Washington Post’s Erik Wemple Takes CNN and MSNBC to Task Over Steele Dossier Coverage: ‘A Reckoning is Years Overdue’
The Washington Post’s Erik Wemple called out CNN and MSNBC over their coverage of the infamous dossier compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele.
Last week, Special Counsel John Durham — who was appointed by the Trump administration to review the handling of the Russia investigation — indicted Igor Danchenko, a major source included in the Steele dossier, for making false statements to the FBI.
Steele’s dossier, which alleged that Russia had compromising information on Trump, was largely hailed by the media as credible, despite being unverified and containing glaring errors (see: spelling Alfa Group as “Alpha Group” throughout.)
The charges against Danchenko, the dossier’s primary intelligence collector, are further evidence undermining the information included within the document, as he was charged with five counts of making false statements to the FBI regarding his dosser sources.
“The indictment provides further insight into why the FBI had concluded that the dossier was mostly a jumble of claims that were inaccurate, unconfirmed or already publicly reported,” Wemple wrote in a piece criticizing some in the media for their breathless coverage of the dossier.
“Sourcing for the dossier was threadbare in the most charitable of depictions,” he wrote.
In 2017, for example, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow aired a special report on the dossier, claiming that Steele gathered information from “deep cover sources inside Russia.”
Wemple criticized that report, noting that the indictment further proved “Danchenko isn’t a deep-cover type.”
“The Danchenko indictment doubles as a critique of several media outlets that covered Steele’s reports in 2016 and after its publication by BuzzFeed in January 2017,” Wemple wrote. “CNN, MSNBC, Mother Jones, the McClatchy newspaper chain and various pundits showered credibility upon the dossier without corroboration — and found other topics to cover when a forceful debunking arrived in December 2019 via a report from Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz.”
In light of Danchenko’s indictment, multiple news outlets, such as ABC News, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal, announced they are “reviewing” past coverage of the Steele dossier, specifically reporting on Sergei Millian, the former president of the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce.
“The indictment raises new questions about whether Sergei Millian was a source for the Steele dossier, as The Post reported in 2017. We are continuing to report on the origins and ramifications of the document,” the Post’s executive editor Sally Buzbee said in a statement.
While The Washington Post claimed that Millian “shared some tantalizing claims about Donald Trump” with Steele in a 2017 report, Wemple noted that the Danchenko indictment now challenges that allegation.
The indictment, Wemple wrote, claimed Danchenko “never spoke” to Millian, despite the dossier alleging that the two had “direct contact” with each other.
“News organizations may face a mismatch as they place their reporting alongside the indictment. Where the indictment relies on emails, interviews and other powerful investigative tools, the Journal’s initial scoop cited a single anonymous source,” Wemple wrote. “The sourcing for The Post’s reporting about Millian’s alleged conversation is unclear, while ABC News attributes its primary assertion to ‘a person familiar with the raw intelligence provided to the FBI.”
“These news outlets now face a steep journalistic challenge — that of returning to their source(s) in an effort to back up the original claims that Millian was an unwitting source for the dossier,” he continued. “If that effort doesn’t produce enough evidence to surmount the allegations in the indictment, there’s only one option: Retract the stories. Allowing one version of events to sit awkwardly alongside another — and leaving it to the reader to decide — won’t cut it.”
Wemple went on to criticize Maddow for her attempt to downplay the findings of the Danchenko indictment on her show Thursday night, by questioning if Durham’s work is trying “to discredit the whole Russia investigation by arresting various sources for that investigation.”
“Just as Durham can’t use the dossier to deflect from the larger Trump-Russia tableau, however, people such as Maddow and others can’t use the larger Trump-Russia tableau to deflect from their coverage of the dossier,” Wemple concluded. “A reckoning is years overdue.”
