I don’t think this is an indictment of the media at all. I never saw this material discussed anywhere except in the middle of a forest of qualifications about it being “unconfirmed” or “unproven.” That’s the right way to cover it. No one reading those stories had any business thinking these allegations were proven. I doubt many did.
It’s also intrinsically a lot harder for any US news organization to investigate these allegations (which concern private events in Russia!) than it is for them to investigate Gary Hart’s infidelity.
It seems like the appropriate way to handle potentially significant but extremely difficult or impossible to verify allegations is to note that they are unverified.
I suspect this isn’t going to be a popular opinion here bc people love to crap on “the media,” but imperfect as they are they are the best and frequently only source for important information as it is happening in real time.
The thing about the Steele Dossier though is that it wasn't just "unproven allegations"; that understates the level of lack of credibility associated with the dossier that should have been obvious to the media from the start.
The basic story didn't even make sense. Here's a guy, Steele, who hadn't worked at an intelligence agency for a half decade, who somehow was still in touch with "valuable" clandestine MI6 intelligence contacts who supposedly didn't care about MI6 anonymity protections and were willing to share their secrets with dudes in the private sector in exchange for money. It was never a context likely to reveal true statements.
And the genesis of the dossier itself, being a hired project designed to only seek politically incriminating information was doomed to be biased from the start, especially in light of the foregoing. At a minimum, the media should have been more willing to couch their statements about the dossier by indicating that Steele was paid by Fusion GPS, who had been hired by the Clinton's campaign and the Democratic National Committee. That would have at least prompted a lot of people to consider whether the dossier might be an honest attempt at finding real facts or might be closer to a fishy paid political hit job.
If its unconfirmed/unproven, as a journalist, shouldn't you not publish it. So I disagree that it is not an indictment. If you label yourself as news, then you should be reporting factual information. Right now NYT, WaPo, Fox, all look like propaganda from the left or right arm of the US of A. The talking heads did this for 4 years . How that is not an indictment I fail to understand. Open to having my mind changed.
I think a lot of people thought the allegations were real. You only need to look at how hard the media was pushing the article. You know the old belief that "if you think it's true or are told it's true long enough, it'll eventually come true"? Same thing with modern media.
I'm sure the numerous articles that Washington Post and other media outlets have deleted regarding the dossier (without posting any retractions or justifications) is evidence enough that the media had the job of pushing the dossier so much that it became true to the eyes of people gullible enough to watch and internalize mainstream media. Especially when you can tie it to other things people hated, like a certain orange haired man.
I remember when Liberals rightly criticized Fox for reporting "Now, I'm not saying this is what happened, but consider <salacious unconfirmed attack on the integrity of [Democrat politician]>.
The Steele dossier was junk to anyone who bothered to think about it as evidenced that Buzzfeed published after every other media institution passed on it.
The honest way for those media that passed over the dossier to report the Steele dossier was: "The Steele dossier, which we passed over because we think it is junk, claims that Trump [...]"
This was not an honest mistake. I know many people who loathed Trump in '16, crying when he won, who voted for him in '20 because of this.
> That prompted a statement promising further examination from The Journal and something far more significant from The Washington Post’s executive editor, Sally Buzbee. She took a step that is almost unheard-of: removing large chunks of erroneous articles from 2017 and 2019, as well as an offending video.
This is why archive.org and its ilk are now more important than ever before. We can’t allow history to be erased like this in the name of saving face.
I think that's a big downside of the internet compared to traditional media.
It's so easy to just remove anything after the fact without any accountability. Don't worry, it's just WaPo rewriting history instead of issuing corrections and retractions officially with justification and reasonings.
This opinion piece casually makes the very bold claim that the Steele Dossier has been disproven now, though the only evidence they seem to provide is that one of the informants has been arrested for lying to the FBI. I have not heard of any evidence that has directly contradicted the dossier, and in fact, I've seen a handful of news stories where other internet commenters have noticed that the timelines discovered from current investigations have matched up with pieces of the dossier.
