Media Did Not Fall For The Russia Collusion Hoax. They Were Part Of It – The Federalist

Soon after Special Counsel John Durham indicted Igor Danchenko, the Primary Sub-Source of the Steele dossier, on five counts of lying to the FBI, the press paused to feign a moment of public introspection. The corrupt medias attempt to frame their failings as mere confirmation bias, however, holds no truer than the Russia-collusion hoax they peddled for five years.

The proof of this reality is seen in the prostitute sex tapes: the non-existent golden showers one and the verifiable, but ignored, Hunter Biden videos.

The first step of what appeared, at least momentarily, to be the kick-off of a mea culpa parade came earlier this month when the Washington Post amended large segments of two articles covering the Russia-collusion storyline, one from March 2017 and the second from February 2019.

Both articles had named Sergei Millian, a Belarusian-American businessman, as the individual identified as Source D in the Steele dossier. While Millian had long denied speaking with Danchenko or having any role in the dossier, it was only after Durham charged the Russian-born Danchenko and former Brookings Institute employee with lying about receiving a telephone call from Millian that the Post and other media outlets removed the claims.

Then, last week, The New York Times ran a guest essay by professor of journalism and former Columbia Journalism School dean Bill Grueskin, headlined, How Did So Much of the Media Get the Steele Dossier So Wrong?

To Grueskin the problem was multi-pronged. Grueskins prologue to why so many were taken in so easily was simple: The dossier seemed to confirm what they already suspecteda corruption of Donald Trump that spanned from dodgy real estate negotiations to a sordid hotel-room tryst, all tied together by the president-elects obeisance to President Vladimir Putin of Russia.

From there, Grueskin listed the problems, which amazingly all belonged to Trump. Trump had long curried Mr. Putins favor and he and his family were eager to do business in Russia. Then there was Trumps choice of Paul Manafort as his campaign chair that reinforced the idea that he was in the thrall of Russia.

Adding to the perfect storm that explained the press failures, Grueskin posited that journalists also had to deal with the fact that many of the denials came from confirmed liars. Further complicating the matter, Grueskin wrote, was that some reporters simply didnt like or trust Mr. Trump, and didnt want to appear to be on his side.

Here, Grueskin quoted from former Times reporter Barry Meiers book Spooked: Plenty of reporters were skeptical of the dossier, but they hesitated to dismiss it, because they didnt want to look like they were carrying water for Trump or his cronies.

Bunk. The corrupt media did not fall for the Russia collusion hoax. They were part of it.

How else to explain the scathing email Jake Tapper sent BuzzFeed editor Ben Smith after the latter published the dossier? I think your move makes the story less serious and credible[.] I think you damaged its impact, the CNN anchor wrote.

On that point at least, Tapper was correct. The actual dossieras opposed to select excerpts or word-smithed summaries pushed by the anti-Trump presswas a laughably fake document. When the public saw the source, they didnt buy it, and, really, neither did the press.

For all corporate medias ex post facto efforts to rationalize why they fell for the dossier, only one holds true: They didnt like Trump, personally or politically.

Now, Joe Biden, they like. So when weeks before the November 2020 election, when The New York Post published multiple stories revealing damaging information recovered from an abandoned laptop bearing a Biden Foundation sticker, social media silenced the story and corporate media spun it as Russia disinformation.

The same folks who supposedly bought anonymous claims that Trump had paid prostitutes to pee on a bed the Obamas had once slept in found the actual videos of Hunter Biden with prostitutes unbelievable. Likewise, we are to believe Trumps supposed shady business deals made the dossier plausible to the press, while unworthy of the medias trust were genuine emails discussing a 10 percent cut reserved for the Big Guy as part of a Biden family deal being plotted with a Chinese energy giant.

And we are to suppose that the press that pushed the Russia collusion hoax did so hesitantly and out of a desire not to carry water for Trump and his cronies, all while they carried Biden over the finish line, where he now sits as the commander-in-chief across the virtual table from Chinas Xi Jinping.

Sure, now the corporate media is expending some effort to report on Hunter Bidens partnership in 2016 with a Chinese state-backed company that gave the communist organization ownership of an African cobalt mine. That profitable investment by the younger Biden gave China control over much of the worlds production of cobaltan essential element for electric car batteries. With the Biden administrations latest spending proposal earmarking billions for promoting electric vehicles, we now see reporters beginning to probe whether the presidents son remains a financial beneficiary of that deal.

But that the corrupt media turned a blind eye to the evidence of a China-Biden scandal in 2020 lays bare the lie that journalists fell for the dossier and the Russia-collusion conspiracy theory because of a confirmation bias. There was no confirmation bias in playit was collusion, pure and simple.

Margot Cleveland is a senior contributor to The Federalist. Cleveland served nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk to a federal appellate judge and is a former full-time faculty member and adjunct instructor at the college of business at the University of Notre Dame.The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

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Media Did Not Fall For The Russia Collusion Hoax. They Were Part Of It - The Federalist