A reckoning is hitting news organizations for years-old coverage of the 2017
Steele dossier, after the document's primary source was charged with lying to
the FBI.

Why it matters: It's one of the most egregious journalistic errors in modern
history, and the media's response to its own mistakes has so far been tepid.

Outsized coverage of the unvetted document drove a media frenzy at the start
of Donald Trump's presidency that helped drive a narrative of collusion
between former President Trump and Russia.

� It also helped drive an even bigger wedge between former President Trump
and the press at the very beginning of his presidency.

Driving the news: In wake of the key source's arrest and further reporting on
the situation, The Washington Post on Friday corrected and removed large
portions of two articles.

� To The Post's credit, its media critic, Erik Wemple, has written at length
about the mistakes made by The Post and other media outlets in their coverage
of the dossier.

BuzzFeed News, which made waves in 2017 by publishing the entire dossier,
says it has no plans to take the document down. It's still online,
accompanied by a note that says �The allegations are unverified, and the
report contains errors.�

� Ben Smith, who was BuzzFeed's editor-in-chief at the time and is now a
media columnist at The New York Times, told Axios, �My view on the logic of
publishing hasn't changed."

� BuzzFeed defended the decision in a 2018 lawsuit by arguing that because
the FBI opened an investigation into the Trump campaign's ties to Russia, the
dossier itself was newsworthy, whatever the merits of its contents turned out
to be. It won that case.

Other outlets that gave the document outsized coverage have so far been less
forthcoming.

� CNN and MSNBC did not respond to requests for comment about whether they
planned to revisit or correct any of their coverage around the dossier

� Mother Jones Washington bureau chief David Corn began reporting about the
dossier prior to the 2016 election. Asked by Wemple whether he planned to
correct the record, Corn said," My priority has been to deal with the much
larger topic of Russia�s undisputed attack and Trump�s undisputed
collaboration with Moscow�s cover-up."

� Corn did not respond to a request to speak on the record with Axios.

� The Wall Street Journal told Axios, "We�re aware of the serious questions
raised by the allegations and continue to report and to follow the
investigation closely."

� Axios was among the outlets that did not publish the dossier or original
reporting based on its contents.

What to watch: The Steele screwup will undoubtedly cause an even bigger rift
in trust between Democrats and Republicans.

--
Let's go Brandon!