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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 just doesn't seem very likely.
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.
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.
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.
What parts have been disproven, exactly?
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.
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...
It's a sad state of thing but here we are.
Specifically, what they're going to change to insure they aren't so trivially manipulated next time.
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.
Let’s put it this way, if the US electorate was shrewd enough to have found Trump boring, it’s would not have been a stock they would have rode. They rode it because they could.
The Steel Dossier was them riding the liberal Trump backlash movement. They just don’t give a shit, they are surfing our waves.
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!"
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.
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
“ 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.”
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.
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
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.
Obsessing over the Russia dossier which wasn’t the basis for this investigation and discounting the whole trump Russia thing is like saying sequoia National forest doesn’t exist because one of the trees turned out to be a cell tower.
Edit: many downvotes without logical replies, actually without any replies at the moment, shows this comment is making people experience inconvenient truths, which they must cancel. Long live the cancel culture, am I right?
In fact, to continue my analogy, the article itself explains that the rest of the forest is a big factor of why some journalists reported like the cell tower was a tree.
So No, I don’t need to provide support of statements that the article we are commenting on already supports.
It’s clear those statements are inconvenient to people so they are downvoting and not even reading the article
Are you sure about that? I read they couldn't have gotten a FISA warrant without it.
Now please present evidence that disproof this claim. While you are collecting evidence, I will assume that statement above is true.
No, now we're admitting that it was based on lies. That information has been around for a long time; if not quite all the way to the first allegations, at least very soon thereafter. It's the same deal with the lab leak. The information showing the lab leak hypothesis is at least plausible (if unprovable) was available in May 2020, but it was only this year that various actors got around to admitting the plausibility. We didn't "learn" anything this year that changed the underlying facts in either case; it's just that the facts became morally permissible to report.
>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?
https://help.nytimes.com/hc/en-us/articles/115014809107-How-...
For counter example look at how they avoided looking into emails on hunter Biden's laptop. Oh, we can’t prove the emails are genuine… but they had no problem taking evidence against their disfavored candidates at face value.
And why pick that as the most recent example, instead of, say, the invasion of Iraq?
Another excellent example. Thanks!
>And one person (however important) getting shot isn't what most of us think of when you say "people die".
People die is general usage while I was providing a US example.
>And why pick that as the most recent example, instead of, say, the invasion of Iraq?
Interesting? I actually dont believe I've seen the news blamed for that invasion. Typically the reasoning is economic. I wish to know more!
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.
Organizations can’t change at all within 20 years? Democrats have changed just as much in general. 3/4 of the stuff the blue check marks talk about on Twitter wasn’t even mentioned in passing in the early 00s.
You can be negative about Trump pretty much everywhere and nobody would bat an eye. You can even spew lies like him peeing on proustites and it will be on the news nonstop for years.
Many people who like Trump see that sort of cultish behavior against him and turn around and defend Trump on everything. If people were more reasonable with their negativity of Trump, I have no doubt most Trump supporters would admit Trump's flaws.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
He did commute the sentence of a woman wrongfully incarcerated (after urging by a Kardashian).
He also did advocate for ending the War in Afghanistan but, again, but not handled in a manner that I would applaud.
Cult-like implies unquestioning devotion. You know the part where he said he could shoot somebody on 5th avenue and not lose any votes? That was shocking to me (and others). More shocking was that he was right.
Any sort of "derangement" on my part or others is shock at how his words and actions are acceptable. I take no pleasure in it (quite the opposite). I wish I could be provided evidence that all of these things are not true -- I don't want to be aghast but the evidence I have at hand but I guess I'm just a pussy, right?
Again, I abhor partisan politics but am forced to align with the side that I find least contemptible.
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.
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.
And to be fair, many of the Steele dossier claims had some corroboration (eg, numerous meetings between the Trump campaign and the Russians).
> If people were more reasonable with their negativity of Trump, I have no doubt most Trump supporters would admit Trump's flaws.
Prove it. In this thread I've done my best to be as reasonable as can be. I've acknowledged the few things I think he did that weren't bad. I've been clear that Joe Biden and the Dem party is not above reproach.
* Biden's son's position was a old school corruption (buying favor).
* The wind-down of Afghanistan was poorly executed (really the failure of military leadership but the buck stops with him).
* Biden promised to decriminalize cannabis at the federal level and shows no signs of acting on that.
* Biden has done nothing to address immigration (but the biggest solution is to decriminalize *all* drugs and that ain't gonna fly).
I didn't mean to suggest you do that, but there are some people I have talked with (mostly online, but a few in person) who do basically base their identity on hating Trump.
I also know some people who base their identity on their love of Trump.
There is a cult of personality on both sides of this. I fully believe Trump likes it and takes the whole all publicity is good publicity to an extreme.
>Prove it.
I don't think it is possible since Trump has been heavily criticized for the last 6 years (or however long). He didn't really have followers prior to this. I don't recall ever seeing anybody defending or criticizing Trump on everything 10 years ago.
What I am basing it on is other politicians. When people don't treat politicians as poorly as Trump was treated, people tend to acknowledge more flaws. My statement was anecdotal not some sort of study assessing this. I should have made it more clear.
> So let's hear what disappoints you about Trump
1. The way he speaks (not his inflection, but what he says)
2. He didn't really accomplish anything. Just a tax cut and a couple mediocre judges?
3. The people he surrounded himself with. (I don't fully blame him on this. My understanding is some better people refused to work with Trump so he had to go with worse people.)
4. Nepotism (probably could be combined with #3)
I don't want to hate Trump, as I think hate is toxic, but I'm aghast at what he has done and enabled. I'm also in the camp that thinks that if the dems lose control in 2024 it will be the end of democracy. I wish that were hyperbole.
Those on the left and right have more in common than with the elites, and that's the plan. But you can find "I'd rather be Russian than Democrat" shirts proudly worn at his rallies.
There is hate being preached, and it's incredibly effective. This is why I've voiced my concerns about "free speech" here before (and it's never been well received, but hey I got to say it!).
I could go on and on but I'll spare you. Again, thank you for engaging.
I've been explicit in saying that I am not a fan of the Democratic party. They are not above reproach.
What's interesting is I never hear any complaints about the GOP from those on the right. Nada. Nothing. This is not whataboutism, it's that these complaints read as tribal warfare, not a search for the common good.
Sure on the left you've got LGBQTXYZ rights but that's been a thing for some time. I'm kinda drawing a blank here so feel free to share.
This divide is no organic accident -- it's being actively promoted. Team Red vs. Team Blue is a master stroke in ye olde divide and conquer game.
But I agree with you on two points. First, the Overton Window is getting wider. In fact, I think it's worse. It got stretched so far that it shattered.
Second, I agree that someone (or several someones) are playing divide and conquer, and they are not our friends - of either side. We're being divided, and the next step is coming...
And thank you for your thoughtful reply. I'm not here to argue or score points -- I genuinely want to understand the thinking that happens outside my box.