The Spicy Dossier, Fake News, and the Role of the Media
January 11, 2017
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It's one fabulously nasty mess both CNN and Buzzfeed created for themselves.
Buzzfeed decided to publish an unsubstantiated dossier full of all kinds of licentious information about president-elect Trump, particularly that he has "deep ties to Russia". CNN then ran with the Buzzfeed story.
The backstory on how the dossier came to be is as bizarre as the document itself.
NOTHING, not even the tiniest little accusation in the report was verified before Buzzfeed hit "publish." They even mentioned that the document had been bouncing around news outlets and reporters for months. Such open secrets are not uncommon. Stories, videos, documents, especially those most sensational in nature are frequently shopped to blogs, news orgs, and reporters. Everyone knows about them. Everyone talks about them. But no one reports them. Why? Because their veracity is unprovable.