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Aaron Maté writes for The Nation, and anchors The Real News. He returns to update his rational skepticism of Russiagate, and notes that Democrats are not using it in the midterm campaigns.Aaron Maté is a rising star in journalism, and his reporting on Russiagate has been solid, rational and skeptical. The podcast opens with a quick review of recent media reports that keep the scandal alive, with little to show for two years of heavy coverage by newspapers and cable TV.
Read Maté’s recent article here. He notes that the Russia scandal is not being used in Democratic campaigns for House and Senate, even by principal players. We discuss how the story was displaced by the Kavanaugh hearings in September and October, and that ratings for Fox “News” went up while MSNBC was flat and CNN declined.
Maté details his recent interview with James Risen, the vaunted national security reporter who now writes for The Intercept. Risen abruptly ended the interview when challenge by Maté, hanging up the phone.
He also comments on the recent purge of independent media sites from Facebook, noting that many of those sites were listed on the 2016 blacklist published by the WashPost and fed by the murky group ProporNot.