NYT shits all over Buzzfeed & Pissgate media

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But CNN declined to include the specific allegations contained in the dossier — such as collusion between Mr. Trump’s team and Russian operatives — saying that its journalists could not independently verify them

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BuzzFeed’s decision, besides its immediate political ramifications for a president-elect who is to be inaugurated in 10 days, was sure to accelerate a roiling debate about the role and credibility of the traditional media in today’s frenetic, polarized information age.

Of particular interest was the use of unsubstantiated information from anonymous sources, a practice that fueled some of the so-called fake news — false rumors passed off as legitimate journalism — that proliferated during the presidential election.

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In a brief interview in the Times newsroom on Tuesday evening, Dean Baquet, the executive editor of The Times, said the paper would not publish the document because the allegations were “totally unsubstantiated.”

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Immediately after BuzzFeed’s publication, some reporters volunteered that they, too, had received copies of the report. “Raise your hand if you too were approached with this story,” Julia Ioffe, a journalist who has written extensively on Russia, wrote on Twitter, adding that she had not reported on the information in the document “because it was impossible to verify.”

Writers at the blog Lawfare, which covers national security issues, said they had been in possession of the document “for a couple of weeks” but opted not to publish because the allegations were unproven.

“Yes, they are explosive; they are also entirely unsubstantiated, at least to our knowledge, at this stage,” the site wrote on Tuesday night. “For this reason, even now, we are not going to discuss the specific allegations within the document.”

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