The Media Stonewalls on the Steele Dossier News companies are even more reluctant than other businesses to come clean about their misbehavior. By Eric Dezenhall
‘Why don’t they just fess up and say they’re sorry?” That is the question journalists have asked about the corporate and institutional clients of my crisis-management business. It’s a question media companies should be asking themselves amid the implosion of the Steele dossier. Here we are, a few weeks after the dossier was discredited, and no one has paid a price.
Having had media companies as clients, I’ve found that when they’re under fire, they behave no differently from chemical or drug companies. Why? Because they don’t see coming clean as being in their self-interest.
Among other things, the truth can tarnish the brand and jam them up in court. So they often deny, stonewall, close ranks, and attack their critics. Two things media companies have that other businesses don’t is the ability to deliver news instantly and the mantle of moral authority.
The crisis confronting the news media post-dossier is rooted in disinformation. In the crisis business, we often do detective work to uncover the sources of disinformation leveled at our clients. The first factor in a successful disinformation campaign is an audience that desperately wants to believe something. Then you find a plausible allegation that fits the marketplace. Next, you implant an outrageous allegation within the plausible one. Finally, you find a trustworthy person, someone simpatico with media organizations, to let it rip.
The merchandising of the Steele dossier fits this template. First, there was fertile ground for an anti-Trump narrative. Donald Trump’s rise was especially odious to journalistic and cultural elites. Then there was the shiniest object in the dossier, the infamous “pee tape” that no one credible has claimed to have seen. Finally, there were operatives with strong ties to the media, including Democratic Party consultants and former journalists billed as “marketplace intelligence” researchers who are, in reality, press agents.
When nonmedia companies make unforced errors, the fallout is punishing—lost sales, congressional hearings, lawsuits and management shakeups. When journalists fumble in the manner of the Steele dossier, however, the immediate reaction is rewarding—blockbuster stories, clicks, ratings and ad sales.
consequences tend to manifest as a vague generational erosion in credibility, which is happening now in the acceptance of the “fake news” battle cry.
Then there is the power of the First Amendment and impotence of American defamation law, which affords the media considerable free rein. New clients are often stunned when I explain that there is no law enforcing journalistic accuracy; there are only laws against engaging in a demonstrable conspiracy to injure a target by knowingly or recklessly injuring that target through false reporting—something that’s almost impossible to prove.
Finally, there is the self-regard of some journalists convinced that theirs is a chosen profession. They are incapable of thinking that they could be as wrong as the people and institutions they cover.
On the few occasions where I have played a role in encouraging a media outlet to kill a proposed story, the disappointed journalists often allege that their story was spiked because their target lied or used its vast power to intimidate the press. You rarely hear the more likely explanation, which is that the reporter couldn’t nail down the story and an ethical editor stopped it.
It is in the short-term interest of a media company to stand by its reporting—and behind the First Amendment—rather than say it was wrong and face the consequences.
In the Steele case, when the media would normally be screaming for an apology, only some, such as the Washington Post, have bothered to correct their stories. But the Post didn’t really examine why it got the story wrong in the first place.
The New York Times is in an even deeper credibility crisis: The newspaper would have to admit it was wrong; in addition, a Times reporter helped turn the collusion story in one direction. The rest of the media, including the Times, followed because the tale was too good to resist.
The reluctance to correct course is often justified with the logic: Well, our hearts were in the right place or Something rotten still happened there. Imagine executives of a pharmaceutical company responding to claims that their drug injured or killed people by conveying that they tried hard to make a good drug, but—oops.
Journalists are right to dig for malfeasance. But with all the hand-wringing over the decline of good journalism, it turns out that one reason why someone like Donald Trump could win a political knife fight by shouting “Fake news!” is that, on the Steele dossier, he was right.
Mr. Dezenhall is CEO of Dezenhall Resources Ltd., a crisis management firm, and the author of the novel “False Light.”
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