Media top headlines May 4
Gov. Andrew Cuomo's warning that unvaccinated people could kill their grandma's and more round out today's top media headlines.
MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace was on the receiving end of intense criticism Monday for perpetuating the lie that Rudy Giuliani received an FBI briefing notifying him that he was the target of a Russian disinformation campaign.
The former Republican strategist was slammed by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald following the retractions by various major news outlets of their false reporting that Giuliani received the briefing.
"As usual, the MSNBC program of Nicolle Wallace — who has magically transformed from a disinformation agent for the Bush/Cheney White House into an identical disinformation agent but now for the DNC — was one of the leaders in spreading this lie," Greenwald wrote in his Monday newsletter, which gave a scathing rebuke to "corporate news outlets" for spreading the false story.
After the initial false report that Giuliani received the briefing, Wallace continuously promoted the story on her Friday broadcast of "Deadline: White House," with multiple guests assisting her in pushing the narrative.
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She even credited one guest, former FBI special agent, and regular MSNBC contributor, Clint Watts with sharing "excess amounts of wisdom" after he also innacurately speculated as to when and why Giuliani "probably" received the briefing.
The retractions of the story were issued Saturday by The New York Times, The Washington Post, and NBC News, however Wallace waited until her Monday broadcast to briefly mention the corrections, despite the extent of her previous coverage. Her show also issued a correction from its Twitter account.
Greenwald addressed the retractions in a thread on Twitter, and specifically called out Wallace, as well as Watts, for feeding the audience "absolute falsehoods."
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"This is all par for the course. But in this case, dozens of journalists for NBC News, MSNBC, CNN and The Washington Post — the very outlets that purported to "confirm" the false story — as well as activists and scholars who purport to combat "disinformation," spread it all over Twitter and, days later, have left it up, even knowing the story is false, while not even telling their followers that the story was false and has been retracted," Greenwald continued in his newsletter, including a video clip of Watts on Wallace's show discussing the FBI briefing that never happened.