Nothing to see here, folks. Move along please. Get on with your lives.

The news story is not "Trump got peed on by prostitutes" (even though that is hilarious and I so hope it's true); the news story is Trump and Obama were briefed on the possible existence of audio and video tapes from multiple locales and the possibility of Russian bribery attempts on Trump. Saying this is fake news is like saying when the President gets briefed on intel chatter about possible terrorist attacks is "fake news" just because the attacks might not happen.

 

"Saying this is fake news is like saying when the President gets briefed on intel chatter about possible terrorist attacks is "fake news" just because the attacks might not happen."

That's not what happened here, and you know it.

What happened here is that Buzzfeed reported the equivalent of "Terrorist chatter says there's going to be an attack at the Washington Monument at 4 PM on Saturday, January 14, but we're not totally sure it's true. In fact it probably isn't, but use your own judgment." THAT'S fake news.

 

The journalistic principle at stake here is very simple: You do not publish damaging, unsubstantiated, anonymous allegations.

You don't do this even if the subject of the allegations is extremely prominent; even if the allegations are being widely gossiped about; or even if the subject is a loathsome person with a long history of spreading damaging, unsubstantiated rumors about others.

And saying "some guy said this to me, I don't know whether it's true but here you go" does not absolve a journalist of either legal or ethical obligations for accuracy. ​

The simple reason BuzzFeed should not have published the Trump Russia dossier

 

OMG! What a perfect analogy. I had not thought of that one.

 

Here's what seems like a pretty sober assessment from the Guardian, with a lot of info on the former MI6 agent, now confirmed as Christopher Steele.

Trump dossier: intelligence sources vouch for credibility of report's author

Interesting read. It points out that while the info in the dossier may or may not be true (or some of both), it is highly likely that Steele did a professional job compiling it, and didn't make anything up. Did his Russian sources? We don't yet know.