This afternoon, CNN reported that President Barack Obama and President-Elect Donald Trump had been briefed by the intelligence community on the existence of a cache of memos alleging communication between the Trump campaign and Russian officials and the possession by the Russian government of highly compromising material against Trump. The memos were compiled by a former British intelligence officer on behalf of anti-Trump Republicans and, later, Democrats working against Trump in the general election. According to CNN, the intelligence officer’s previous work is credible, but the veracity of the specific allegations set forth in the document have not yet been confirmed. Notably, Mother Jones journalist David Corn reported the week before the election on similar allegations that Trump had been “cultivated” by Russian intelligence, on the basis of a memos produced by “a former senior intelligence officer for a Western country.” A similar report also appeared in Newsweek. 
 
 This cache of memos has been kicking around official Washington for several weeks now. A great many journalists have been feverishly working to document the allegations within it, which are both explosive and quite various: some of them relate to alleged collusion between Trump campaign officials and Russian intelligence, while others relate to personal sexual conduct by Trump himself that supposedly constitutes a rip-roaring KOMPROMAT file. 
 
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 We have had the document for a couple of weeks and have chosen, as have lots of other publications, not to publish it while the allegations within it remain unproven. In response to CNN’s report, however, Buzzfeed has now released the underlying document itself, which is available here. 
 
 Whether or not its release is defensible in light of the CNN story, it is now important to emphasize several points. 
 
 First, we have no idea if any of these allegations are true. Yes, they are explosive; they are also entirely unsubstantiated, at least to our knowledge, at this stage. For this reason, even now, we are not going to discuss the specific allegations within the document. 
 
 Second, while unproven, the allegations are being taken quite seriously. The President and President-elect do not get briefed on material that the intelligence community does not believe to be at least of some credibility. The individual who generated them is apparently a person whose work intelligence professionals take seriously. And at a personal level, we can attest that we have had a lot of conversations with a lot of different people about the material in this document. While nobody has confirmed any of the allegations, both inside government and in the press, it is clear to us that they are the subject of serious attention. 
 
 Third, precisely because it is being taken seriously, it is—despite being unproven and, in public anyway, undiscussed—pervasively affecting the broader discussion of Russian hacking of the election. CNN reported that Senator John McCain personally delivered a copy of the document to FBI Director James Comey on December 9th. Consider McCain’s comments about the gravity of the Russian hacking episode at last week’s Armed Services Committee hearing in light of that fact. Likewise, consider Senator Ron Wyden’s questioning of Comey at today’s Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, in which Wyden pushed the FBI Director to release a declassified assessment before January 20th regarding contact between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. (Comey refused to comment on an ongoing investigation.) 
 
 So while people are being delicate about discussing wholly unproven allegations, the document is at the front of everyone’s minds as they ponder the question: Why is Trump so insistent about vindicating Russia from the hacking charges that everyone else seems to accept? 
 
 Fourth, it is significant that the document contains highly specific allegations, many of which are the kind of facts it should be possible to prove or disprove. This is a document about meetings that either took place or did not take place, stays in hotels that either happened or didn’t, travel that either happened or did not happen. It should be possible to know whether at least some of these allegations are true or false. 
 
 Finally, fifth, it is important to emphasize that this is not a case of the intelligence community leaking sensitive information about an investigative subject out of revenge or any other improper motive. This type of information, referencing sensitive sources and methods and the identities of U.S. persons, is typically treated by the intelligence community with the utmost care. And this material, in fact, does not come from the intelligence community; it comes, rather, from private intelligence documents put together by a company. It is actually not even classified. 
 
 All of which is to say to everyone: slow down, and take a deep breath. We shouldn’t assume either that this is simply a “fake news” episode directed at discrediting Trump or that the dam has now broken and the truth is coming out at last. We don’t know what the reality is here, and the better part of valor is not to get ahead ahead of the facts—a matter on which, incidentally, the press deserves a lot of credit. 
 
 UPDATE: The Guardian reports: 
 
 The Guardian has learned that the FBI applied for a warrant from the foreign intelligence surveillance (Fisa) court over the summer in order to monitor four members of the Trump team suspected of irregular contacts with Russian officials. The Fisa court turned down the application asking FBI counter-intelligence investigators to narrow its focus. According to one report, the FBI was finally granted a warrant in October, but that has not been confirmed, and it is not clear whether any warrant led to a full investigation. 
 
