Bob Woodward Claims He Tried to Warn Journalists About the Steele Dossier

This one of the interesting pull quotes is from a huge effort by Columbia Journalism Review to figure out what went wrong in Russiagate. As a Washington Post journalist and author, Bob Woodward plays only a small part in this series of four parts. However, he is a voice in the wilderness that is narrative journalism. Significant enough to warrant Fox News’ attention.

The authors of “Trumped Up: The Press versus The President” Woodward spoke to me about the point where everything became poisonous. That’s an easy point to identify — the Steele Dossier, swallowed whole by mainstream media outlets despite its clear and obvious problems. Woodward reminds CJR that he went on air at the time — on Fox — to call it a “garbage document,” Only to be ignored by his fellow journalists, especially at The Post:

Two days following the Senate announcement, Bob Woodward appeared on Fox News and called the dossier a “garbage document” That “never should have” a part of an intelligence briefing. Later, he told me that the Post wasn’t interested in his harsh criticism of the dossier. Woodward stated that he was not interested in his harsh criticisms of Fox after his comments on Fox. “reached out to people who covered this” At the paper, identify them only generically “reporters,” Woodward explained why he was so critical. Woodward replied, “How did they react?” “To be honest, there was a lack of curiosity on the part of the people at the Post about what I had said, why I said this, and I accepted that and I didn’t force it on anyone.”

Give one cheer to Woodward for getting this right, but he didn’t exactly go out on a limb after that to counter the narrative. Woodward himself has been known to push a narrative and cut corners when necessary to get the job done. Woodward and Carl Bernstein have tended to exaggerate Woodward’s Watergate success and make it seem like he is the only one who can do the job.

Woodward at least recognized the danger in swallowing entire dubious claims just because they fit your preferred narrative. CJR’s lengthy report denies that the media, in particular the New York Times, do this.

One result of Durham’s investigation has been to further discredit the dossier in the eyes of many in the media. It prompted the Washington Post to retract large chunks of a 2017 article in November 2021, and to follow with a long review of Steele’s sources and methods. Similar looks were done by CNN and the Wall Street Journal.

The Times has offered no such retraction, though the paper and other news organizations were quick to highlight the lack of firsthand evidence for many of the dossier’s substantive allegations; “third hand stuff” Isikoff now refers to them as “third-hand information”. They seldom, if ever, mentioned that the FBI inquiry originated from third-hand information.

For its insight into narrative journalism, this is a priceless look at how the NYT office reacted to the Mueller Report.

In July 2019, after seven painful hours of investigation into whether Donald Trump was conspiring with Russia, Robert Mueller III, the special prosecutor, finally said no.

“Holy shit, Bob Mueller is not going to do it,” is how Dean Baquet, then the executive editor of the New York Times, described the moment his paper’s readers realized Mueller was not going to pursue Trump’s ouster.

Baquet admitted to his colleagues at a town meeting that the Times had been caught shortly after the testimony ended. “a little tiny bit flat-footed” by the outcome of Mueller’s investigation.

The NYT continues to be adamant about its coverage on Russiagate in general and the Steele dossier in particular. CJR was informed by Baquet that the Times “covered the story better than anyone else,” Baquet pointed to the awards that had been given for their coverage. CJR’s analysts scoffed at Baquet’s defense, and that forms the core of their retrospective on the damage done to journalism:

The outside of the Times’ own bubble, the damage to the credibility of the Times Its persistence, three years later, is evident and will likely take on new energy as the nation confronts yet another election season fueled by animosity toward the media. The root of this conflict was an undeclared warfare between entrenched media and an emerging type of disruptive presidency that has its own hyperbolic version the truth. (The Washington Post has tracked thousands of Trump’s false or misleading statements.) Trump was sometimes seen to play with the media, giving spontaneous answers to questions regarding Russia that pointed to darker narratives. The follow-ups to these stories were either downplayed, or ignored when they were not authoritatively cut.

Trump and his conservative media allies fueled the political storm. But the most important flashpoints were created by mainstream journalism.

CJR points out that the damage to journalistic credibility was nothing short of devastating. The credibility of the American media was rated highly prior to 2016. A Reuters poll found that the American press had fallen to the bottom of a 46 nation ranking by 2022. Only 26% believed mainstream media were reliable sources of information. The clear bias in reporting about the farcical Russia collusion claim and the unambiguous drive of editors like Baquet, to push Trump out the office have played a major role in that disillusionment.

The editorial clique, however, prefers to read this. Added to the number of narratives Instead of returning to reporting facts. “Objectivity has got to go,” Emilio Garcia Ruiz, editor in chief at the San Francisco Chronicle, said this during a review on the current media meltdown. Cronkite News Lab. One of Woodward’s former colleagues at the Post, former executive editor Leonard Downie Jr, argues that the journalist’s own life experiences and need for expression and diversity trumps the value of objective reporting:

“[I]ncreasingly, reporters, editors and media critics argue that the concept of journalistic objectivity is a distortion of reality. They point out that the standard was dictated over decades by male editors in predominantly White newsrooms and reinforced their own view of the world,” Downie Jr. wrote. “They believe that pursuing objectivity can lead to false balance or misleading “bothsidesism” Reporting on stories about race, gender, LGBTQ+ rights and income inequality as well as climate change are some of the topics that we cover. And, in today’s diversifying newsrooms, they feel it negates many of their own identities, life experiences and cultural contexts, keeping them from pursuing truth in their work.”

“Journalists of color” Journalists from the LGBTQ community stated that they report objectively “negates their own identity, life experiences and cultural contexts, keeping them from pursuing truth in their work,” According to Downie, Jr.

The American media industry is planning to repeat the foolishness that led them down the primrose road with the Steele dossier. This is a public embrace narrative journalism over facts and the need for journalism that serves its own interests rather than those of its consumers.