jimnyc
12-04-2017, 05:51 PM
Well, well, well. And how great would it be if it turned out to be CNN? But appears it started with the WSJ. Poltico?
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Fusion GPS Scandal Implicates Media In Possible Pay-To-Publish Scheme
A court filing from the U.S. district court for DC shows that Fusion GPS paid several journalists and was paid by a media organization.
Court filings released last month by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence suggest growing evidence of a pay-to-publish scandal that may shake large parts of the Washington press corps.
At the center of the controversy is the Washington DC-based communications shop Fusion GPS, which assembled and distributed the so-called “Steele dossier.” It’s named after former British spy Christopher Steele, who is believed to have authored the document alleging that Donald Trump and members of his campaign colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election. Steele acknowledges that some of the dossier’s information is sourced to Russian officials, including a “top-level intelligence officer.”
In its other Russia-related work, Fusion GPS engaged in a media campaign opposing a law targeting foreign nationals across the globe for human rights abuses. In its advocacy against the Global Magnitsky Act, a worldwide extension of the U.S. legislation imposing sanctions on Russian officials and other figures associated with the Russian government for their involvement in the detention and death of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, Fusion GPS mirrored Kremlin talking points.
Now the court filing from the U.S. district court for DC shows that Fusion GPS paid several journalists, including three who reported on “Russia issues relevant to [the committee’s] investigation,” the House Intelligence Committee said in a court filing.
The documents did not release the names of the journalists and media organization.
How Fusion GPS Used Media Contacts
To understand the role Fusion GPS played in promoting and distributing the Steele dossier as well as the company’s work to undermine the Magnitsky Act, we’ll need a fuller account of Fusion GPS’s relationship with the journalism industry its principals left and then cultivated.
The story starts at the Wall Street Journal, which is taking fire from the rest of the profession, plunging the paper into what some have described as a civil war between its traditionally right-wing editorial page and left-leaning news desk.
“I don’t know a single WSJ alum who’s not agog at where that edit page is heading,” tweeted former Wall Street Journal reporter Neil King, reacting to a Journal editorial calling for the firing of Robert Mueller. “WSJ edit page has gone full bats–t, now hosting an op-ed suggesting Trump pardon everyone, including himself,” tweeted former high-ranking Wall Street Journal editor Bill Grueskin, now a professor at the Columbia School of Journalism.
When the Journal’s Kimberley Strassel wrote on the editorial page that plenty of bombshells are to come in the Trump-Russia narrative—about the FBI, the Democratic National Committee, and Fusion GPS—Journal alums told Politico reporter Jason Schwartz that was all crazy talk. The real story, they suggested, was that News Corp owner Rupert Murdoch had whispered in Journal editor Gerard Baker’s ear that the paper better support Trump or else.
Rest - http://thefederalist.com/2017/12/04/fusion-gps-scandal-implicates-media-possible-pay-publish-scheme/
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Fusion GPS Scandal Implicates Media In Possible Pay-To-Publish Scheme
A court filing from the U.S. district court for DC shows that Fusion GPS paid several journalists and was paid by a media organization.
Court filings released last month by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence suggest growing evidence of a pay-to-publish scandal that may shake large parts of the Washington press corps.
At the center of the controversy is the Washington DC-based communications shop Fusion GPS, which assembled and distributed the so-called “Steele dossier.” It’s named after former British spy Christopher Steele, who is believed to have authored the document alleging that Donald Trump and members of his campaign colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election. Steele acknowledges that some of the dossier’s information is sourced to Russian officials, including a “top-level intelligence officer.”
In its other Russia-related work, Fusion GPS engaged in a media campaign opposing a law targeting foreign nationals across the globe for human rights abuses. In its advocacy against the Global Magnitsky Act, a worldwide extension of the U.S. legislation imposing sanctions on Russian officials and other figures associated with the Russian government for their involvement in the detention and death of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, Fusion GPS mirrored Kremlin talking points.
Now the court filing from the U.S. district court for DC shows that Fusion GPS paid several journalists, including three who reported on “Russia issues relevant to [the committee’s] investigation,” the House Intelligence Committee said in a court filing.
The documents did not release the names of the journalists and media organization.
How Fusion GPS Used Media Contacts
To understand the role Fusion GPS played in promoting and distributing the Steele dossier as well as the company’s work to undermine the Magnitsky Act, we’ll need a fuller account of Fusion GPS’s relationship with the journalism industry its principals left and then cultivated.
The story starts at the Wall Street Journal, which is taking fire from the rest of the profession, plunging the paper into what some have described as a civil war between its traditionally right-wing editorial page and left-leaning news desk.
“I don’t know a single WSJ alum who’s not agog at where that edit page is heading,” tweeted former Wall Street Journal reporter Neil King, reacting to a Journal editorial calling for the firing of Robert Mueller. “WSJ edit page has gone full bats–t, now hosting an op-ed suggesting Trump pardon everyone, including himself,” tweeted former high-ranking Wall Street Journal editor Bill Grueskin, now a professor at the Columbia School of Journalism.
When the Journal’s Kimberley Strassel wrote on the editorial page that plenty of bombshells are to come in the Trump-Russia narrative—about the FBI, the Democratic National Committee, and Fusion GPS—Journal alums told Politico reporter Jason Schwartz that was all crazy talk. The real story, they suggested, was that News Corp owner Rupert Murdoch had whispered in Journal editor Gerard Baker’s ear that the paper better support Trump or else.
Rest - http://thefederalist.com/2017/12/04/fusion-gps-scandal-implicates-media-possible-pay-publish-scheme/