 UPDATE II: Trump just tweeted this: 
 
 FAKE NEWS - A TOTAL POLITICAL WITCH HUNT! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 11, 2017 
 
 Mic reports that Michael Cohen, Trump's special counsel, has denied several allegations contained within the report, some pertaining to Cohen specifically. ||||| (CNN) Classified documents presented last week to President Obama and President-elect Trump included allegations that Russian operatives claim to have compromising personal and financial information about Mr. Trump, multiple US officials with direct knowledge of the briefings tell CNN. 
 
 The allegations were presented in a two-page synopsis that was appended to a report on Russian interference in the 2016 election. The allegations came, in part, from memos compiled by a former British intelligence operative, whose past work US intelligence officials consider credible. The FBI is investigating the credibility and accuracy of these allegations, which are based primarily on information from Russian sources, but has not confirmed many essential details in the memos about Mr. Trump. 
 
 The classified briefings last week were presented by four of the senior-most US intelligence chiefs -- Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, FBI Director James Comey, CIA Director John Brennan, and NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers. 
 
 One reason the nation's intelligence chiefs took the extraordinary step of including the synopsis in the briefing documents was to make the President-elect aware that such allegations involving him are circulating among intelligence agencies, senior members of Congress and other government officials in Washington, multiple sources tell CNN. 
 
 These senior intelligence officials also included the synopsis to demonstrate that Russia had compiled information potentially harmful to both political parties, but only released information damaging to Hillary Clinton and Democrats. This synopsis was not an official part of the report from the intelligence community case about Russian hacks, but some officials said it augmented the evidence that Moscow intended to harm Clinton's candidacy and help Trump's, several officials with knowledge of the briefings tell CNN. 
 
 The two-page synopsis also included allegations that there was a continuing exchange of information during the campaign between Trump surrogates and intermediaries for the Russian government, according to two national security officials. 
 
 Sources tell CNN that these same allegations about communications between the Trump campaign and the Russians, mentioned in classified briefings for congressional leaders last year, prompted then-Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid to send a letter to FBI Director Comey in October , in which he wrote, "It has become clear that you possess explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisors, and the Russian government -- a foreign interest openly hostile to the United States." 
 
 CNN has confirmed that the synopsis was included in the documents that were presented to Mr. Trump but cannot confirm if it was discussed in his meeting with the intelligence chiefs. 
 
 The Trump transition team declined repeated requests for comment. 
 
 JUST WATCHED Conway reacts to intel claims on Russia Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Conway reacts to intel claims on Russia 05:22 
 
 Appearing on Late Night with Seth Meyers, Kellyanne Conway, a senior Trump adviser, dismissed the memos, as unverified and untrue. 
 
 CNN has reviewed a 35-page compilation of the memos, from which the two-page synopsis was drawn. The memos have since been published by Buzzfeed . The memos originated as opposition research, first commissioned by anti-Trump Republicans, and later by Democrats. At this point, CNN is not reporting on details of the memos, as it has not independently corroborated the specific allegations. But, in preparing this story, CNN has spoken to multiple high ranking intelligence, administration, congressional and law enforcement officials, as well as foreign officials and others in the private sector with direct knowledge of the memos. 
 
 Some of the memos were circulating as far back as last summer. What has changed since then is that US intelligence agencies have now checked out the former British intelligence operative and his vast network throughout Europe and find him and his sources to be credible enough to include some of the information in the presentations to the President and President-elect a few days ago. 
 
 On the same day that the President-elect was briefed by the intelligence community, the top four Congressional leaders, and chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate intelligence committees -- the so-called "Gang of Eight" -- were also provided a summary of the memos regarding Mr. Trump, according to law enforcement, intelligence and administration sources. 
 
 The two-page summary was written without the detailed specifics and information about sources and methods included in the memos by the former British intelligence official. That said, the synopsis was considered so sensitive it was not included in the classified report about Russian hacking that was more widely distributed, but rather in an annex only shared at the most senior levels of the government: President Obama, the President-elect, and the eight Congressional leaders. 
 
