BuzzFeed's Dossier Was Both Flimsy and Newsworthy
Real news about fake news
Apple RecordsIs there a good defense of BuzzFeed's decision to publish the Urinegate memos last night? Glenn Greenwald's analysis of the story makes the best argument I've seen, though there are so many caveats here that I don't think it quite qualifies as a defense:
It's almost impossible to imagine a scenario where it's justifiable for a news outlet to publish a totally anonymous, unverified, unvetted document filled with scurrilous and inflammatory allegations about which its own editor-in-chief says there "is serious reason to doubt the allegations," on the ground that they want to leave it to the public to decide whether to believe it.
But even if one believes there is no such case where that is justified, yesterday's circumstances presented the most compelling scenario possible for doing this. Once CNN strongly hinted at these allegations, it left it to the public imagination to conjure up the dirt Russia allegedly had to blackmail and control Trump. By publishing these accusations, BuzzFeed ended that speculation. More importantly, it allowed everyone to see how dubious this document is, one the CIA and CNN had elevated into some sort of grave national security threat.
Whether or not that's a defense, the basic argument here is true: Once I read what BuzzFeed had, I saw CNN's story in a rather different light.
Now, that still leaves plenty of room to criticize BuzzFeed, which noted some errors in the dossier at the outset but could have done much more to report out its claims before publishing it. (To give the most obvious example, they should have asked Michael Cohen for comment on whether he had been to Prague at the time the file said he was there, rather than letting us wait til after the piece dropped to see Cohen deny he'd ever been to the city at all. BuzzFeed later updated its story to note his denial.) But even if BuzzFeed could have done a much better job of setting the context for the document it was printing, its report in turn supplied some valuable context for CNN's story. Beyond that, if this dossier, or a summary of it, has shaped the ways influential people in Washington have been behaving, the document itself is clearly newsworthy.
On the other hand, I can't co-sign this part of Greenwald's column:
There is a real danger here that this maneuver can harshly backfire, to the great benefit of Trump and to the great detriment of those who want to oppose him. If any of the significant claims in this "dossier" turn out to be provably false—such as Cohen's trip to Prague—many people will conclude, with Trump's encouragement, that large media outlets (CNN and BuzzFeed) and anti-Trump factions inside the government (CIA) are deploying "Fake News" to destroy him. In the eyes of many people, that will forever discredit—render impotent—future journalistic exposés that are based on actual, corroborated wrongdoing.
Don't get me wrong: Trump's fans will certainly do this. But if this dossier didn't exist, they'd just point to something else. There's already enough kooky stuff out there for Trump's defenders to handwave about "fake news" whenever something legitimate comes out. This is, in fact, a pretty standard political maneuver. (Think of how many allegations against Barack Obama, credible or not, provoked a chorus of liberals making Benghazi jokes. And the standard Benghazi theories were a lot less far-out than the stuff in the BuzzFeed dossier.)
In any event, a ton of Trump exposés have appeared since he entered the presidential race in mid-2015, some of them convincing and some of them not. It should be clear by now that many Trump loyalists are already perfectly capable of finding reasons to reject even the most well-sourced stories. To judge from some of the tweeters I saw taking the dossier's claims at face value last night, some people are perfectly capable of embracing even the most poorly-sourced allegations as well. It can be remarkably easy to believe the things you already want to believe.
Bonus audio: Nick Gillespie recently interviewed Greenwald for the Reason podcast:
Photo Credit: BuzzFeed
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FAKE NEWS
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Thank you for your informative comment.
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If any of the significant claims in this "dossier" turn out to be provably false—such as Cohen's trip to Prague—many people will conclude, with Trump's encouragement, that large media outlets (CNN and BuzzFeed) and anti-Trump factions inside the government (CIA) are deploying "Fake News" to destroy him.
Shouldn't they conclude that? I mean, if the dossier is provably false, doesn't that mean that somebody went to the effort of deploying fake news to destroy him?
