[huitzitziltzin]

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.

[AlanYx]

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.

[huitzitziltzin]

> 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

I have friends from a job I haven't worked in for years. Intelligence is a little different, obviously, but it's not completely crazy.

> 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.

Most sources share their information with the CIA or MI6 for money - why not share them with this guy for money? Especially if he's a former spy and someone you personally know.

I disagree that the setup makes no sense.

> 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

This point makes sense, but this information was attached to articles about this dossier from the very beginning, if I recall correctly. You can look up the original buzzfeed article and see if they listed the source. Maybe they didn't. But it was widely known and reported for a long time.

[AlanYx]

"Intelligence is a little different" is an understatement. MBAs take their rollodexes with them when they leave jobs. It beggars belief that (i) spies do too, as the information would likely have a secret or higher classification, and (ii) also retain the unfettered ability to just reach out to those intelligence contacts whenever without violating commitments they made during their employment.

Your second point is false. The source of the funding for the dossier (Clinton/DNC) was first reported in the media by the Washington Post on October 24, 2017, ten months after the January 2017 release of the dossier.

[jesterman81]

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.

[huitzitziltzin]

> If its unconfirmed/unproven, as a journalist, shouldn't you not publish it.

This might be an extremely high standard, depending on what you mean by "if it's unconfirmed/unproven."

All kinds of things are commonly reported in newspapers with the qualifier "sources close to X say..." - should newspapers avoid publishing such things? I am not sure that would be good for us as readers.

These allegations clearly fall close to the boundary on the other side of this field: in retrospect it seems like many of them are fictional. (Though the (literal, criminal) indictment mentioned in this piece is of a guy who was a source for only a few of the many things in the document.) But I think your standard is too high.

Doing your best as a journalist to confirm something to the extent that you can and then calling unconfirmed, but potentially interesting or troubling allegations just that seems like a reasonable compromise.

[scohesc]

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.

[RattleyCooper]

>No one reading those stories had any business thinking these allegations were proven. I doubt many did.

Were you living under a rock? People were frothing at the mouths BEGGING for it to be true.

[huitzitziltzin]

> Were you living under a rock? People were frothing at the mouths BEGGING for it to be true.

I wasn't. They were begging for it to be true.

But that is very different from (1.) these allegations actually being true, or (2.) anyone's believing they were true.

[jjeaff]

Some of it did turn out to be true. A few things were confirmed to be false, and quite a few of the more salacious ones remain unconfirmed either way and will probably remain that way. Considering the very guilty looking connections that the whole Trump orbit had with Russia, it's a wonder it didn't get even more traction.

I mean, the president's son and campaign official sent an email to Trump's campaign manager inviting him to a meeting with a woman connected to the Kremlin. Multiple officials have gone to jail for Russia connected or Russian adjacent crimes. His national security advisor had secret unofficial meetings with Russia. He also accepted tens of thousands of dollars from a Russian government news organization to give a speech just a few months before becoming the national security advisor (he was even photographed sitting at the head table with Putin).

There is nothing in the Steele Dossier that seems out of place, out of character, or even unlikely. Much of it is unconfirmed, but it all fits into the official and true narrative from what we know do far.

[Synaesthesia]

People took it quite seriously. Aaron Maté has chronicled the outrageous claims people made. https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/trump-russiagate-...

[mdswtchr]

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.

[michaelmrose]

I don't understand why the Steele dossier being at best worthless would convince anyone who disliked Trump's policies or persona in 2016 to vote differently in 2020. Even if you conclude media bad it in no way follows Trump good. Did they somehow initially believe it and then the scales fell from their eyes and they realized he did get 100s of thousands of Americans killed but at least nobody pees on him so he became in their eyes ok?

That just doesn't seem very likely.

[retox]

I imagine it has something to do with the Dossier coverage bolstering Trumps claims that the media is untrustworthy. It's easy from there to think "well, if they lied about this, what else did they lie about?". So you look more into many of the stories in the media, come to the conclusion that they regularly lie or embellish and your disdain snowballs from there.

[djsbs]

This person didn't vote for Trump but, although she voted for Sanders in the primary, she didn't vote for HRC either. So she wasn’t a cultist on either side.

She has good memory and in ‘16 listen/read all the “liberal” sources. When the narrative started to fall apart (and if you have good memory you saw it fall apart) she started giving an ear to “alternative” media.

She eventually reached the conclusion that the alternative media was more honest.

Take from this anecdote what you will, but these people are out there (they’re referred to, obnoxiously, as being “red pilled”) and when elections are won on the margins, they matter.

