Which is more credible, Trump, the Trump dossier or the BBC’s reporting of the dossier?
The BBC has known of the dossier for a long time and could not justify publishing it because it was completely unsubstantiated. What the BBC needed was a Forlorn Hope, someone to sacrifice themselves for the cause, to publish what the BBC suspects is fake news knowing that this will open the door for the BBC and its ilk to report on the dirty dossier without tainting their own reputations whilst generating massive, negative headlines and trending rumours about Trump…Buzzfeed stepped up to be the fall-guy. The fact that the allegations are almost certainly untrue is irrelevant, the hugely damaging headlines and rumours will inevitably hurt Trump and that seems to have been the intent from the start rather than a seeking after the truth.
The BBC clearly knows the dossier is a nonsense, it reads as if it were written by a student set on spoofing someone…indeed people are claiming just that...but the BBC doesn’t report the doubts about the file, it rather spends its time trying to insinuate that the dossier is credible and authentic.
The BBC of course expects that few people will read the dossier and that the BBC version of the truth will become The Truth. They know that if people did read it they would instantly become aware that the dossier was suspect, written as it is in a very unprofessional style, packed with inconsistancies, errors of fact and detail. Supposedly written by a highly educated MI6 officer who speaks Russian and specialised in Russian affairs the dossier made mistakes that such a person should never make but I have yet to see the BBC make anything other than a cursory qualification of the accuracy and veracity of the dossier.
The document makes what seem personal comments that don’t fit with an intelligence document, the author expresses what are his own personal feelings it seems and the dossier has inconsistencies throughout….it states that Russia took fright at the reaction to the email hack and decided not to produce any more intelligence and ‘leaks’…then it states that Russia will in fact exploit the emails further and go as far as to create uyet more content. It tell us that Trump’s team were also utterly dismayed at the reaction to the emails…or not…apparently the Trump team was also entirely relaxed about the email scandal because it distracted the Media from Trump’s corrupt dealings with the Chinese. Oh..hang on…the MSM have tried for months to substantiate the claims in the dossier and they cannot find any dirt about China and Trump? Then again why did the people who commissioned the report, supposedly Jeb Bush at first, then the Democrats, not use the dossier? Surely the Dems would have seen it as a very powerful weapon to take down Trump and as Trump makes very undiplomatic statements about China why does China, with a famous cyberwarfare capability, not respond by ‘leaking’ Trump’s apparently corrupt practices in China?
The dossier is written in such a way that little that is claimed can be verified….the FSB will not be releasing any compromising material it has on Trump and it is unlikely they admitted having such material to an ex-MI6 agent to help him damage Trump when according to GCHQ and the CIA Russia was trying to help Trump [The BBC can’t have it both ways]. The dossier claims Trump’s team were feeding Russia information on Russian oligarchs in the US in return for dirt on Hillary….really? The Russians couldn’t find out for themselves what their own people were up to? They have their own ex-pat community in the US who could provide plenty of information if so inclined. …or just read it in the newspapers.
We read that Trump was offered substantial business deals in Russia which mysteriously he didn’t accept…then we read that it was Trump making great efforts to find investments in Russia but failed…and instead had to ‘settle for the use of extensive sexual services there from local prostitutes rather than business success’. That sounds credible no? What rubbish is this? Why has the BBC fallen hook, line and sinker for it?
The dossier claims that the Russians have been grooming Trump for 8 years….so the CIA et al had no idea and did nothing to stop Trump becoming President? Did the Russians really see Trump as the next President 8 years ago? LOL. No one thought Trump would be President 8 weeks ago.
The dossier, for all its complete lack of proof and evidence, has a remarkable level of detail in some respects….it knows exactly what very senior people in Russian government were saying and indeed what they were drinking at the time. For a one man band Mr Steele seems remarkably effective and wide ranging in his information gathering…not only having extensive contacts within the Russian intelligence services and with senior Russian politicians but also moles in the Republican Party, Russian ex-pats in the US and Democrat sources amongst many others.
There’s lots more nonsense in the dossier…read it and laugh.
Curious though that the CIA itself didn’t know any of this and indeed has been unable to substantiate any of it…as neither has the well resourced MSM which has tried for months to do so….even the Guardian takes a swipe at Buzzfeed….
Prestige, trust, truth: flimsy and amorphous but essential for the survival of good journalism, as opposed to rumour and lies. In these dangerous times – both for journalism and the world – “newsworthy” is not enough. It is wrong for any respected news organisation to publish information it knows may not be true.
Hmmm…’wrong for any respected news organisation to publish information it knows may not be true.‘ And yet the BBC has been peddling this story as it it were true for days now…..but shamelesly it has also thrown its collaborator to the wolves as it also attacks Buzzfeed and boasts about itself….
Just as traditional media included many different types of publisher – tabloids v broadsheets, for example – so new, digital media include those who exhaustively check their facts and proceed with caution and those who are prepared to publish unverified allegations because they think the public should know…..The BBC is in the former camp.
I’m sorry what? The BBC checks their facts and proceeds with caution? Indeed, the BBC refused, as said to publish this dossier itself because they knew it stank and their reputation would be ruined….and yet as soon as its partner published the BBC were there to exploit it and make the headlines with lurid claims about Trump….all ‘caution’ cast to the wind because there was a separation between the dossier and the BBC now.
The dossier is nothing that could not be produced by someone in a broom cupboard with an internet connection joining up the dots to make a whole that is false but superficially believable…Trump was here, his colleagues were there…spin a web of intrigue around that, associate it with world events, throw in some completely unprovable claims that Trump had met and was working with Russian intelligence and bingo…a conspiracy that had enough legs to at least get people talking even if most respected media outlets refused to touch it with a barge pole despite absolutely hating Trump. It was meant as a media hit job, a character assassination, but it seems to have backfired due to its amateurish nature. The BBC liked it though….Frank Gardner, the security expert, loved it.
Oh and lastly….loved this.
Remember, ironically, that Buzzfeed was the BBC’s and the Guardian’s organ of choice that fed them stories about the shocking rise of fake news with which they berated the right-wing press as the supposed purveyors of of such untruths…now both the Guardian and the BBC aren’t so enamoured with such claims….very childish they think…playground taunts and pernicious umbrella terms….
The Guardian….
After admitting that he wasn’t entirely sure whether the dossier was dodgy or not in his note to staff, Smith predictably earned the ire of Trump, who called BuzzFeed a “disgrace” and the website “a failing pile of garbage”. The next US president then resorted to the modern version of the playground chant of “liar, liar, pants of fire” when he said of the report: “It’s all fake news.”
The BBC….
Finally, life has been made harder for other news organisations, such as The New York Times and CNN, who Trump targeted in his remarkable press conference.
They have now been conflated with Buzzfeed under Trump’s pernicious umbrella term “fake news”.
I think we can safely conflate the BBC under Mr Trump’s pernicious umbrella…very useful when there are golden showers about no?