The media had every right to pursue Russia-Trump. But …

The launch of a federal counterintelligence investigation in summer 2016 into the Donald Trump presidential campaign and Russia had nothing to do with the media: As the New York Times reported, the “driving factors” were the hacking of the Democratic National Committee in 2016 plus a Trump campaign aide who had mouthed off about his advance knowledge of the matter. The media had no idea about these events until after they unfolded.

Yet this is 2019, when the media is responsible for everything that happens in the United States. And so a heave of press-oriented criticism has followed the release of a summary by Attorney General William P. Barr indicating that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III — who would later take over that investigation — “did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russia”* in his nearly two-year investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election and the role, if any, of the Trump campaign therein. “[T]he media coverage of the Russia investigation was abysmal and self-discrediting — obsessive and hysterical, often suggesting that the smoking gun was right around the corner, sometimes supporting its hoped-for result with erroneous, too-good-to-check reporting,” wrote Rich Lowry in the National Review. “Never has so little come of so many screaming chyrons.”

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