 CNN has also learned that on December 9, Senator John McCain gave a full copy of the memos -- dated from June through December, 2016 -- to FBI Director James Comey. McCain became aware of the memos from a former British diplomat who had been posted in Moscow. But the FBI had already been given a set of the memos compiled up to August 2016, when the former MI6 agent presented them to an FBI official in Rome, according to national security officials. 
 
 The raw memos on which the synopsis is based were prepared by the former MI6 agent, who was posted in Russia in the 1990s and now runs a private intelligence gathering firm. His investigations related to Mr. Trump were initially funded by groups and donors supporting Republican opponents of Mr. Trump during the GOP primaries, multiple sources confirmed to CNN. Those sources also said that once Mr. Trump became the nominee, further investigation was funded by groups and donors supporting Hillary Clinton. 
 
 Spokespeople for the FBI and the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment. Officials who spoke to CNN declined to do so on the record given the classified nature of the material. 
 
 Some of the allegations were first reported publicly in Mother Jones one week before the election. 
 
 One high level administration official told CNN, "I have a sense the outgoing administration and intelligence community is setting down the pieces so this must be investigated seriously and run down. I think [the] concern was to be sure that whatever information was out there is put into the system so it is evaluated as it should be and acted upon as necessary." ||||| A dossier making explosive — but unverified — allegations that the Russian government has been “cultivating, supporting and assisting” President-elect Donald Trump for years and gained compromising information about him has been circulating among elected officials, intelligence agents, and journalists for weeks. 
 
 The dossier, which is a collection of memos written over a period of months, includes specific, unverified, and potentially unverifiable allegations of contact between Trump aides and Russian operatives, and graphic claims of sexual acts documented by the Russians. BuzzFeed News reporters in the US and Europe have been investigating various alleged facts in the dossier but have not verified or falsified them. CNN reported Tuesday that a two-page synopsis of the report was given to President Obama and Trump. 
 
 Now BuzzFeed News is publishing the full document so that Americans can make up their own minds about allegations about the president-elect that have circulated at the highest levels of the US government. 
 
 The document was prepared for political opponents of Trump by a person who is understood to be a former British intelligence agent. It is not just unconfirmed: It includes some clear errors. The report misspells the name of one company, "Alpha Group," throughout. It is Alfa Group. The report says the settlement of Barvikha, outside Moscow, is "reserved for the residences of the top leadership and their close associates." It is not reserved for anyone, and it is also populated by the very wealthy. 
 
 The Trump administration's transition team did not immediately respond to BuzzFeed News' request for comment. However, the president-elect's attorney, Michael Cohen, told Mic that the allegations were absolutely false. 
 
 
 
 "It's so ridiculous on so many levels," he said. "Clearly, the person who created this did so from their imagination or did so hoping that the liberal media would run with this fake story for whatever rationale they might have." 
 
 
 
 And Trump shot back against the reports a short time later on Twitter. ||||| Looking for news you can trust? 
 
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 On Friday, FBI Director James Comey set off a political blast when he informed congressional leaders that the bureau had stumbled across emails that might be pertinent to its completed inquiry into Hillary Clinton’s handling of emails when she was secretary of state. The Clinton campaign and others criticized Comey for intervening in a presidential campaign by breaking with Justice Department tradition and revealing information about an investigation—information that was vague and perhaps ultimately irrelevant—so close to Election Day. On Sunday, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid upped the ante. He sent Comey a fiery letter saying the FBI chief may have broken the law and pointed to a potentially greater controversy: “In my communications with you and other top officials in the national security community, it has become clear that you possess explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisors, and the Russian government…The public has a right to know this information.” 
 
 Reid’s missive set off a burst of speculation on Twitter and elsewhere. What was he referring to regarding the Republican presidential nominee? At the end of August, Reid had written to Comey and demanded an investigation of the “connections between the Russian government and Donald Trump’s presidential campaign,” and in that letter he indirectly referred to Carter Page, an American businessman cited by Trump as one of his foreign policy advisers, who had financial ties to Russia and had recently visited Moscow. Last month, Yahoo News reported that US intelligence officials were probing the links between Page and senior Russian officials. (Page has called accusations against him “garbage.”) On Monday, NBC News reported that the FBI has mounted a preliminary inquiry into the foreign business ties of Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chief. But Reid’s recent note hinted at more than the Page or Manafort affairs. And a former senior intelligence officer for a Western country who specialized in Russian counterintelligence tells Mother Jones that in recent months he provided the bureau with memos, based on his recent interactions with Russian sources, contending the Russian government has for years tried to co-opt and assist Trump—and that the FBI requested more information from him. 
 