It’s hard to prove a negative. But after years of investigations, no support for any of its notable claims has been found. And now we’re learning that it was indeed based on lies.
There is ample evidence that shows the Dossier was faked and paid for by the Clinton campaign. It's just not presented with all the hysteria like the collusion story was. If they did they would show how much egg on the face actually exists.
>Now it has been largely discredited by two federal investigations and the indictment of a key source, leaving journalists to reckon how, in the heat of competition, so many were taken in so easily because the dossier seemed to confirm what they already suspected.
Check out the Talk page for the Steele Dossier on Wikipedia [1]. A bunch of wiki knights have taken it upon themselves to weasel-word the article to make it appear as if the dossier is still almost exclusively factual, which we now of course know it is not.
The media occasionally sort of becomes unhinged and only talking to itself. It's hard to attribute why this happened but effectively the consequences is that journalistic ethics standards go out the window. This almost always results in people dying. This kind of behaviour is what starts wars or gets politicians assassinated.
Ok fair. NYtimes reporting that phones got tapped. Not exactly a surprise given snowden and how easy it is to get such data. Almost 100% this article is true.
Wait... trump isn't offering the Nytimes their own article? Only months later? By the same author? Does Michael S Schmidt smoke a ton of weed and forgot he himself wrote the article explaining it?
So the fact checkers come down and clearly show Schmidt his article saying he must retract?
This is the media falling from journalistic standards. Every single time in history where the media does this, people die. In the USA, the last major time the media did this, Mckinley got assassinated.
Why pick McKinley's assassination as your evidence, and not, say, the Spanish-American War? And one person (however important) getting shot isn't what most of us think of when you say "people die".
And why pick that as the most recent example, instead of, say, the invasion of Iraq?
Most of this reads like a justification. Even the title "...get [it] so wrong" makes it sound like it just happened to them (the media). Trust in media in the US is at an all time low that didn't just happen. US mainstream media is utterly useless for any topic that's politicized somehow yet other topics don't suffer from this decline in usefulness. I might not be able to point a finger at the exact place where the problem lies but the problem is there and its not "just happening". A Justification why it "happened" is the exact opposite of what has to be done to fix this.
I tend to defer to Marcy Wheeler when it comes to evaluating this stuff; she spends a lot of time actually looking at primary source material (court filings, etc.), AND she called out the dossier as likely Russian disinformation back in 2017.
Essentially after 2016 you should treat New York Times, Washington Post and other mainstream press as partisan actors. If they publish something negative about Biden, it's probably true. If it's something negative about Trump, republicans or anyone right of center, it's most likely partisan attack. The difference between op-ed and news is also blurry and frankly should be mostly ignored - selective reporting is a thing.
The same NYTimes that shilled the Iraq War for Bush?
I have no party affiliation but vote Dem because I consider them to be the lesser of two evils. There's plenty to not like.
I'm not a fan in general of Biden but have been less disappointed then I expected to be (and sometimes more). I could enumerate many of his failings (e.g., Hunter Biden's job was corrupt).
I find it impossible to discuss anything negative about Trump with his supporters -- it's effectively a cult. I know I'll get downvotes for it but it's true, and incredibly frustrating. There's no opportunity to find consensus -- and no indication this will ever change.
You would do well to far closer examine what Trump did and is if you don't well understand why the media immediate took the opposing side. The media is in general very center to center left the hard rightward turn of the republicans and Trump alone explains little about their rejection.
He is an immoral and dangerous person and that much was obvious in 2016 when the big lie bad already been rolled out because he thought he was going to lose. There can be no virtue in looking at the rise of Hitler 2.0 in a nation with thousands of nukes and casualty examining the pros and cons of different policy positions when the only one that matters is the fact that he believes in the supremacy of his will over the will of the people.