In the eyes of many people, that will forever discredit—render impotent—future journalistic exposés that are based on actual, corroborated wrongdoing.
That's the way credibility works, and why you shouldn't fuck around with it. Do we really criticize people who discount statements from proven liars?
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Do we really criticize people who discount statements from proven liars?
Idk. What is their political party affiliation?
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I, for one, still take Glenn Greenwald with a grain of salt because of his long ago sock-puppeting of his own posts. I've been moving to a more trusting stance with him in particular, but in general, credibility should be difficult to establish and easy to lose.
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"Shouldn't they conclude that? I mean, if the dossier is provably false, doesn't that mean that somebody went to the effort of deploying fake news to destroy him?"
And why shouldn't HE assume so regardless of the dossier? The press has already done everything it can to destroy him, shy of outright liable.
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Already knew MSM was fakenews
Leftists Lie
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It's Nazi Germany all over again.
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You know who else...hey, wait just a minute?!
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To judge from some of the tweeters I saw taking the dossier's claims at face value last night, some people are perfectly capable of embracing even the most poorly-sourced allegations as well.
"Russia is in control of the US government" said one comment made on the internet.
That's enough to get an article written these days right? Or does it have to be a bonafide tweet?
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The reaction from the left is every bit as insane and idiotic as the "Obummer's a secret Muslim" people in 2008.
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The difference is, the secret Muslim nutters were always very much a fringe.
If the people frantically pushing every obviously bogus Trump story were very much a fringe, then we could draw an equvalency. They are not a fringe - they are wealthy, powerful people with access to all kinds of previously credible media distribution channels. As noted, they are destroying that credibility, but when those channels have been highjacked by fringe nutters, why is that a bad thing, again?
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But the real question is for Reason Mag, will they or will they not publish my story about how Trump turned me into a Newt!!!!!!
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But, you got better!
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what well sourced stories? I voted against Hillary but this TDS by the left is getting way out of hand and is really starting to hurt them and that does no favors for the democracy they claim to protect form Trump. Whats not noted here is that the idiot McCain also had his hand in this story at some point. its really disgusting and it should have never made the news on any level. I'm not referring to the sexual act as disgusting, thats a matter of opinion, but reporting the story is disgusting and tells us all we need to know about the charachter of those who hate Trump and will do anything to hurt him. I think its worse than the birthers
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I guess the pussy grabbing is a well sourced story. I stand by the rest of my statement though
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The fact that he said is well sourced, if he did it is another question. It seems the women who accused him are not pushing the issue now the election is over
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This is the kind of shit that can turn a man into a nihilist.
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Naw, it's not worth it to go full nihil.
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"Say what you will about the tenets of National Socialism, at least it's an ethos."
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Dammit!
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Nihilists? I mean, say what you want about the tenants of National Socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos.
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I just want to know what happened to the scary clown epidemic. How did all of these scary clowns just suddenly disappear into thin air? The Russians? Space aliens? Bigfoot?
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Is it possible that clowns still exist but Americans just stopped being cowards about it?
Naahhhhhhh.
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They put regular-person makeup on top of their clownface!
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Trump won the election. Therefore the clown epidemic metastasized and now the killer clowns are indistinguishable from ordinary citizens.
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How did all of these scary clowns just suddenly disappear into thin air?
We are hibernating. It's cold out in the woods.
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More importantly, it allowed everyone to see how dubious this document is, one the CIA and CNN had elevated into some sort of grave national security threat.
I have to ask, have we ever had a situation where the U.S. intelligence community is actively trying to destabilize a U.S. president?
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Well, they've never been so blatant and obvious about it. This shit is almost comical if not for the third world banana republic implications.
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some believe they lied to Bush II and lets not forget what some think they did to Kennedy
I for one would like to limit the CIA to just spying and nothing more or eliminate them all together. -
I have no hope that it will actually happen, but I'd absolutely love it if Trump came down hard on CIA when he's actually in power. Ideally, ending the entire agency and replacing it with something that will at least be moderately accountable.