 “This is something of huge significance, way above party politics,” the former intelligence officer says. “I think [Trump’s] own party should be aware of this stuff as well.” 
 
 Does this mean the FBI is investigating whether Russian intelligence has attempted to develop a secret relationship with Trump or cultivate him as an asset? Was the former intelligence officer and his material deemed credible or not? An FBI spokeswoman says, “Normally, we don’t talk about whether we are investigating anything.” But a senior US government official not involved in this case but familiar with the former spy tells Mother Jones that he has been a credible source with a proven record of providing reliable, sensitive, and important information to the US government. 
 
 In June, the former Western intelligence officer—who spent almost two decades on Russian intelligence matters and who now works with a US firm that gathers information on Russia for corporate clients—was assigned the task of researching Trump’s dealings in Russia and elsewhere, according to the former spy and his associates in this American firm. This was for an opposition research project originally financed by a Republican client critical of the celebrity mogul. (Before the former spy was retained, the project’s financing switched to a client allied with Democrats.) “It started off as a fairly general inquiry,” says the former spook, who asks not to be identified. But when he dug into Trump, he notes, he came across troubling information indicating connections between Trump and the Russian government. According to his sources, he says, “there was an established exchange of information between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin of mutual benefit.” 
 
 This was, the former spy remarks, “an extraordinary situation.” He regularly consults with US government agencies on Russian matters, and near the start of July on his own initiative—without the permission of the US company that hired him—he sent a report he had written for that firm to a contact at the FBI, according to the former intelligence officer and his American associates, who asked not to be identified. (He declines to identify the FBI contact.) The former spy says he concluded that the information he had collected on Trump was “sufficiently serious” to share with the FBI. 
 
 Mother Jones has reviewed that report and other memos this former spy wrote. The first memo, based on the former intelligence officer’s conversations with Russian sources, noted, “Russian regime has been cultivating, supporting and assisting TRUMP for at least 5 years. Aim, endorsed by PUTIN, has been to encourage splits and divisions in western alliance.” It maintained that Trump “and his inner circle have accepted a regular flow of intelligence from the Kremlin, including on his Democratic and other political rivals.” It claimed that Russian intelligence had “compromised” Trump during his visits to Moscow and could “blackmail him.” It also reported that Russian intelligence had compiled a dossier on Hillary Clinton based on “bugged conversations she had on various visits to Russia and intercepted phone calls.” 
 
 The former intelligence officer says the response from the FBI was “shock and horror.” The FBI, after receiving the first memo, did not immediately request additional material, according to the former intelligence officer and his American associates. Yet in August, they say, the FBI asked him for all information in his possession and for him to explain how the material had been gathered and to identify his sources. The former spy forwarded to the bureau several memos—some of which referred to members of Trump’s inner circle. After that point, he continued to share information with the FBI. “It’s quite clear there was or is a pretty substantial inquiry going on,” he says. 
 
 “This is something of huge significance, way above party politics,” the former intelligence officer comments. “I think [Trump’s] own party should be aware of this stuff as well.” 
 
 The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment regarding the memos. In the past, Trump has declared, “I have nothing to do with Russia.” 
 