[vannevar]

Clearly Donald Trump influenced the degree to which the story got reported, even as unproven allegations. Had Mitt Romney been the subject, the media would probably have been more skeptical. But Trump had already said and done so many morally questionable things over his long career in the spotlight that it was easier to believe the dossier's accusations were credible.

[GenerocUsername]

Sure this media hit job turned out to be an obvious lie, but my convictions towards the others remains unshaken!

[Swenrekcah]

To be fair they weren’t reported as “unconfirmed” or “alleged”.

The bankruptcies are real, the scams are real (e.g. Trump University), the debts to foreign interests, the pay-for-play, the 9/11 phone call is real, etc.

But this Dossier seems to be a fabrication which is a condemnation for all the outlets that did report so extensively on it, even if the used some caveats. They implied there was a reason to believe its truth and I certainly thought that some of it must be true even if I didn’t know which parts. So shame on them as well.

[deltarholamda]

>Had Mitt Romney been the subject, the media would probably have been more skeptical

What do you base this on? Do you not remember the Romney campaign in 2008? He was "otherizing" Obama, and we all know that's crypto-fascist talk. Not to mention his "women in binders." Or his connections to the Mexican Romneys who were polygamists and otherwise unsavory. That's just 12-odd years ago.

Believing the media is, in any way, unbiased or otherwise independent is foolish. All you have to do is compare the Steele dossier with the Hunter Biden laptop. For the former, there were stories every week about how Trump was basically a Russian asset. For the latter, the laptop was ignored, and the NY Post deplatformed by tech companies for writing about it. Now imagine if the laptop had been Donald Trump, Jr.'s. Is there any doubt in your mind that we would have heard about every sketchy thing in it? How big would the NYT headline be? How many segments would Colbert do on Jr.'s peccadilloes?

Journalists aren't better people than the rest of us. They have their biases just like you and me. As I see it, the real problem has been the consolidation of media into large corporations, all of which work with the government to construct the narrative for their own benefit. You could probably fit every truly independent working journalist into a Winnebago.

It's always best to approach everything you read with a healthy dose of cynicism.

[landemva]

Romney and McCain both got the media light touch. Those two were favored RNC boys. They are part of the club, and I'm not in it. McCain's hands were on the dossier from Clinton.

[vannevar]

You're confusing two ideas. One is the garden variety criticism that all candidates get when they are running for the Presidency. That's what Romney received.

The dossier, on the other hand, contained specific allegations of wrong-doing. I don't think it would've gotten the same degree of play with Mitt Romney, in large part because, whatever his flaws, Mitt Romney has a much better reputation than Donald Trump. Believing that character and reputation don't matter to journalists is foolish. Just like the rest of us, they take past behavior into account when weighing allegations.

And certainly it's a good idea to approach the media with a healthy dose of cynicism. But it's worth noting that much of the Steele Dossier was in fact corroborated, including numerous meetings between the Trump campaign and Russian agents.

[deltarholamda]

>The dossier, on the other hand, contained specific allegations of wrong-doing

The dossier was opposition research, paid for by the Clinton campaign, and treated as serious allegations by the media and the FBI. And now we know that the FBI, and most likely the media as well, knew it was utter nonsense from the start. There isn't any confusion here, except the confusion how it seems that nobody involved in that disaster of a smear campaign--that was used for dodgy wiretaps of an opposition campaign--has been held accountable.

>One is the garden variety criticism that all candidates get when they are running for the Presidency

That's nonsense, and it's concerning that you seem to actually believe that. The point was that utterly anodyne Mitt Romney was cast as that season's Worse Than Hitler role, and you seem to have completely forgotten that. You are correct that it would have been somewhat more difficult to pin a pee tape on Romney, but if you can't see him being cast as a crypto Russian agent, if required, then you are terribly naive. The lack of any reporting of Hunter's laptop, outside of government officials, current and former, dismissing it as more Russian trickery, just proves the point that there is a manufactured narrative.

Our government doesn't work, and the sense-making organisms that we rely on to keep the government accountable, i.e. the media, seems to vary between corrupt and incompetent. That's the real problem.

[nathanaldensr]

So it's Donald Trump's fault that a group of people completely fabricated information. Got it.

[simonh]

If you build a solid reputation for something, that makes you vulnerable to future allegations along the same lines. It doesn't justify false allegations in any way.

[vannevar]

No, but it's Donald Trump's fault that the fabrications seemed plausible based on his past behavior.

And to be fair, many of the Steele dossier claims had some corroboration (eg, numerous meetings between the Trump campaign and the Russians).

[cpr]

No, the reason everyone salivated over and jumped on any ridiculous claim was that Trump was threatning to upset (and then starting to upset) the apple cart the deep state had been constructing and profiting from for decades.