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Or just using his executive privilege to declassify their fuckups.
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Can you explain why Robby Soave published the video of a mentally handicapped crime victim being tortured and humiliated? Can you explain why Robby Soave repeatedly posted the bound and gagged victim's photograph?
http://reason.com/blog/2017/01.....hows-black
http://reason.com/blog/2017/01.....onsible-fo
I find anti-Trump, partisan hackery at BuzzFeed easier to defend than disregarding the feelings of a mentally handicapped crime victim--and potentially contributing to the victim's public humiliation.
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Why did Soave write an article that said that Trump openly admitted to sexual assault? Why did he praise a man who bombs children as a role model? Because he's an embarrassment to his profession, but he's fortunate that others are more embarrassing.
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Why did Soave write an article that said that Trump openly admitted to sexual assault?
I'd fire my law firm if they didn't have an absolute shit fit over that article. Soave may have actually committed defamation even under the Sullivan standard. "Sexual assault" actually has a defined legal meaning (unlike "sexual predator"). Falsely accusing someone of committing a felony is defamation per se, as well. Falsely claiming that someone has confessed to a felony is a dead easy win, under any defamation standard.
If Trump were nearly as hostile to the 1A, and nearly as quick to sue, as Reason would like us to believe, Reason would be in court right now desperately trying to settle.
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If Trump were nearly as hostile to the 1A, and nearly as quick to sue, as Reason would like us to believe, Reason would be in court right now desperately trying to settle.
You generally settle out of court.
/pedant
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"In court" - you've been sued.
"Desperately trying to settle" - almost never happens until you've been sued.
/king pedant
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Your sentence structure puts the lie to that interpretation.
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Can you explain why Robby Soave published the video of a mentally handicapped crime victim being tortured and humiliated? Can you explain why Robby Soave repeatedly posted the bound and gagged victim's photograph?
I love how you keep harping on this. -
He's got a bloody shirt--and dammit--he's going to wave it.
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Don't get me wrong: Trump's fans will certainly do this.
You seem to be ignoring the other people in the equation, that is, the non-Trump supporters who are looking at this and recognizing that yes, it is a case of "large media outlets (CNN and BuzzFeed) and anti-Trump factions inside the government (CIA) are deploying "Fake News" to destroy him." Trump's diehards are going to justify anything, but the middle America/moderates/independent voters/whatever you want to call them are seeing media actively lie to them in absolutely insane ways. This absolutely helps to further delegitimize American media.
You want to combat 'fake news'? Stop having major mainstream media companies mass-produce the stuff.
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And unequivocally call them on it when they do.
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They're (the media) out of their minds. The bubble they're in must be completely opaque because I know of no one who takes this crap seriously outside of dedicated leftists. Everyone else is standing back and saying "what the fuck?"
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Hell, I'm in Canada, and I've actively had over a dozen people who used to watch CNN religiously for American news drop it and begin to bitch endlessly about how they're promoting the most insane lies imaginable. People are not buying it, and the more they try to double down the more people are getting sick of it.
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I honestly don't think they can back down now. So many reputations are going to be ruined that they're going to beat this dead horse for as long as they can.
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The story that should have run on this isn't "Looky here at this report on Trump's pervy fetishes giving the Russians leverage over him". It should have been "Holy crap, somebody is actually trying to discredit Trump by distributing obvious garbage like this. Here's who those people are."
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You're assuming they have journalistic integrity and are not just trying to smear Trump with whatever they can lay their hands on, real or not.
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Yes, I know, you did say "Should".
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Think of how many allegations against Barack Obama, credible or not, provoked a chorus of liberals making Benghazi jokes
This is what bothers me about the MSM. They STILL run cover about how Hillary and Obama were caught red handed lying about how badly they fucked up that whole situation, to the point that our own ambassador was denied assistance for hours. No one ever held Obama accountable for a laundry list of lies and obfuscations continuing to his last days.