 The FBI is certainly investigating the hacks attributed to Russia that have hit American political targets, including the Democratic National Committee and John Podesta, the chairman of Clinton’s presidential campaign. But there have been few public signs of whether that probe extends to examining possible contacts between the Russian government and Trump. (In recent weeks, reporters in Washington have pursued anonymous online reports that a computer server related to the Trump Organization engaged in a high level of activity with servers connected to Alfa Bank, the largest private bank in Russia. On Monday, a Slate investigation detailed the pattern of unusual server activity but concluded, “We don’t yet know what this [Trump] server was for, but it deserves further explanation.” In an email to Mother Jones, Hope Hicks, a Trump campaign spokeswoman, maintains, “The Trump Organization is not sending or receiving any communications from this email server. The Trump Organization has no communication or relationship with this entity or any Russian entity.” ) 
 
 According to several national security experts, there is widespread concern in the US intelligence community that Russian intelligence, via hacks, is aiming to undermine the presidential election—to embarrass the United States and delegitimize its democratic elections. And the hacks appear to have been designed to benefit Trump. In August, Democratic members of the House committee on oversight wrote Comey to ask the FBI to investigate “whether connections between Trump campaign officials and Russian interests may have contributed to these [cyber] attacks in order to interfere with the US. presidential election.” In September, Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Rep. Adam Schiff, the senior Democrats on, respectively, the Senate and House intelligence committees, issued a joint statement accusing Russia of underhanded meddling: “Based on briefings we have received, we have concluded that the Russian intelligence agencies are making a serious and concerted effort to influence the U.S. election. At the least, this effort is intended to sow doubt about the security of our election and may well be intended to influence the outcomes of the election.” The Obama White House has declared Russia the culprit in the hacking capers, expressed outrage, and promised a “proportional” response. 
 
 There’s no way to tell whether the FBI has confirmed or debunked any of the allegations contained in the former spy’s memos. But a Russian intelligence attempt to co-opt or cultivate a presidential candidate would mark an even more serious operation than the hacking. 
 
 In the letter Reid sent to Comey on Sunday, he pointed out that months ago he had asked the FBI director to release information on Trump’s possible Russia ties. Since then, according to a Reid spokesman, Reid has been briefed several times. The spokesman adds, “He is confident that he knows enough to be extremely alarmed.” ||||| Where does transparency meet irresponsibility? Right at the line that BuzzFeed’s editor Ben Smith approached Tuesday and decided to step over in the name of serving citizens’ best interests. 
 
 With caveats and explanations aplenty, Smith published a 35-page “dossier” — actually just a bunch of scurrilous allegations dressed up as an intelligence report meant to damage Donald Trump. 
 
 Smith said he did so because his, and BuzzFeed’s, preference and philosophy is, essentially, “When in doubt, publish.” But at many other news organizations, the rule is caution: “When in doubt, leave it out.” 
 
 In this case, the doubt should have prevailed. News organizations and government officials have known for months that this information, if it can be called that, existed. But despite many attempts, the claims about Trump’s behavior and relationships in Russia could not be verified. 
 
 Thus, major newspapers and magazines sat on them. In October, the Washington bureau chief of Mother Jones, David Corn, wrote a story based on the file but stopped well short of publishing the specifics. 
 
 (Bastien Inzaurralde/The Washington Post) 
 
 Why? Because he couldn’t verify them. 
 
 So what changed and blew this out into the public eye? Not just BuzzFeed’s data dump, but a series of events. Intelligence agencies summarized the “dossier” and included it in material given to Trump and President Obama. 
 
 CNN published a story Tuesday saying that much. And with the door cracked open, BuzzFeed pushed through. In doing so, the digital behemoth — which for years has balanced a tension between its start as a lighthearted click factory and, under Smith and a serious news team, a purveyor of investigative journalism and breaking news — set off a fierce debate. 
 
 “Publishing this dossier reflects how we see the job of reporters in 2017,” Smith wrote. In other words, readers are grown-ups and deserve to be treated as such, not paternalistically protected from information that might upset them. True enough, but it avoids the larger point: It’s a bad idea, and always has been, to publish unverified smears. 
 
 The decision certainly resulted in clicks. It also brought approval and disapproval, in some cases from unexpected quarters. 
 
 Richard Tofel, president of ProPublica, praised the decision: “Kudos to @buzzfeedben and his team for publishing the dossier. Once CNN story out, citizens should have evidence to consider for themselves.” 
 
 Journalist Michael Tracey noted that while WikiLeaks had been “relentlessly attacked” for publishing verified, authentic information, BuzzFeed was being “cheered for publishing what appears to be a total sham.” 
 
