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Opinion | Departed CNN staffer Eric Lichtblau: ‘I’m as baffled as anyone by this strange turn of events’
By Erik Wemple Media critic July 6, 2017
In late June, CNN announced that three top editorial staffers had resigned over a story regarding a President Trump ally — Anthony Scaramucci — that the network had retracted. The news stunned newsies. “Journalists deserve reprimands, time-outs and maybe even a few hours in the pillory for honest work gone wrong. But it’s a mistake for readers to overstigmatize all errors and sideline the responsible reporters,” wrote Politico’s Jack Shafer, who nodded to Craig Silverman’s work on journalistic consequences.
The CNN trio — Thomas Frank, Eric Lichtblau and Lex Haris — have remained pretty quiet since their departure, perhaps because of exit negotiations or an agreement with CNN. In a July 3 Facebook post, however, Lichtblau opened up just a touch about the experience. “I can’t discuss the details of the situation, unfortunately, but just know that I’m as baffled as anyone by this strange turn of events,” wrote Lichtblau, who moved to CNN from the New York Times earlier this year. Such bafflement squares with accounts of the incident; CNN executives said that the harsh outcome was the result of internal procedures and guidelines that went unheeded. Though they cited “concern” about the integrity of the story itself, they never came forth with an accounting of its shortcomings.
Lichtblau continued: “It was a short run for me at CNN — much shorter than I’d intended, to be sure — but we did some really good stories in my time there, with more pieces in the works that I hope to see soon. I got to work on the tail end of Scott Glover’s phenomenal ISIS bride story. And I got to sit next to Wolf Blitzer (a true gentleman) as he announced he had ‘Breaking News from Eric Lichtblau,’ on an important exclusive about Jim Comey’s upcoming testimony against President Trump. As Kurt Vonnegut might have said in this situation: ‘So it goes.’ ”
Lichtblau was a key reporter in a multiple-byline story alleging that Comey would refute a Trump allegation during his then-upcoming Senate testimony. The story was wrong.
More:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2017/07/06/departed-cnn-staffer-eric-lichtblau-im-as-baffled-as-anyone-by-this-strange-turn-of-events/