CNN contributor and former Republican National Committee (RNC) chief of staff Mike Shields in an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Sunday called for media who “shaded their coverage toward collusion” to be held accountable.
After Cooper attempted to do some damage control, insisting it was “a good day for Americans” that President Trump was not found guilty of collusion with Russia in its attempts to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, according to The Deadline, Shields said that it is time for media organizations to do their due diligence in making sure journalists guilty of engaging in biased coverage come clean and admit fault.
“Media organizations should go back and talk to the people that shaded their coverage toward collusion, and ask some really tough questions so that the public starts to regain their trust in the coverage,” Shields said.
“Hold people accountable for that,” he continued. “Come out and say ‘We were wrong.’ Write some editorials. Hold some journalists accountable for mistakes they made. That would earn the American people’s trust back.”
Shields later added that he thinks the U.S. is “at an inflection point for both the media and Democrats on Capitol Hill."
"If they want anyone to take them seriously moving forward, there’s got to be accountability," he said.
According to a bombshell report by the Media Research Center released on Monday, major news networks gave a whopping 2,284 minutes to the Russia collusion probe.
MRC’s Newsbusters reports,
That’s an average of roughly three minutes a night, every night, for an astonishing 791 days — a level of coverage normally associated only with a major war or a presidential election. In fact, TV reporters devoted more airtime to the Russia investigation than any of the Trump administration’s policy initiatives — immigration, tax reform, trade, North Korea, ISIS, the economy, veterans’ affairs, the opioid epidemic, to name but a few. Since his presidency began, nearly one-fifth (18.8%) of all of Trump’s evening news coverage has been about this one investigation.