Why Buzzfeed posted the "dossier"

And why so many Americans don't trust the media

Not for the first time, Semafor editor Ben Smith was asked about his decision to post the notorious “Russian dossier” in January 2017, shortly before former President Donald Trump took the oath of office. I find Smith’s answer unsatisfying and Reason Magazine’s Nick Gillespie’s lack of follow-up disappointing.

In short, neither media big shot seemed bothered that they got played and as a result, big media ran stories that promoted political misinformation.

Here’s the interview.

You made the decision to publish the Steele dossier, the source of the idea that there was a pee tape of Donald Trump—which I hope to God, even if it's true, it never sees the light of day, because I already have nightmares. Most of the Steele dossier has been debunked.

Yes.

What went into your decision making to say, "Okay, we're going with this"? And then what's the effect of something like that on trust in media?

I certainly came to that decision with a sort of Gawker mindset in a way, that we should be saying to our audience the same thing we're saying to each other. That it seems crazy that you and I would have a conversation and then a lawyer or doctor or teacher or construction worker who is in our audience would say, "Hey, what are you talking about?" We'd be like, "Sorry, you're not smart enough to understand this."

A lot of journalists had been given the dossier. It was compiled by, actually at that time, a very well-regarded former British spy who was involved in the FIFA investigations and knew a lot of journalists from that.

We, like I think everybody else, got the dossier later and through a weird side door, so we weren't bound to secrecy. But also we did what everybody else did; we sent a reporter to Prague to see if she could figure out if Michael Cohen had been there. She went from hotel to hotel showing his picture. And it's amazing: People at hotels, I guess in Prague, will just check their guest registry for you, if you're sort of a charming, friendly reporter, apparently. And we went to Moscow to talk to see if anybody at the Ritz-Carlton would discuss this with us.

I was already thinking: Every journalist in Washington has seen this thing, all the intelligence officials, a lot of the senators. Harry Reid has written an open letter to James Comey saying he knows that Comey has compromising information on Trump, demanding he release it. [Arizona Sen. John] McCain is acting super weird in a way that you don't really understand unless you know about this. So at some point you're kind of like, "This is the dark matter of Washington and everyone is in on it, except for the reader." It's hard to explain what's going on, actually, without some reference to it. So we're thinking: How do we cover it?

It wasn't really this grand principle. There's a very specific thing that happens, which is CNN reports that this previously secret document has been briefed to President Obama and President-elect Trump. And that it alleges that Trump was compromised by the Russians. And at that point, to me, it's like, "I'm holding in my hands a list of suspected communists in the State Department." You can't show the document. You can not report on it. Which is where we were. But you can't show it and then say, "But it'll burn your eyes out if you look at it." I just think that's not a tenable position. So that's why we published it.

Problem: The dossier was a piece of fiction, which Gillespie does not acknowledge.

Bigger problem: Yes, the dossier had been peddled to select beltway journalists, but their organizations would not run stories on the cooked-up compromat because it could not be corroborated. And still has not been.

Worst of all: You’d never guess that the dossier was a piece of political disinformation manufactured by Democrats.

Don’t take my word for it. Read what CNN had to say.

Two special counsel investigations, multiple congressional inquiries, civil lawsuits in the US and the United Kingdom, and an internal Justice Department review have now fully unspooled the behind-the-scenes role that some Democrats played in this saga. They paid for the research, funneled information to Steele’s sources, and then urged the FBI to investigate Trump’s connections to Russia.

Where there should be shame, instead there is cluelessness.

Big media outlets were lied to by machine Democrats, and theset guys are yukking it up about how quaint it is that Eastern European reservation clerks talk to reporters. This is why so many Americans do not trust the media.

Debra J. Saunders is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute’s Chapman Center for Citizen Leadership. Feel free to comment, and better yet, to sign up for notifications of future posts.