Paul Wood

Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.

But is a mea culpa required? Perhaps. Perhaps not

 Washington

REVERSE FERRET! When he edited the Sun, Kelvin MacKenzie used to throw open his office door and bellow this at the newsroom when the paper had got a story wrong. It came from the northern endurance sport of ferret-legging: a pair of razor-toothed ferrets are put down your trousers — no underwear allowed. The Sun would call the ferrets off some hapless public figure and go into full reverse without apology or explanation. If we in the media have spent the past two years getting the Trump-Russia story wrong, simply pulling a reverse ferret now would not be enough. There would have to be something more. But is a mea culpa required? Perhaps. Perhaps not. On Friday, the special counsel, Robert Mueller, handed in his report on whether the Trump campaign had colluded with Russia. The Department of Justice told reporters there would be no more indictments, of President Trump or anyone else. The Fox News presenter Sean Hannity immediately tweeted, with the same foghorn he uses on air: ‘MSNBC CONSPIRACY NETWORK LIARS FAKE NEWS CNN LIARS NY TIMES WAPO LIARS.’ That was to be expected: Hannity is Trump’s favourite journalist. But Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone — who once wrote a book about Trump called Insane Clown President — argued that Russiagate was ‘this generation’s WMD… a death-blow for the reputation of the American news media.’ The senior White House correspondent for the New York Times wrote, on the paper’s front page, that there would have to be a ‘reckoning’ for the media (among others). That’s true. There does have to be a reckoning. We should take a hard look at our reporting of Trump and Russia. But after advancing steadily on one road for so long, the shock of the moment has sent the herd squawking in the opposite direction, a crowd stampeded by a gunshot.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Written by
Paul Wood
Paul Wood was a BBC foreign correspondent for 25 years, in Belgrade, Athens, Cairo, Jerusalem, Kabul and Washington DC. He has won numerous awards, including two US Emmys for his coverage of the Syrian civil war

Topics in this article

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in