This was the highest-profile fuck up by a news organization in 2019. They didn't merely publish propaganda or disinformation: they published fraudulent news of the highest consequence, so bad that the Special Counsel had to issue an emergency statement to prevent all hell from breaking loose.
Buzzfeed later wrote an explanation of their reporting[1].
It's interesting - Buzzfeed's claim is:
The facts of Cohen’s lies and his interactions with Trump are, largely, now settled. Our sources — federal law enforcement officials — interpreted the evidence Cohen presented as meaning that the president “directed” Cohen to lie. We now know that Mueller did not.
The Mueller denial of the Buzzfeed reporting is very limited:
"BuzzFeed's description of specific statements to the Special Counsel's Office, and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Michael Cohen's Congressional testimony are not accurate,” Robert Mueller’s spokesman, Peter Carr, said.
This was prior the Mueller report being released.
We now know Mueller report says: "While working on the
congressional statement, Cohen had extensive discussions with the President's personal counsel, who, according to Cohen, said that Cohen should not contradict the President" and "Cohen also discussed pardons with the President?s personal counsel and believed that if he stayed on message, he would get a pardon or the President would do "something else" to make the investigation end.[2]
The dispute seems mostly around the term "directed", and if it was directly by Trump or by his legal team. Both Mueller and Buzzfeed's sources agree that Trump and his legal team knew in advance that Cohen's congressional testimony contained lies.
The Buzzfeed reporting was based on an official's notes that said “he was asked to lie by DJT/DJT Jr., lawyers.”
Politfact agrees it is open to interpretation.[3]
In any case, it seems calling it "fraudulent" is going too far. It seems like there is broad agreement that Trump didn't use the words "Please lie", but he did imply that is what he wanted and that Cohen would be rewarded if he did, and Trump's legal team approved the statements that they knew included lies.
I'm going to do a HN taboo here and talk about voting. I realise this is an emotive subject and people have their predefined views. I'd ask people not to just vote on if they like Buzzfeed or not, and if they support Trump or not and instead consider if any of the things here have information they didn't know before. I believe that the answer to misinformation is information and I've tried to gather as much relevant information as possible here, and present both sides in as clear way as possible.
