Buzzfeed is a questionable source.
What does all this show?
#1 Mueller's team makes very few statements. But in this instance they wanted to correct falsehoods. They wanted to direct back towards the facts.
#2 CNN wanted to interview representatives from Buzzfeed to get info from the source (of the source) but in light of the Muller team's statement they instead reported that the story had been contradicted by the Mueller team.
So all of the reporting of the Buzzfeed story I have seen made clear that none of the information provided by Buzzfeed had been independently verified. It is not uncommon when a news outlet breaks a story that other news outlets report on the "breaking story." They almost always report it as a story by (whoever) that they have not independently verified. That's what happened here. Buzzfeed has sources. They believe their sources. They reported the story based on their confidence in those sources.
If this report was flat out wrong, Buzzfeed will either have to explain how thy were duped or they will become an illegitimate news source. That's how journalism works.
CNN didn't issue a retraction. No one but Buzzfeed needs to issue a retraction. They haven't done that yet, They have said they are looking into this further. The entire news media doesn't have to issue a retraction here.
Some of you don't know how journalism works. I mean, I was on my middle school and high school newspaper, so it's like I'm a ****ing expert here. Which is pretty damn funny.