Media has a change of message on whether the Russians could influence the election

James Taranto:

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The claim that Russia was behind the hacking of email accounts belonging to the Democratic National Committee and John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, isn’t new. It was well-aired during the campaign. On Oct. 19 a CNN.com report sought to reassure a public “understandably concerned about the integrity of next month’s election”: “Election officials and cyber experts say it’s virtually impossible for Moscow or some other outside group to influence the election outcome.”

Like the Times, CNN seems to have experienced a dramatic change of attitude. Yesterday on “Reliable Sources,” during a discussion of the Russia news, host Brian Stelter posed this question to Politico’s Julia Ioffe: “Julia, we’re talking about a candidate who has lost in a historic way in terms of the popular vote but clearly won in the Electoral College. Is this something of a national emergency? And are journalists afraid to say so because they’re going to sound partisan?” (The Media Research Center’s Brent Baker has video.)
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Both opinions probably reflect their partisan bias depending on the outcome of the election.  The issue of the popular vote is grossly misleading.  Trump did not waste any time or money in states like California, Illinois, and New York.  He focused on the winnable states.

I think there is a great deal of bad faith in the media treatment of this issue.  The premise of the CIA assessment appears to be flawed since the RNC was not hacked.  I conclude "with a degree of confidence" that the media and the Democrats are attempting to delegitimize the Trump victory for partisan purposes.