Carl Bernstein, the famed journalist who had a hand in breaking the Watergate scandal, spoke out against president-elect Donald Trump‘s top surrogate Kellyanne Conway, referring to her as the incoming Trump administration’s “propaganda minister.”
CNN’s Anderson Cooper grilled Conway after Trump’s first press conference as president-elect this Wednesday, questioning her refusal to accept a CNN report linking members of the Trump camp to Russia. In her response, Conway tried to conflate CNN’s reporting with that of BuzzFeed‘s publishing of unverified reports alleging Russia’s possession of compromising personal information about Trump.
Conway’s refusal to distinguish between CNN’s reporting and BuzzFeed’s frustrated Bernstein, who lectured her on “what reporting is” during a CNN panel this Thursday.
“Let’s talk about what reporting is,” Bernstein said to Anderson Cooper. “It’s the best attainable version of the truth.”
“The chief intelligence officials of the United States of America saw this material, thought that it deserved investigation, thought that it ought to be brought to the attention of the president of the United States and to the president-elect,” he continued, adding that’s “the best attainable version of the truth.”
“One of the great anonymous sources of this era is Kellyanne Conway,” Bernstein said. “She does it everyday. She’s been an anonymous source for the last ten months, particularly during this campaign, when it suits her. And it’s time to talk about what we do as journalists and what propaganda ministers do.”
That is what she is—is a propaganda minister,” he said.
Bernstein then defended his colleagues’ reporting at CNN.
“We did our work,” Bernstein argued, later adding, “That is the story.”
Watch the video below:
Featured image via YouTube
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