When CNN sacks two TV hosts in four days, a New York Times story is dubbed “false” by former FBI director James Comey and NDTV gets raided by the CBI, you could safely say the media hasn’t had a good week.

CNN’s biased coverage of US President Donald Trump has left even the most Clintonian Democrats red-faced with embarrassment. Here’s what Ben Domenech of The Federalist wrote last week about CNN’s reportage: “Since the new administration arrived in Washington, CNN has continued this war (on Trump) at a fever pitch. Daily they roll out eight-person panels where not one person defending the administration is represented. They have offered the most biased coverage of the Trump administration by far, to the point that Republicans on Capitol Hill openly mock their lack of balance. A network that once strove to be centrist in its approach is now openly antagonistic, and will run with the thinnest of scoops for hours at a time in order to make their case against President Trump.

“This has led them to be sloppier journalists than we’ve ever seen before. Consider their worst performance this week: CNN didn’t get anywhere near enough flack for their ridiculous story that ran on Tuesday night, which they talked about for hours, saying that James Comey would refute Trump’s claim that he was cleared three times.

The four-person byline included Gloria Borger, Eric Lichtblau, Jake Tapper, and Brian Rokus. They have since changed the headline on the piece from "Comey expected to refute Trump" to "Comey unlikely to judge on obstruction".

“At some point, CNN is going to have to decide what they are willing to do in this war on the president and his administration, and whether they are willing to sacrifice even a semblance of balance and centrism in their quest against him, transforming themselves from a news network into an agenda-driven propaganda unit, complete with their useful idiots, their organs of the past administration, and their collection of invented sources who pass along useful lies.”

So have CNN’s Jake Tapper and his three colleagues been sacked? Not yet. But if they continue to ignore basic journalism (like being factual), they might join Kathy Griffin and Reza Aslan.

Both CNN hosts have recently lost their shows.

Griffin, who co-hosted a show with the storied Anderson Cooper (son of heiress Gloria Vanderbilt), posted a photo of a bloodied, decapitated head of Trump. The blowback from both the Left and Right was fast and furious. For once, polarised America agreed: Griffin must go. Under pressure, CNN announced her termination.

Days later, another CNN host Reza Aslan, who fronted the Believer series, was sacked for a series of profane tweets and, at first, lying that he hadn’t sent them.

Again Trump was the trigger. Aslan tweeted: “This piece of sh-t is not just an embarrassment to America and a stain on the presidency, he’s an embarrassment to humankind.”

Aslan deleted the tweet the next day but not before it was widely shared. Reluctantly, and belatedly, he apologised for it.

It was too late to save his job. Again CNN was forced by public pressure to axe his show’s second season.

James Comey pretty much demolished both the “collusion with Russia” and “obstruction of justice” cases. Photo: Reuters

Indians will remember Aslan from the controversial programme he did on cannibalism among certain religious sects in India.

Meanwhile, The New York Times, which like CNN has fought a running battle with Trump since his election as president, was called out by, of all people, James Comey, the FBI director whom Trump fired last month and who is the toast of the left-liberal US media.

Comey testified under oath to the Senate Intelligence Committee last Thursday (June 8). Trump-baiters were ecstatic. Here was a man who could finally bring Trump down.

In the event, Comey indicted himself and ended up exonerating Trump. But that’s not the story you’ll read or see in the US mainstream media, now scraping the bottom of the journalistic barrel.

Spinning the story, The New York Times wrote: “Mr Comey’s testimony on Thursday before the Senate Intelligence Committee sharpened obstruction-of-justice questions. Specifically, according to Mr Comey’s testimony, after he met that day with Mr Trump and others in the Oval Office, Mr Trump ordered all the other officials out of the room — twice reiterating to lingerers, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Mr Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner, that they were to leave. Then, Mr Comey said, Mr Trump brought up Mr Flynn, calling him a ‘good guy and saying, ‘I hope you can let this go’. ”

The real takeaways from Comey’s testimony were:

1) Comey himself (yes, himself) leaked privileged memos to The New York Times through a friend who is a law professor at Columbia University. That’s against FBI employment rules and could lead to criminal prosecution of Comey.

2) Comey testified under oath that he told Trump he was not under investigation for alleged Russian collusion in the 2016 US presidential election.

3) Comey, again under oath, confirmed that Trump did not seek to impede the investigation into Russian collusion but, in fact, encouraged him to get to the truth (“it would be good to find out if there were some ‘satellite’ associates who did something wrong”, were Trump’s exact words, according to Comey’s sworn testimony at the Senate hearing).

In short, Comey pretty much demolished both the “collusion with Russia” and “obstruction of justice” cases that the Democrats and mainstream US media were hoping to build to impeach Trump. Comey was their man – and he blew it.

But that’s not the story the US media is spinning.

It is notably silent too on the fact that Comey, at the Senate hearing last Thursday under oath, damaged the credibility of The New York Times by calling its story on Russian collusion of the elections “false”.

Jim Stinson of Lifezette.com wrote: “In a major blow to The New York Times and the prevailing narrative on the president, James Comey testified that a Times story on collusion between the Donald Trump campaign and Russian hackers was flat-out false. The February 14 story, Trump Campaign Aides Had Repeated Contacts With Russian Intelligence, ran the day after Trump dismissed Michael Flynn as national security adviser. Times reporters Michael S Schmidt, Mark Mazzetti, and Matt Apuzzo wrote the story. Comey, whom President Donald Trump fired on May 9, said he knew the story was false, but he double-checked with his agents after The Times published it. ‘In the main, it was not true,’ Comey said (in his sworn testimony).”

Indian media too

It’s been an equally bad week for the Indian media. The CBI raid on NDTV has placed under scrutiny an issue that has festered since the go-go, scam-filled days of UPA-I.

The truth is hidden under several layers. The CBI is investigating an alleged Rs 48-crore loss caused to ICICI Bank due to NDTV reportedly underpaying a loan. The real investigation, which began nearly a decade ago under the UPA government, was about dozens of foreign-domiciled NDTV-linked companies and what role they played in the UPA’s roller-coaster decade.

The reaction of the Indian media has been apoplectic. Senior journalists like Kuldip Nayar, who should know better, have compared the situation to the Emergency when Opposition politicians, activists and journalists were jailed.

Nayar himself was jailed during the Emergency. Today Nayar is free to condemn in the harshest terms the government, the CBI, and the prime minister – as indeed he should be.

The problem with the Indian media isn’t that it’s not free. It’s that it pretends it isn’t.

Also read: The hypocrisy of the 'Freedom of the Press' campaign