Culture

4Chan Conspiracies And Media Ethics: How Donald Trump’s Pissgate Is Spiralling Out Of Control

The real story behind Pissgate.

by Osman Faruqi  12 January 2017

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It’s only been 24 hours since BuzzFeed controversially published a dossier containing unverified allegations Donald Trump had close ties with the Russian government and was secretly filmed engaging in a golden shower act in a Moscow hotel.

Since then the story has kicked off a huge debate about media ethics but it’s also gone down some very weird paths. 4Chan is claiming the whole thing is a hoax they set up to demonstrate how gullible the media is and Trump has responded by labelling CNN as a purveyor of “fake news” and BuzzFeed a “failing pile of garbage”.

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The controversy has become a focal point for discussions around trust in the media and what kind of president Donald Trump will be. But how important is Pissgate, really? And does it deserve all this attention when we’re just a week away from Trump becoming commander-in-chief?

What We Actually Know About The Trump Allegations

Given how none of the allegations levelled against Trump have been verified, either by the media or US intelligence agencies, it’s not surprising that there are plenty of rumours doing the rounds.

Here’s what we know for sure: The dossier on Trump was written by a former British spy called Christopher Steele. Steele was working for a company called Orbis Business Intelligence. They were hired by Trump’s Republican opponents during the primary race to dig up dirt.

Hiring private firms to conduct “opposition research” (a polite term for building up a dirt file or shit-sheet) is a very common occurrence in US politics. At some point the Republican funding the research (we don’t know who it was) stopped, and a Democratic client (again, we don’t know who) picked up the bill.

According to various media reports Steele tapped his former Russian contacts, from his time as a spy, to build up the file on Trump. That’s how he found out about the alleged links to Putin and Pissgate. But here’s where things start to get a bit murky.

CNN, who broke the story but, unlike BuzzFeed, refused to publish the unverified claims, reported that Steele had handed over the documents to the FBI because he was so concerned about their contents. But it turns out former Republican presidential John McCain had gotten his hands on the dossier as well, and he also decided to hand them over to the FBI.

Back in October last year the US website Mother Jones published a similar story to CNN, claiming a “veteran spy” (most likely Steele) had handed over a file on Trump to the FBI. Other media outlets have also reported that they had access to the dossier well before it was published by BuzzFeed.

So we know it was floating around for months in the intelligence community, Republican circles and in the media. But that doesn’t really help us verify the allegations. That all depends on who Steele’s sources were and if they’re trustworthy.

Is The Whole Thing A 4Chan Conspiracy?

4Chan users are claiming that one of their own, acting as an anti-Trump source, fed the allegations to a Republican Party operative called Rick Wilson. Wilson was an opponent of Trump’s during the primary race and according to 4Chan he passed the information on to other Republicans, before he eventually ended up with Trump who in turn handed it over to the FBI.

The only proof of this story is an archived thread from last November where a poster claims to have fed false information to Wilson.

4chan

There are a bunch of problems with this theory. There’s no records of the poster specifically documenting what he allegedly fed Wilson. 4Chan wants us to just take them at their word that what was in the dossier published by BuzzFeed is exactly what this user made up.

But the biggest problem is that we now know the source for the dossier wasn’t Rick Wilson, who’s denied it all along, but Christopher Steele.

So despite the fact 4Chan is running around claiming credit for having trolled the media, there’s no evidence for it and their supposed theory doesn’t make any sense.

“Fake News”

If the allegations in the dossier can’t be verified does that make the BuzzFeed story fake news? According to Donald Trump the answer is yes, and he’s using the story’s publication to denigrate the media.

But “fake news” has become a meaningless concept. It’s become a term people use to disavow any story they don’t like. The Washington Post is calling on the term to be abandoned, and it’s hard to disagree.

Regardless of what words we use to describe BuzzFeed’s reporting, there are important questions around the publication of the story. It’s now clear that a bunch of reputable media outlets in the US had access to the dossier, including CNN and The New York Times. Both refused to publish the story.

BuzzFeed acknowledged the story was unverifiable, and some of the facts were wrong, but published the full dossier. According to BuzzFeed the decision was taken “so that Americans can make up their own minds about allegations.”

There are strong arguments for and against publishing this kind of material, but that particular argument from BuzzFeed is pretty odd. How exactly are members of the public supposed to make up their minds about allegations that weren’t able to be verified by huge, global news organisations like CNN or the FBI and the CIA?

Journalists, particularly in political contexts, are sent all sorts of stories and rumours about individuals. It’s their job to verify before publishing, rather than just publishing and leaving it for the reader to figure out whether it’s true or not. Lots of people won’t care about Trump having his reputation damaged because… well, it’s Trump, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good precedent to set.

Some media ethicists and journalists have called BuzzFeed “irresponsible” for publishing the dossier. There’s a risk that the decision feeds into Trump’s rhetoric that the media is biased, untrustworthy and out to get him.

As one investigate journalist wrote in the Los Angeles Times: “An unverified piece of gossip thirstily repackaged as adversarial journalism is still an unverified piece of gossip, no matter how much we might long for proof of or intuitively agree with the points it advances.

“If we don’t believe the right should be able to sling mud without sourcing it or ‘just put things out there for the public to decide,’ the left can’t do it either. ”

On the other hand, The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald, who helped publicise the Snowden files, has argued that BuzzFeed made the right call. Greenwald noted that the decision could backfire and boost Trump’s support, but in his view the allegations are so “farcical” they deserved to be aired and dismissed.

What Next?

Trump’s response to the allegations has been typical and effective. He’s fired back at the publications who initially covered the story, namely CNN and BuzzFeed, and accused the media and intelligence agencies of acting like Nazis.

Yes, it’s a completely absurd response, but as we saw during the presidential election campaign absurd doesn’t automatically mean ineffective. Trump is continuing to play up this idea that he’s an anti-establishment figure, fending off attacks from political opponents from both parties and the mainstream media.

Because the allegations haven’t been verified, the story has already moved on. Instead of debating Trump’s alleged Russia links most major outlets in the US are covering his fiery attack on the media. That’s a strategy Trump deployed with great success during the election campaign, aided by the fact that trust in media is at record lows.

The clear takeaway from this whole saga is that if people want to take down Trump it’s going to take a lot more than an unverified dossier full of salacious gossip.

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Feature image via Gage Skidmore