While the mainstream press, including The New York Times and The Washington Post, has generally done an outstanding job exposing the steady stream of lies coming out of the White House as well as reporting both on Russian interference with the last presidential election and Robert Mueller’s investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia in such interference, it has, in at least one respect, let the public down. Notwithstanding the recent statement of Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger that “[we] will continue to infuse our journalism with expertise by having lawyers cover law,” his paper and other media outlets continue to have non-lawyers reporting on legal matters and to make significant mistakes when they do. Two recent examples illustrate the point.
On January 16, in an article entitled “Bannon Is Subpoenaed in Mueller’s Russia Investigation,” the Times reported that “[p]rosecutors generally prefer to interview witnesses before a grand jury when they believe they have information that the witnesses do not know or when they think they might catch the witnesses in a lie.” In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.
