This Rolling Stone controversy is a brilliant opportunity to highlight how subtle, yet brutally obvious, presented broadcast media bias can be when combined with ideological opportunism.

Donald Trump said on Thursday the author of the interview, Paul Solotaroff, called to apologize for the way it was edited:

“The writer actually called me and said, ‘I’m so upset, I wrote this great story and [publisher] Jann Wenner screwed it up’ — he told me that,” Trump said on CNN’s “New Day.” “They added a lot of stuff, a lot of garish stuff, that I think is disgusting.” (link)

The author of the article, Solotaroff, appeared on CNN with Anderson Cooper and was questioned about this assertion by Trump.  The author appears to deny the assertion, however if you really listen to his answer, and accept his situation, you recognize there’s validity and affirmation to what Trump is claiming  – you just need to understand the context.
In order to appreciate how the MSM constructs these expositions you have to understand he position of the interview.  Anderson Cooper is questioning the author by putting him in a lose/lose interview position.  Cooper is forcing answers against a backdrop of the person being questioned facing “statements against interest“; a reputable journalist would never do this.
Affirm a “Statement Against Your Interest” – Meaning the author is being questioned about the claims by Trump that the authors writing -as stated to him- was controlled/manipulated by the Rolling Stone editor who is also unbelievably the magazine publisher, Jann Wenner.
How does the writer answer that question affirmatively and retain his financial livelihood or career interest?  He can’t – that’s why a reasonable journalist would never ask a question like that under those conditions.
Judge for yourself – Watch, and listen closely, at 03:54 of the interview:
https://youtu.be/F2lpAovKeMk?t=3m53s
Anderson Cooper put Solotaroff in a position where his affirmative response would be against his own interest – Jann Wenner is not only the editor of this article, he’s the publisher of the magazine – therefore he has only one option to reply and not face a devastating result from his employer.
This questioning approach is one way you can tell when a media entity, in this case CNN, is framing a specific narrative.
However, what does slip out is Solotaroff’s admission that Wenner took full control of the editing of the article and had never done that before.   The writer stated in the career of this publisher at Rolling Stone he’d never done that before, and never done that with Solotaroff’s lengthy career writing for Rolling Stone – Ever.
Solotaroff also uses the term “marching orders”, meaning he was given instructions by Wenner for information to change the angle, and Solotaroff not necessarily agreeing with the instructions.  This indicates publisher Jann Wenner had a unusually vested interest in this specific article, which easily implies the publisher had an ideological intention.
However, again as with all things crafted carefully, and with layers of plausible deniability, it’s an almost impossible thing to prove, hence the value in it.
But given the structure of the interview, the inherent inability of Solotaroff to affirm, and the fact-based evidence that Wenner had never edited material before, the weight of Trump’s claim carries much more validity than a Rolling Stone denial.