 (The Washington Post) 
 
 And in the New York Post, columnist and longtime magazine editor John Podhoretz made a solid point: “In my experience, there is no source of whom you need to be more skeptical, and whose information you need to verify to the letter before you can even begin to think of publishing it, than an ‘intelligence’ source.” 
 
 Once BuzzFeed published, of course, the dam burst. Slate followed, publishing the documents itself, and anyone in the world had access with a few keystrokes. 
 
 Trump — who gave his first news conference Wednesday — immediately took to Twitter to brand the information “fake news” and to blame a political witch hunt. The publication of the documents does, indeed, give fuel to the notion that the press is out to get him. 
 
 Most mainstream outlets, including The Washington Post, even now are staying away from the specifics of the report, said to be prepared by a former British intelligence official. Those media organizations don’t get much credit these days for skepticism and editorial judgment, but for the most part, they have shown it here. 
 
 I don’t fault BuzzFeed for lack of skepticism here. Smith was clear with readers that the information he was publishing couldn’t be verified and, indeed, there was no reason to believe that much of it was true. What I fault him for was plunging down a slippery ethical slope from which there is no return. 
 
 In an era when trust in the media is already in the gutter, this does absolutely nothing to help. But even that isn’t the core point, which is far simpler: 
 
 It’s never been acceptable to publish rumor and innuendo. And none of the circumstances surrounding this episode — not CNN’s story, not Trump’s dubious history with Russia, not the fact that the intelligence community made a report on it — should change that ethical rule. 
 
 For more by Margaret Sullivan, visit wapo.st/sullivan. ||||| Drew Angerer/Getty Images 
 
 BuzzFeed on Tuesday published a 35-page dossier comprising a series of memos, containing intelligence reportedly gathered by a former British intelligence agent as opposition research, about alleged ties between President-elect Donald Trump and Russia. It included claims that Russian authorities have been “cultivating and supporting” Trump for “at least five years” and obtained compromising material on Trump that included video of “perverted” sex acts in a Moscow hotel. 
 
 Will Oremus Will Oremus is Slate’s senior technology writer. Email him at will.oremus@slate.com or follow him on Twitter. 
 
 The dossier was not new. BuzzFeed and multiple other news organizations had obtained it well before Tuesday and had been investigating its various claims. Mother Jones wrote about it prior to the election, on Oct. 31, and published a handful of quotes from it. Key figures in Congress had also seen it and even publicly alluded to it, and the Guardian reported on Tuesday that Sen. John McCain had passed it to FBI Director James Comey last month. But no one had published its entire, stunning contents before Tuesday—partly because, as my colleague Joshua Keating put it, “nothing in the memos has been confirmed, and even their provenance is murky.” 
 
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 BuzzFeed posted the dossier in full, prefacing it with a series of caveats about its veracity and updating it shortly afterward with a vehement denial from Trump’s attorney Michael Cohen, about whom the memo makes several claims. Why did the site opt to publish what so many others had opted not to? And why now, in particular? The answers point to a media industry that still takes its “gatekeeping” functions more seriously than it sometimes gets credit for—even if it doesn’t always perform them. 
 
 BuzzFeed’s editor, Ben Smith, explained the decision in a memo to his staff, which he subsequently provided to me and then published on Twitter: 
 
 Here's the note I sent to @buzzfeednews staff this evening pic.twitter.com/OcAloWzVzb — Ben Smith (@BuzzFeedBen) January 11, 2017 
 
 Smith didn’t address why BuzzFeed waited until now to publish the document, and he declined to comment further for this article. But the move came almost immediately after CNN reported Tuesday that top U.S. intelligence officials had shown Trump and President Obama a two-page synopsis of the dossier. The synopsis was presented as an unofficial appendage to the classified security briefings they gave Obama and Trump about Russian interference in the presidential election, CNN reported. Sources also told CNN that the “Gang of Eight” Congressional leaders had been provided a synopsis of the dossier as well. 
 
 That top U.S. intelligence officials saw fit to brief Trump and Obama on the dossier would seem to indicate that they took the claims at least somewhat seriously, even though they’ve been unable to verify them and, as BuzzFeed noted, the memos contain some “clear errors.” But CNN’s report suggests that the briefing was partly just about making Trump aware that the dossier existed and was circulating at the highest levels of the U.S. government. 
 
