Veteran journalist Bob Woodward’s scathing remarks about the media’s handling of the Russiagate saga and the Christopher Steele dossier were met with widespread silence in the industry this week.
Woodward was one of several major figures who spoke to the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) for its post-mortem — published this week after 18 months of work — on the story of alleged collusion between Donald Trump and Russia. But that consumed the American media for years. Woodward, the legendary Washington Post reporter who helped break the Watergate scandal in the 1970s and conducted several eye-opening interviews with President Trump, said the news coverage of the Russia inquiry was “not well handled.” Gone” and believed that viewers and readers had been “cheated”.
He also claimed in the report that he had warned Washington Post reporters working on Russia collusion stories that he had made the Christopher Steele dossier public in 2017 as a “trash document.” Why was it critically criticized and Post reporters expressed a lack of curiosity about it? topic.
By Jeff Garth Long work for CJR The media coverage of the Trump-Russia story has had several key moments, including the press’s handling of the now-infamous Steele dossier in a credible manner, the New York Times and Washington Post’s use of stories that advance an ideology. This includes awarding the Pulitzer Prize, which ultimately did not materialize. Consequences, misleading or omitted facts and figures that clouded the media’s favored Russia collusion narrative, and the media’s 2019 letter to then-Attorney General Bill Barr on the findings of Robert Mueller’s investigation. Summarized.
Veteran journalist Bob Woodward was critical of the media’s Russiagate reporting.
(Fox News)
The liberal Columbia Journalism Review offers a scathing indictment of the New York Times’ Russiagate coverage
In 2018, reporters from The New York Times and The Washington Post shared the Pulitzer Prize for “deeply public-interest, sustained reporting coverage of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and its links to the Trump campaign.” dramatically advanced the nation’s understanding of the President-elect’s transition team and his eventual administration.”
Both The Times and The Post have cited the Pulitzer as validation of their reporting, but the awards have come under fire as the Russiagate story and the idea that Trump is involved in a diabolical conspiracy wither. Reporters who won the prestigious award for their Russia reporting largely ignored requests for comment on Woodward’s remarks.
New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman, Michael S. Schmidt, Mark Mazzetti, Adam Antos, Matt Apuzzo, Joe Baker, Adam Goldman, Sharon LaFreniere and Matthew Rosenberg did not respond when reached. The New York Times’ media relations department also did not respond to a request for comment.
Washington Post reporter Roseland Halderman cited the paper’s media relations team, which released a statement defending the paper.
The Pulitzer Prize board announced earlier last year that it was standing by its 2018 national reporting awards to The New York Times and The Washington Post for their coverage of alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
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“We are proud of our coverage of the investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 campaign, including our stories that were awarded a Pulitzer Prize for advancing the nation’s understanding of this consequential period. Responsibility. On the few occasions when new information came to light that caused us to re-evaluate past reporting, we did so frankly,” a Post spokesperson said.
The Washington Post has corrected more than a dozen articles related to the Steele dossier coverage
Post reporters Philip Rooker, Greg Miller, Alan Nakashima, Tom Hamburger, Greg Jaffe and Sari Horwitz did not respond to individual requests for comment. Post reporter Devlin Barrett said he was on “ski mountain” when contacted but referred to the title of his book, “October Surprise: How the FBI Tried to Save Itself and Crash the Election.” “
Some conservatives have questioned why Woodward did not criticize the Russiagate coverage more forcefully at the time. Woodward did not respond to a request to clarify his remarks.
“He told his Post colleagues the dossier was garbage, but they ignored it, and he accepted it,” conservative media watchdog Tim Graham tweeted Wednesday.
Gareth was largely critical of major news outlets and rehashed some of the lesser points that marked the media frenzy for his CJR report.
The Washington Post has since corrected reporting that Belarusian-American businessman Sergei Millin was the primary source of the dossier’s claim of collusion between Trump and the Kremlin, and has had to redact several other stories in the dossier.
The Times criticized Garth’s writing for a variety of stories. A clear example of this was an alleged bombshell article on February 14, 2017, headlined, “Trump campaign aides had repeated contacts with Russian intelligence.” It cited four anonymous U.S. officials, and editors enthusiastically approved the story, captured on camera in the 2018 Showtime series “The Fourth Estate,” which gained behind-the-scenes access to the paper. of But it was torn apart behind the scenes by then-FBI agent Peter Strzok, a staunch Trump opponent who now appears frequently on MSNBC. In his notes at the time, he said he was unaware of any contact between Trump advisers and Russian intelligence officials.
Former President Donald Trump told the Columbia Journalism Review that he had to contend with “unbelievable fake stories” during his presidency.
(AP Photo/Andrew Harnick, File)
The Times was also called out in 2018 for not reporting on texts Strzok released about not being involved when Mueller’s investigation first began. “There is none greater,” he wrote. “We should have run it,” a former Times journalist admitted to CJR.
Elon Musk Agrees to Russiagate as One of the ‘Most Misguided and Disingenuous Conspiracy Theories’ Spread by Mainstream Media
A senior media insider with deep ties to Washington said there were certainly figures who were skeptical about the Steele dossier, but “the mainstream media got on the bandwagon and became a vindictive thing.” Which had a lot of flaws because it was sensational.” He compared it to the media’s role in the build-up to the Iraq War and the eventual conflict.
“I think any time something is sensational there needs to be a lot more investment in investigating every aspect of it, and so yes, I think there has to be serious introspection about that environment. where conflicting information thrives,” he said.
In several instances, the Times was also criticized in the CJR report for not publishing responses from figures criticized in its stories.
The Pulitzer Committee announced in 2022 that it had investigated and determined that subsequent information did not invalidate his credibility. Award-winning stories. There were 20 listed on the Pulitzer site and many of them relied heavily on anonymous sources.
Mueller’s report ultimately concluded that there were no indictable cases of collusion or collusion between Trump’s team and the Russians, and ten episodes that raised questions of possible collusion but did not determine that. that such crimes were committed; Trump’s orbit summed up the results in his favor: “No collusion, no obstruction.”
As for Woodward, he called Mueller’s final report “trash” and Mueller’s restrained, less-than-credible testimony before Congress in 2019, apparently infuriating liberal media figures who have been Trump for years. were clinging to it as a lifeline to prevent
The CJR report has received attention in some pockets of the media this week but little consideration or engagement by the mainstream press.
Independent journalist Matt Taibbi, who has found himself in the mainstream media crosshairs in recent months covering the Twitter files, challenged mainstream outlets to engage with Garth’s findings.
“What’s puzzling about the omertà surrounding the CJR opus on Russiagate coverage is that it comes at a time when media companies as businesses are in crisis. The obvious solution is to rebuild trust, and that’s Can’t if they won’t. Face this car wreck,” Taibi tweeted on Wednesday.
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