Well, the wish is father to the thought. Connoisseurs of this sort of thing may remember that St. Martin's Press chickened out at the last minute and did not publish a book stating that the Bush boys had had a business flying drugs in from South America. It sounded implausible to me, but apparently not if you were zealous enough. Anyway, the publisher decided that it didn't want to risk the outcome of the lawsuit that would certainly have been brought.
They manipulated themselves. "Let's boost publicity for this clown! It makes the Republicans look bad! He's smearing all the other primary candidates! We might even be able to make him win the primary! Plus, it's good for ratings."
Yeah. Brilliant. (Though it probably would have worked if the Democrats had run anyone less flawed than Hillary.)
More apt would be pump and dump schemes ala Stratton oakmont —which is illegal.
News orgs should be held to account when they do not partake in due diligence.
They used to require multiple sources before embarking on exposes and when making inflammatory accusations. Today quoting an anonymous source on Twitter is sufficient basis for articles on policy, society, etc.
One only has to look at who and what owns these massive media conglomerates to realize these companies don't have our best interests at heart. They're all owned by massive, money-making individuals/corporations who just exist to make more money and to keep your eyeballs engaged. They have no "duty" to serve only the facts.
Why would we serve just the facts and spend time doing investigative journalism, when we could just run with "anonymous sources" and treat _those_ sources as fact!
If only the ones screaming "freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences" were to slightly change their mantra to "freedom of the press doesn't mean freedom from consequences!"
The saddest part are the brainwashed in discussions repeating talking points from the mainstream without thinking, and calling everyone else crazy. Then echoing themselves with podcasts and etc that repeat the same talking points and opinions
No doubt the mainstream media keeps reaching new lows, supported by the fact checkers, and the big tech censorship
But they will not learn anything... The current mainstream coverage of the Rittenhouse case is just surreal, and the opinion segments are disgusting
For those who take this headline as an indictment of the trump-Russia affair, keep in mind the article content actually goes on to explain that the many many non-dossier related instances of sketchiness was a big factor in some reporters taking the dossier too seriously.
“ The first problem was this: There is no doubt that Mr. Trump had long curried Mr. Putin’s favor and that he and his family were eager to do business in Russia. Moreover, Mr. Mueller showed, and filed indictments that explained, how the Russians interfered in the 2016 campaign by targeting voter-registration systems, hacking into Democrats’ emails and taking advantage of Facebook and other social media companies to foment dissent and unrest.
Mr. Trump’s choice of Paul Manafort to serve as his campaign chairman reinforced the idea that he was in the thrall of Russia. Those fears were borne out when a bipartisan Senate committee found Mr. Manafort to be a “grave counterintelligence threat” because of his ties to a Kremlin agent. So, given all those connections, it was easy to assume that the dossier’s allegations must also be true.”
Likewise, the article does put the dossier reporting issues in perspective stating:
” None of this should minimize the endemic and willful deceptions of the right-wing press. From Fox News’s downplaying of the Covid-19 threat to OAN’s absurd defense of Mr. Trump’s lies about the election, conservative media outlets have built their own echo chamber, to the detriment of the country.”
This story is much larger than the Steele dossier, and it's a story that augurs a lot of trouble for the US.
For starters, Trumpers have not forgotten and will not forget this. That's 30% of the US populations with an intense anger towards the whole Steele story. The Steele dossier was debunked years ago by anyone who followed the story with a modicum of balance - like the late Stephen F Cohen pointed out, how likely is it that Trump, a hotelier, wouldn't be fully aware that top suites at the top hotels in world capitals aren't bugged to high heaven? Why would a pee pee tape embarrass Trump, the personification of the old dictum: "No publicity is bad publicity"?
Then, there is the issue of media credibility. Media credibility is already at all time low. We've known for years that the Steele dossier had been rejected because major media outlets realized it was probably bunk. This will further this decline in trust and cement American's media polarization.
