Media Scramble to Whitewash Deceptive Steele Dossier Reporting

Every American who has paid any attention to national politics over the last five years is familiar with a set of documents that became known as the Steele dossier and the way the media reported it. Those documents were in fact a collection of salacious rumors and unverified allegations concerning former President Donald Trump. Recently, the Steele dossier has found its way into the news once again – but for a reason nobody could have anticipated.

One journalist, writing a lengthy article for one of the most prominent national news outlets and published by the said outlet on November 19, observed:

“Legitimate questions are now being raised about the dossier -- how it was used by Democrats as a political weapon against Trump, how it was handled by the FBI and US intelligence agencies, and how it was portrayed in the mainstream media.”

One could be forgiven for thinking that the journalist in question was a Trump supporter or, if not, then at least an individual with conservative or Republican leanings. The article containing the above words was surely published on the Fox News website or perhaps any one of the other prominent conservative news sites – maybe by Liberty Nation, in fact. But, no; these words were written by one Marshall Cohen, who reports for CNN and, yes, this article, which takes a critical look at the origins of the Steele dossier and how it was used, was published on CNN’s website. Finally, it appears, at least a handful of people at the Cable News Network have tested positive for journalism.

Indeed, Cohen even goes as far as admitting, “Trump swiftly rejected [Christopher] Steele's claims and said a ‘group of opponents ... put that crap together.’ Nearly five years later, it's clearer than ever that he wasn't too far off about the origins of the dossier.”

The people at CNN aren’t the only ones, apparently. One of the nation’s most prominent newspapers – the one that bears the name of America’s capital city but is now owned by one of the world’s largest corporations – has also seen fit to retract, correct, and delete some of its own fevered reporting on a piece of political opposition research – the dossier – that was compiled by a man who admitted he was desperate to stop Trump from becoming president.

That newspaper has quickly rewritten its own highly erroneous reporting on the imaginary conspiracy between Trump and the Russians to steal the 2016 presidential election.

An Outbreak of Journalism?

Unfortunately, the tests for an infection of journalism are, like so many COVID tests, producing false positives. Reports of the death of objective news reporting have not been greatly exaggerated. There is no collective mea culpa going on, here. CNN and the newspaper mentioned are simply attempting to cover their tracks. For more than four years they eagerly and intentionally misled the American public with entirely unverified stories of some shady – and potentially treasonous – relationship between Trump and the Russian government. They did this initially to try to swing the 2016 election to Hillary Clinton and, later, to delegitimize Trump’s election victory and his presidency. Only now, as the investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia collusion hoax is producing federal indictments, are these media entities scrambling to whitewash their own past deceit.

The entire four-plus-year deception perpetrated by the Clinton presidential campaign, the Democratic Party, former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, and the establishment media upon the American people should never be forgotten or forgiven.

Thomas Jefferson, who was no friend of the media but who understood the vital importance of independent, objective journalism, once said, “Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.” Of course, it is debatable whether most of the modern establishment media could be accurately described as the “free press.” Jefferson also said, “Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle.”

~ Read more from Graham J. Noble.