“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.”
That could mean anything from "flat out wrong" to "they got a single word wrong in the reported speech but we don't want to tip anyone's hand whilst we're still working on this". It definitely doesn't warrant being described as "skewed or outright false information" until we know more, does it?
It warrants being called skewed, because I doubt the man in charge of investigating the allegations would make a public statement to call out a "single word wrong". At the very minimum there is something incorrect about the statement itself if "Mr No-Comment" is making a comment. Especially so if no other outlet has yet been able to verify the claims, as stated in the NYT article.
> a public statement to call out a "single word wrong"
I can see many scenarios where they would do exactly that to categorise something as "not accurate" if that information being unchallenged lead to problems building a case or enabled someone like Cohen to back out of a deal etc. But we don't know if it's any of them. Or if Buzzfeed were wrong. At some point, I suppose, we will.
> At the very minimum there is something incorrect about the statement itself
Yes but we don't know where it lies on the "Flat Out Bullshit" to "It's Largely Accurate But We're Not Going To Publically Acknowledge That At The Moment" scale.
I think you're being overly generous here. I would argue the scale is from "bullshit" to "some pertinent information is incorrect". You can spin the latter as meaning the same as "largely accurate" if you want, but it is a spin. I'm hoping that other outlets can dig in and shed more light on the issue in the coming days.
“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.”
That could mean anything from "flat out wrong" to "they got a single word wrong in the reported speech but we don't want to tip anyone's hand whilst we're still working on this". It definitely doesn't warrant being described as "skewed or outright false information" until we know more, does it?