A few hours have passed since Codegate has broken and media outlets such as CNN have already, through various news programs such as Anderson Cooper 360 and Out Front with Erin Burnett, effectively placed Trump on trial. 

Professor Alan Dershowitz the highly respect defence lawyer and political commentator, has already stated on CNN that if Trump has leaked classified information to the Russians he will have committed the gravest security error in the history of the US by a sitting president.

Seasoned reporters are referring to the evidence of reports in the Washington Post and New York Times as if these reports are wholly infallible and utterly beyond refute, chiefly because the authors of the reports are superior, highly qualified journalists. CNN has waded into the battle against Trump without checking, double-checking and triple-checking the facts. It’s hard to escape a nagging worry that CNN’s rush to provide titillating real-time commentary for their audience has outweighed sensible concerns to ensure this potentially presidency-ending story has been exposed to the fullest scrutiny by CNN's own experts before the station releases its heavy guns upon the White House. 

What if the reports in the Post and the Times turn out to be broadly wrong or contain a number of small factual errors that require a retraction?

The media are acting as if they smell Trump’s blood in the water.  If Trump successfully challenges key components of the breaking scandal the damage to the media’s credibility will be irrecoverable and Trump will be covered in unbreakable Teflon for the remainder of his term(s).