Also, Trump followers know there is a long list of other immoral/illegal/dishonest assaults on his presidency (no, not including the "Big Lie"). They are seething mad, and they are growing in numbers, recruiting even among ethnic minorities.
On the other side, there is a 30% hardcore never-Trump group that has many reasons to be grieved by Trump. Trump's mistreatment of muslim countries was shocking (although, every muslim I know voted for Trump). The environment and pandering to Big Oil.
I've tried to write this as balanced as possible because, I see a great danger from my vantage point that of a Latin American immigrant from a country that went through a savage four (or was it forty?) year civil war. It doesn't end well, and our current media should be sacrificed for peace and to air out the laundry.
America, you've conjured a very nasty demon you have no experience with.
> They can also scrutinize whether, by focusing so heavily on the dossier, they helped distract public attention from Mr. Trump’s actual misconduct.
Focusing on the questionable Steele dossier seemed to be a fairly effective anti-Trump strategy in the short run at least, but perhaps in hindsight the media can reflect on whether a focus on actual misconduct might have been a better approach overall.
[+] [-] missinfo|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] huitzitziltzin|4 years ago|reply
It’s also intrinsically a lot harder for any US news organization to investigate these allegations (which concern private events in Russia!) than it is for them to investigate Gary Hart’s infidelity.
It seems like the appropriate way to handle potentially significant but extremely difficult or impossible to verify allegations is to note that they are unverified.
I suspect this isn’t going to be a popular opinion here bc people love to crap on “the media,” but imperfect as they are they are the best and frequently only source for important information as it is happening in real time.
[+] [-] AlanYx|4 years ago|reply
The basic story didn't even make sense. Here's a guy, Steele, who hadn't worked at an intelligence agency for a half decade, who somehow was still in touch with "valuable" clandestine MI6 intelligence contacts who supposedly didn't care about MI6 anonymity protections and were willing to share their secrets with dudes in the private sector in exchange for money. It was never a context likely to reveal true statements.
And the genesis of the dossier itself, being a hired project designed to only seek politically incriminating information was doomed to be biased from the start, especially in light of the foregoing. At a minimum, the media should have been more willing to couch their statements about the dossier by indicating that Steele was paid by Fusion GPS, who had been hired by the Clinton's campaign and the Democratic National Committee. That would have at least prompted a lot of people to consider whether the dossier might be an honest attempt at finding real facts or might be closer to a fishy paid political hit job.
[+] [-] jesterman81|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scohesc|4 years ago|reply
I'm sure the numerous articles that Washington Post and other media outlets have deleted regarding the dossier (without posting any retractions or justifications) is evidence enough that the media had the job of pushing the dossier so much that it became true to the eyes of people gullible enough to watch and internalize mainstream media. Especially when you can tie it to other things people hated, like a certain orange haired man.
[+] [-] RattleyCooper|4 years ago|reply
Were you living under a rock? People were frothing at the mouths BEGGING for it to be true.
[+] [-] Synaesthesia|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mdswtchr|4 years ago|reply
The Steele dossier was junk to anyone who bothered to think about it as evidenced that Buzzfeed published after every other media institution passed on it.
The honest way for those media that passed over the dossier to report the Steele dossier was: "The Steele dossier, which we passed over because we think it is junk, claims that Trump [...]"
This was not an honest mistake. I know many people who loathed Trump in '16, crying when he won, who voted for him in '20 because of this.
[+] [-] ComputerGuru|4 years ago|reply
This is why archive.org and its ilk are now more important than ever before. We can’t allow history to be erased like this in the name of saving face.
[+] [-] scohesc|4 years ago|reply
It's so easy to just remove anything after the fact without any accountability. Don't worry, it's just WaPo rewriting history instead of issuing corrections and retractions officially with justification and reasonings.
Nope, just remove it to save face.
So disgusting.
[+] [-] sp0rk|4 years ago|reply
What parts have been disproven, exactly?
[+] [-] dfadsadsf|4 years ago|reply
Now please present evidence that disproof this claim. While you are collecting evidence, I will assume that statement above is true.