The point has always been easy to see- If it wasn't Obama- say it was Bush who flew half a billion in unmarked bills to Iran as the very same time Iran released four hostages, do you honestly think the media would just accept what the White House claimed that it wasn't a ransom?
Solyndra?
Fast and Furious?
I mean you can't be surprised that Trump fans are cheering him on for calling out Buzzfeed as garbage when they basically looked the other way for the last eight years.
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Don't be too mean to the lefty press. It's not easy to ask the hard questions with a dick in your mouth.
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Lets think about this for a moment. You have this alleged British intelligence document that says the Russians have all this dirt on Trump and is being shopped to the news media all last summer, but was never published because no one could confirm its veracity. .
1. If it was shopped to the media, the Clinton campaign knew about it.
2. If it was legitimate, it was explosive and of great value to the Clinton campaign.
3. The Clinton campaign therefore had every incentive to confirm its veracity.
4. The Clinton campaign could have easily authenticated the document by giving it to the White House and having them call the UK and ask them if it was authentic.
5. So the fact that the Clinton campaign never used this document, is pretty much conclusive proof it is a fake, because if it were real they most certainly would have confirmed that with the British and used it in the campaign.This document is only "newsworthy" to the extent that it opens the question of who faked the document and why. Beyond that, it is completely worthless.
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To give the most obvious example, they should have asked Michael Cohen for comment on whether he had been to Prague at the time the file said he was there, rather than letting us wait til after the piece dropped to see Cohen deny he'd ever been to the city at all.
To be fair, they were ferocious in their non-asking.
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Does the dossier include the real Obama birth certificate from the Kenyan hospital where he was born? Maybe a few receipts from various Muslim "charities" from Barry dated September 12, 2001? A copy of the doctor's report on Michelle's prostate exam? A canceled check from where Hillary bought the gun Vince Foster killed himself with?
Geez, it's like these people ain't even trying. You sneak a little truth in there with your lies and then you've got the plausibility argument knocked in the head. Any one of these things would have headed off any suggestion from Trump's supporters that it's all made-up bullshit.
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If you have never read Legacy of Ashes, you should. It is a tell all history of the CIA. The more I hear about this, the more I am starting to think that only the CIA could fuck up a covert op this badly.
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Someone commenting on Instapundit had the internet comment of the day today. It was
Deep State is John McCain's porn name.
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"By publishing these accusations, BuzzFeed ended that speculation. More importantly, it allowed everyone to see how dubious this document is, one the CIA and CNN had elevated into some sort of grave national security threat."
This may be a real benefit of BuzzFeed publishing the details, but the benefit of that was purely unintentional. BuzzFeed published this stuff to hurt Trump--not to take our intelligence services to task.
And that's what I've been taking from all of this--that Trump may be correct in his assessment last week that our intelligence services have become highly politicized.
In fact, when Trump's people said that, last week, they may have been talking about precisely these details. If i were the incoming President and I'd been given this assessment, and I knew these details were complete fabrications, I'd think our intelligence services were ridiculous and needed to be reorganized, too.
I certainly don't believe anything the FBI says just because the FBI says it. Whatever credibility they had, they've lost it with me. I want independent corroboration of everything they say. As far as I'm concerned, our intelligence services are neither to be disbelieved nor believed. They're just to be noted.
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It can be remarkably easy to believe the things you already want to believe.
Oh yeah, smart guy? How about you prove that unicorns don't exist? You can't do it, can you?
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I tied a virgin to a tree for several hours and a unicorn never showed up.
Then it got dark and I released him back to the Star Wars convention.
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(This is similar to the part of T. H. White's King Arthur books which Disney *didn't* turn into a movie: Teenagers used their sister to lure a unicorn, then killed it.)