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 CNN declined to disclose the substance of the claims, writing, “At this point, CNN is not reporting on details of the memos, as it has not independently corroborated the specific allegations.” Smith and BuzzFeed saw it differently. It’s possible that if they hadn’t published it Tuesday night, someone else would have. 
 
 (Slate, for its part, followed BuzzFeed’s lead and published the dossier later Tuesday as part of Keating’s blog post about it. Asked why Slate ran it, Editor in Chief Julia Turner told me, “The memos BuzzFeed published today are newsworthy documents, and BuzzFeed’s decision to publish was news too. In covering BuzzFeed’s scoop and its implications, we described the allegations in the memos and the questions about their veracity; we thought it served our readers best to republish the documents as well so readers could evaluate the memos for themselves.”) 
 
 BuzzFeed was acting in a tradition in which the notion of media as privileged gatekeeper of information is viewed with disdain. 
 
 What we have, with the memo, is a set of explosive charges against the president-elect that no one so far has been able to either verify or fully debunk. What’s remarkable, in a time of social media, blogs, polarized politics, hacks, and leaks, is that the dossier stayed private for so long, even as the Clinton campaign and Democrats saw their private communications splashed across the news. No doubt that was due at least in part to the claims’ sensational nature and the enormous impact they could have, if verified or even just widely believed. 
 
 David Corn, the Mother Jones journalist who wrote the magazine's comparatively circumspect Oct. 31 report on the allegations, tweeted Tuesday night that he did not publish the full memos at the time because he could not verify their allegations. For Corn—and for journalist Julia Ioffe, who tweeted that she was “approached with this story” but turned it down because it was “impossible to verify”—that call came down to ethics and standard operating procedure. Clearly the internet has not turned journalism into a shameless, traffic-thirsty free-for-all. 
 
 1. For those asking, I didn't publish the full memos from the intelligence operative because I could not confirm the allegations. — David Corn (@DavidCornDC) January 11, 2017 
 
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 Yet the dossier did come out eventually, and it’s interesting to reflect on how and why it happened—and whether it was inevitable. It happened via a series of steps by various actors, each of whom relied on the actions of those before them to justify their own decisions. BuzzFeed presumably published it in part because CNN was reporting on it. CNN was reporting on it because intelligence officials had briefed Trump on it. Intelligence officials briefed Trump on it because senior congressional leaders were passing it around. Senior congressional leaders may have been passing it around in part because Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid alluded to it in a letter blasting FBI Director James Comey for publicizing information harmful to Hillary Clinton but not publicizing the dirt on Trump. Each act lowered the bar for those who followed to act on information that they knew might or might not be true. 
 
 Whether BuzzFeed was right or wrong to publish the memo—and whether it should have presented it with more critical commentary or context—is a question that will be debated in future classes on journalism ethics. For now I’ll just point out that, while Smith has at times proudly positioned BuzzFeed as a member of the “mainstream media,” he was acting here in a different tradition. It was the tradition of internet media and blogs—one pioneered by Matt Drudge, who famously broke the Monica Lewinsky scandal by reporting that Newsweek was sitting on it, and by the now-defunct Gawker. It’s a tradition in which the notion of media as privileged gatekeeper of information is viewed with disdain. It’s one in which sensitive and embarrassing information about public figures is readily disclosed, ostensibly out of respect for the public’s intelligence and right to know. It’s also one in which publishers are rewarded for publishing such bombshells, not with prestigious industry award, but with notoriety, page views, and social media shares. 
 
 Smith’s defense of his decision evinces an understanding of this tradition and BuzzFeed’s place in it. “We have always erred on the side of publishing,” he writes. There is virtue in this posture among journalists, insofar as it serves as a societal counterweight to the tendency of people in positions of power to suppress information that could embarrass them. The question is just how far you’re willing to err in that direction, and Smith acknowledges that this was a particularly close call. It rings just a tad disingenuous, however, when BuzzFeed claims to have published the documents simply “so that Americans can make up their own minds” about the allegations. If America’s top intelligence agencies, congressional staffs, and investigative journalists—including BuzzFeed’s own decorated investigative team—couldn’t make up their minds about the allegations, how do they expect the average reader to do so? ||||| The second question was answered in short order, when BuzzFeed posted a PDF of the 35-page dossier a little after 6 p.m. Even in their posting, BuzzFeed acknowledged some misgivings about the document, admitting that it was full of unverified claims. “It is not just unconfirmed: It includes some clear errors,” the story noted. Verified or not, the claims were highly explosive, and in some cases quite graphic. Because they are not verified, I will not summarize them here, though they can be read at BuzzFeed or in any other number of places. 
 