[+] [-] beervirus|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jesterman81|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JacobThreeThree|4 years ago|reply
>Now it has been largely discredited by two federal investigations and the indictment of a key source, leaving journalists to reckon how, in the heat of competition, so many were taken in so easily because the dossier seemed to confirm what they already suspected.
Do you know something the NYT doesn't?
[+] [-] Sosh101|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] noxer|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mdswtchr|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] joenot443|4 years ago|reply
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Steele_dossier
[+] [-] sleepysysadmin|4 years ago|reply
Since this is NYT I'll use an example from NYT.
January 2017: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/19/us/politics/trump-russia-...
Ok fair. NYtimes reporting that phones got tapped. Not exactly a surprise given snowden and how easy it is to get such data. Almost 100% this article is true.
March 2017: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/04/us/politics/trump-obama-t...
Wait... trump isn't offering the Nytimes their own article? Only months later? By the same author? Does Michael S Schmidt smoke a ton of weed and forgot he himself wrote the article explaining it?
So the fact checkers come down and clearly show Schmidt his article saying he must retract?
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2017/mar/16/donald-tru...
Oh no. Fact checkers kind of got this one wrong.
My point... it isn't about facts. Journalistic standard #1 is honesty. They clearly broke the most important rule.
It goes further: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spygate_(conspiracy_theory)
It's a conspiracy theory! Not only is it false...
This is the media falling from journalistic standards. Every single time in history where the media does this, people die. In the USA, the last major time the media did this, Mckinley got assassinated.
[+] [-] AnimalMuppet|4 years ago|reply
And why pick that as the most recent example, instead of, say, the invasion of Iraq?
[+] [-] noxer|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] riddleronroof|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jonnycomputer|4 years ago|reply
https://www.emptywheel.net/2017/01/11/the-democrats-newfound... (2017)
https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status/1460514005672419328
https://www.emptywheel.net/2021/11/12/source-6a-john-durhams...
[+] [-] jonnycomputer|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dfadsadsf|4 years ago|reply
It's a sad state of thing but here we are.
[+] [-] pstuart|4 years ago|reply
I have no party affiliation but vote Dem because I consider them to be the lesser of two evils. There's plenty to not like.
I'm not a fan in general of Biden but have been less disappointed then I expected to be (and sometimes more). I could enumerate many of his failings (e.g., Hunter Biden's job was corrupt).
I find it impossible to discuss anything negative about Trump with his supporters -- it's effectively a cult. I know I'll get downvotes for it but it's true, and incredibly frustrating. There's no opportunity to find consensus -- and no indication this will ever change.
[+] [-] michaelmrose|4 years ago|reply
He is an immoral and dangerous person and that much was obvious in 2016 when the big lie bad already been rolled out because he thought he was going to lose. There can be no virtue in looking at the rise of Hitler 2.0 in a nation with thousands of nukes and casualty examining the pros and cons of different policy positions when the only one that matters is the fact that he believes in the supremacy of his will over the will of the people.
Neutrality in the face of evil isn't virtue.
[+] [-] cafard|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WarOnPrivacy|4 years ago|reply
Specifically, what they're going to change to insure they aren't so trivially manipulated next time.
[+] [-] AnimalMuppet|4 years ago|reply
Yeah. Brilliant. (Though it probably would have worked if the Democrats had run anyone less flawed than Hillary.)
[+] [-] crate_barre|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mc32|4 years ago|reply
More apt would be pump and dump schemes ala Stratton oakmont —which is illegal.
News orgs should be held to account when they do not partake in due diligence.
They used to require multiple sources before embarking on exposes and when making inflammatory accusations. Today quoting an anonymous source on Twitter is sufficient basis for articles on policy, society, etc.
[+] [-] scohesc|4 years ago|reply
Why would we serve just the facts and spend time doing investigative journalism, when we could just run with "anonymous sources" and treat _those_ sources as fact!