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Oops, I mean spoiler alert.
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I don't think I ever finished the book, but I do remember getting that far.
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It was a barrel of laughs, wasn't it?
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It made no impression on me. Honestly, I abandoned the book for failure to hold my interest.
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I would argue - and Reason by its coverage seems to agree - that "shady characters promote dubioius accusations" is a legitimate story.
To do a story along these lines, of course, it's necessary to expose the people circulating the derogatory reports, not accepting the reports under a promise of confidentiality and then publishing them without explaining exactly how the reports were generated. Is the latter what happened with Buzzfeed?
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It's not just a question of Michael Cohen denying a trip to Prague, it's that Michael Cohen was in Los Angeles visiting USC with his son at the time of this supposed trip to Prague, something that USC verified. It's a claim that was easy to check out, only Buzzfeed didn't bother to do some basic reporting to check it out and find out that it was bogus. They simply printed it and threw up their hands, saying "Hey, look, we're not vouching for any of this stuff! We're just publishing it." Does that strike you as responsible journalism, Jacob?
Anyway, the biggest reason I found it hard to buy the report was simple common sense. If Trump's GOP rivals, and later Hillary, were paying for this stuff as oppo research and yet chose not to use it, doesn't it seem likely that it's bullshit? It's not as if presidential campaigns, especially Hillary's, are averse to running with dubious accusations. Harry Reid fucking ADMITTED that he lied through his teeth about Romney's tax returns in 2012. So, this "intel report" was so farcical and obviously bogus that even a bunch of presidential campaigns tossed it into the trash. That's telling.
Also, I still don't buy that it was entirely the work of a British intelligence agent. No Brit calls the World Cup "soccer", period.
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Jacob, Jesse - I've heard it both ways.
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I think that Buzzfeed has the right to publish whatever they want
I think I have the right to look at what they publish and determine that not only the story is false but so is Buzzfeed and anyone else associated with this.
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In a way, the mistake the scum who authored this made was that they went too far. Obama's room? Golden showers? Its just so lurid as to be incredible. Just like the Rolling Stone fake rape article, really. If they had dialed it back, if they didn't live in such a frikkin' bubble that they lost their ability to distinguish "credible" from "don't make me laugh", neither of these would have ever happened.
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Grab its motherfucking golden shower.
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It also shows that if something comes to them from a source inside the intelligence community they will publish it without a simple fact-check, just like WaPo did with the Vermont power-grid hacking story.
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So,Trump has his own 'Golden Path" .
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I can't find the story via google, which is really odd. But instapundit had a link to a Glenn Greenwald piece in the Intercept about these documents. As much as I loath Greenwald's politics, I have to give credit where credit is due. His article on this is spot on and shows a tremendous about of integrity on his part. Greenwald seems to be the only liberal honest enough to make the point that no matter how much you dislike Trump, allowing the CIA to play politics and put out lies is not the way to attack him.
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So Jesse, fuck you for associating a great Beatles tune with pissing on people
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R. Kelly was just too easy.
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"many people will conclude, with Trump's encouragement, that large media outlets (CNN and BuzzFeed) and anti-Trump factions inside the government (CIA) are deploying "Fake News" to destroy him."
I absolutely loathe the man (consistently for a quarter century now) and that's my conclusion as well.
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Meanwhile, there is this.
Ukrainian government officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump by publicly questioning his fitness for office. They also disseminated documents implicating a top Trump aide in corruption and suggested they were investigating the matter, only to back away after the election. And they helped Clinton's allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisers, a Politico investigation found.
http://www.politico.com/story/.....ire-233446
I am sure all of the people claiming to be so concerned about foreign influence in our elections are going to be all over this, right? Bravo to Politico for writing this. I didn't think they had it in them.
And I wonder how many wonks and various beltway sleaze pushing the Russians are under every bed theory are on the payroll of the Ukrainians? More than we know I bet.
