WaPo Media Critic: Steele Dossier 'Bad News' For MSM

A prominent press critic has warned mainstream media outlets they face a “steep journalistic challenge” to back up their initial reporting on the Steele dossier in the wake of the latest indictment secured by special counsel John Durham. 

Washington Post media critic Erik Wemple wrote Monday that last week’s indictment of Igor Danchenko, a key source for former British spy Christopher Steele’s report, is “bad news” for several media outlets — including Wemple’s own employer.

“The Danchenko indictment doubles as a critique of several media outlets that covered Steele’s reports in 2016 and after its publication by BuzzFeed in January 2017 … CNN, MSNBC, Mother Jones, the McClatchy newspaper chain and various pundits showered credibility upon the dossier without corroboration — and found other topics to cover when a forceful debunking arrived in December 2019 via a report from Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz,” Wemple wrote. 

The NY Post reports Danchenko, a Russian citizen living in Virginia, is accused of lying to the FBI regarding his sources — one of whom turned out to be a PR executive with close ties to Bill and Hillary Clinton. Danchenko helped Steele compile the dossier, which put forth several outrageous allegations — including that Russian security services possessed a tape of Donald Trump in a Moscow hotel room with prostitutes who were urinating on a bed where then-President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama had previously stayed.

On Monday, Wemple said the indictment revealed that the sourcing behind the file was “threadbare in the most charitable of depictions,” as were initial media reports about the dossier’s contents.

One example Wemple cited was reporting by the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and ABC News in 2017 alleging that the most headline-grabbing claims in the dossier — including the supposed existence of the “pee tape” — came from Sergei Millian, former president of the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce.

However, Danchenko’s recent indictment claims that while Danchenko “never spoke” to Millian, Steele believed Danchenko had “direct contact” with Millian.