The decision by the “mainstream media” to run a salacious and unsubstantiated article regarding President-elect Donald Trump that was first posted on the BuzzFeed website has drawn extensive criticism, including accusations that this choice is “the media's latest self-inflicted wound” and “irresponsible journalism.”
Those accusations were made on Tuesday by James Warren, the chief media writer for the Poynter Institute website and former managing editor and Washington Bureau chief for the Chicago Tribune and the New York Daily News.
Noting that “nobody could verify the key details,” Warren stated that those included Trump's “allegedly hiring prostitutes to perform a 'golden showers' show (i.e. urinating) in front of him at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Moscow.”
When the Cable News Network broke the story, the low-rated television channel “did not include the most salacious details and underscored that it could not independently confirm the details about compromising personal and financial information involving Trump.”
“But BuzzFeed decided to not leave anything to the imagination as it ran with an actual 35-page document that was the source of the two-page summary,” Warren noted, “with BuzzFeed underlining in yellow the sexiest (in some cases perverse) allegations.”
“It's not family breakfast table fare,” the media writer stated.
Nevertheless, “the doors were now ajar,” he asserted. “At 6:02 p.m. came this breaking news bulletin from the New York Times: 'Intelligence Chiefs Told President Obama and Donald Trump of Unsubstantiated Reports That Russia Had Salacious Information on Mr. Trump.'"
Warren continued:
The paper's quickie initial story indicated that the material was not corroborated, and the New York Times has not been able to confirm the claims.
But intelligence agencies considered it so potentially explosive that they decided Mr. Obama, Mr. Trump and congressional leaders needed to be told about it and that the agencies were actively investigating it.
“Within an hour or so,” he added, “wire stories or staff-crafted rewrites were everywhere, including the Chicago Tribune, Sacramento Bee, KTLA-TV in Los Angeles and KLIF, a news radio station in Dallas.”
Warren stated: “In my totally random online survey, I found only one outlet that didn't have a story -- the Bangor Daily News in Maine. And nobody could verify the essential claims.”
“BuzzFeed partly rationalized its decision on the notion it was allowing Americans to 'make up their own minds' about allegations about the president-elect that have circulated at the highest levels of the U.S. government."
“Yes, it was merely being a conduit for civic engagement,” Warren continued sarcastically.
BuzzFeed Editor Ben Smith told his staff: “There is serious reason to doubt the allegations. Publishing this document was not an easy or simple call, and people of good will may disagree with our choice. But publishing this dossier reflects how we see the job of reporters in 2017."
That argument “doesn't totally convince me,” the media writer stated. “Just imagine how much total crap the intelligence agencies hear every day and may even pass on to a president or his top aides. Do such transmissions and briefings by their very existence justify media disclosure?”
Consider this possibility, Warren noted: "The CIA informed President Obama that a source in the Middle East claims (without any substantiation) that New England Patriots Quarterback Tom Brady is a secret agent of ISIS (the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria).”
"It represents irresponsible journalism," said Jeffrey Seglin, an ethics and policy expert at Harvard's Kennedy School. "Running a disclaimer that it doesn't know if the source is who he or she says he or she is nor if the facts are correct doesn't make it a responsible editorial decision to publish unsubstantiated information."
Jack Davis, former publisher of the Hartford Courant newspaper, charged: "The purported chain of custody behind this 35 pages of typography ... is so tenuous that it should warn us to keep this unpublished until we can corroborate the links of the chain.”
Davis gave the following example: “A guy says he has heard from guys who have heard guys relate that Russians know something really bad about the next president of the United States."
Even if other media outlets publish it under the de facto cover of “Well, it got brought up in these high-level intelligence briefings to Obama and Trump," there remains a case to go high, not low,” the former publisher asserted.
Davis stated that he would prefer this as an operating principle: "We have standards. And our distinguished newspaper will not be stampeded by irresponsible BuzzFeed postings, and piling-on coverage by CNN and by the New York Times.”
"Somebody has to have standards," the former publisher added.
“Of course, everybody in every corner of this saga -- even Donald Trump -- believes they do,” Warren concluded.
