Did the media botch the Russia story? A conversation with Matt Taibbi.

“In purely journalistic terms, this is an epic disaster.”

That’s how Rolling Stone columnist Matt Taibbi described the media’s coverage of the Trump-Russia story to me in a wide-ranging interview this week. I reached out to him shortly after he published an excerpt from his forthcoming book, Hate Inc., which excoriated the press for the way it handled allegations that Trump was colluding with Russia during the 2016 election.

According to Taibbi, the news that Robert Mueller won’t be issuing any further indictments, along with the revelation that he found...