At CNN, Retracted Story Leaves an Elite Reporting Team Bruised

Late on a Monday afternoon in June, members of CNN’s elite investigations team were summoned to a fourth-floor room in the network’s glassy headquarters in Midtown Manhattan. A top CNN executive, Terence Burke, had startling news: three of their colleagues, including the team’s executive editor, were leaving the network in the wake of a retracted article about Russia and a close ally of President Trump. Effective immediately, Burke said, the team would stop publishing stories while managers reviewed what had gone wrong. It was a chilling moment for a unit that boasted Pulitzer Prize winners and superstar internet sleuths, and had been introduced at the beginning of the year as the vanguard of CNN’s original, high-impact reporting.

The retracted story and ignominious exits of three prominent journalists was an embarrassing episode for CNN, particularly at a time when there was widespread mistrust in the media and President Donald Trump was regularly attacking the press. Two months later it remains an illuminating chapter in the network’s effort to carry out the meticulous, time-consuming work of investigative journalism within the fast-paced, ratings-driven world of 24-hour cable news.