they
constantly complain. They are unfairly and dangerously maligned as
unreliable. People trust fake news sites before they trust these hallowed
institutions, which believe they are divinely entitled to be treated as
authoritative voices of truth.
While they are superb at tirelessly complaining amount their mistreatment,
they are very poor at looking in the mirror asking whether they bear any of
the blame for the drop in faith and credibility that the public is willing
to vest in them.
Perhaps they avoid asking that question because the answer is so
self-evident. If you lie to the public constantly, if you demonstrate to
them that you are willing to tolerate, employ and even reward liars to
deliver the news, then it is not only natural that the public will lose all
faith in your credibility. It is rational, and very well-deserved.
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