If only the ones screaming "freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences" were to slightly change their mantra to "freedom of the press doesn't mean freedom from consequences!"
[+] [-] simonblack|4 years ago|reply
Many of us (and most of were no fans of Trump, either) could see that Russiagate was straight out absolutely laughable unsubstantiated bullshit.
But the media had an agenda and so the US has spent five wasted years when that time, money and effort could have been spent on far more useful stuff.
[+] [-] guilhas|4 years ago|reply
No doubt the mainstream media keeps reaching new lows, supported by the fact checkers, and the big tech censorship
But they will not learn anything... The current mainstream coverage of the Rittenhouse case is just surreal, and the opinion segments are disgusting
[+] [-] mint2|4 years ago|reply
“ The first problem was this: There is no doubt that Mr. Trump had long curried Mr. Putin’s favor and that he and his family were eager to do business in Russia. Moreover, Mr. Mueller showed, and filed indictments that explained, how the Russians interfered in the 2016 campaign by targeting voter-registration systems, hacking into Democrats’ emails and taking advantage of Facebook and other social media companies to foment dissent and unrest.
Mr. Trump’s choice of Paul Manafort to serve as his campaign chairman reinforced the idea that he was in the thrall of Russia. Those fears were borne out when a bipartisan Senate committee found Mr. Manafort to be a “grave counterintelligence threat” because of his ties to a Kremlin agent. So, given all those connections, it was easy to assume that the dossier’s allegations must also be true.”
Likewise, the article does put the dossier reporting issues in perspective stating:
” None of this should minimize the endemic and willful deceptions of the right-wing press. From Fox News’s downplaying of the Covid-19 threat to OAN’s absurd defense of Mr. Trump’s lies about the election, conservative media outlets have built their own echo chamber, to the detriment of the country.”
[+] [-] mint2|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mdswtchr|4 years ago|reply
For starters, Trumpers have not forgotten and will not forget this. That's 30% of the US populations with an intense anger towards the whole Steele story. The Steele dossier was debunked years ago by anyone who followed the story with a modicum of balance - like the late Stephen F Cohen pointed out, how likely is it that Trump, a hotelier, wouldn't be fully aware that top suites at the top hotels in world capitals aren't bugged to high heaven? Why would a pee pee tape embarrass Trump, the personification of the old dictum: "No publicity is bad publicity"?
Then, there is the issue of media credibility. Media credibility is already at all time low. We've known for years that the Steele dossier had been rejected because major media outlets realized it was probably bunk. This will further this decline in trust and cement American's media polarization.
Also, Trump followers know there is a long list of other immoral/illegal/dishonest assaults on his presidency (no, not including the "Big Lie"). They are seething mad, and they are growing in numbers, recruiting even among ethnic minorities.
On the other side, there is a 30% hardcore never-Trump group that has many reasons to be grieved by Trump. Trump's mistreatment of muslim countries was shocking (although, every muslim I know voted for Trump). The environment and pandering to Big Oil.
I've tried to write this as balanced as possible because, I see a great danger from my vantage point that of a Latin American immigrant from a country that went through a savage four (or was it forty?) year civil war. It doesn't end well, and our current media should be sacrificed for peace and to air out the laundry.
America, you've conjured a very nasty demon you have no experience with.
[+] [-] V__|4 years ago|reply
There seems to be a lot of confusion regarding this point. A lot of the dossier has been proven true, some hasn't been proven (yet?) and only one thing has been disproven: https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1456306559756156930
This whole Twitter thread by Seth Abramson is really informative: https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1456299800735870976
[+] [-] musicale|4 years ago|reply
Focusing on the questionable Steele dossier seemed to be a fairly effective anti-Trump strategy in the short run at least, but perhaps in hindsight the media can reflect on whether a focus on actual misconduct might have been a better approach overall.
[+] [-] unanswered|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] baobbab|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]