 Other reporting, including from my colleague Rosie Gray, has already begun to poke holes in the assertions contained in the dossier. Trump denied the report on Twitter, writing, “FAKE NEWS - A TOTAL POLITICAL WITCH HUNT!” Now that the documents are in the public domain, the work under way within some news organizations to suss out what is true in the report will likely accelerate. 
 
 Sensing that the decision to publish would be controversial, BuzzFeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith wrote a memo to staff explaining the thinking, and then posted it on Twitter. 
 
 “Our presumption is to be transparent in our journalism and to share what we have with our readers. We have always erred on the side of publishing. In this case, the document was in wide circulation at the highest levels of American government and media,” Smith wrote. “Publishing this document was not an easy or simple call, and people of good will may disagree with our choice. But publishing the dossier reflects how we see the job of reporters in 2017.” 
 
 Smith alluded to the document’s wide circulation, a nod to the fact that many outlets have either acquired or been offered the chance to view it—a group that includes CNN, Politico (whose Ken Vogel said he’d chased the story), and Lawfare. David Corn of Mother Jones also published a story based on information collected by the British intelligence operative in October. 
 
 Smith’s reasoning is sincere and considered, but the conclusion is highly dubious. Even more perturbing was the reasoning in the published story. “Now BuzzFeed News is publishing the full document so that Americans can make up their own minds about allegations about the president-elect that have circulated at the highest levels of the US government,” the story stated. 
 
 That raises a range of potential objections. First, it unfairly forces a public figure—Trump, in this case—to respond to a set of allegations that might or might not be entirely scurrilous; the reporters, by their own admission, do not know. Second, the appeal to “transparency” notwithstanding, this represents an abdication of the basic responsibility of journalism. The reporter’s job is not to simply dump as much information as possible into the public domain, though that can at times be useful too, as some of WikiLeaks’ revelations have shown. It is to gather information, sift through it, and determine what is true and what is not. The point of a professional journalist corps is to have people whose job it is to do that work on behalf of society, and who can cultivate sources and expertise to help them adjudicate it. A pluralistic press corps is necessary to avoid monolithic thinking among reporters, but transparent transmission of misinformation is no more helpful or clarifying than no information at all.
– "The documents have circulated for months and acquired a kind of legendary status among journalists, lawmakers, and intelligence officials who have seen them." So writes BuzzFeed in introducing the 35-page dossier it published Tuesday night that alleges Russia has compromising information, both financial and personal, on President-elect Donald Trump. Their publication raises some big questions about journalistic ethics: Why did BuzzFeed decide to pull the trigger on publishing in full (in its words) "unverified, and potentially unverifiable allegations"? Why now? Why hadn't other outlets (Mother Jones did quote from it in October)? Some perspective: From the horse's mouth: BuzzFeed Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith in an email explains what went into the decision to publish the dossier, concluding, the move "reflects how we see the job of reporters in 2017." At Slate, Will Oremus takes a positional view. Though he says Smith places BuzzFeed within the mainstream media, "he was acting here in a different tradition": that born of the Internet and blogs "in which sensitive and embarrassing information about public figures is readily disclosed" under a public-has-a-right-to-know rallying cry. At the Atlantic, David A. Graham sees that cry as "an abdication of the basic responsibility of journalism." Heaping information into the public's lap is not the reporter's job, he writes. "It is to gather information, sift through it, and determine what is true and what is not." Here, for instance, is New York Times Executive Editor Dean Baquet's explanation of its own decision: "We, like others, investigated the allegations and haven't corroborated them, and we felt we're not in the business of publishing things we can’t stand by." As for that corroboration, Lawfare makes this point: "This is a document about meetings that either took place or did not take place, stays in hotels that either happened or didn’t, travel that either happened or did not happen. It should be possible to know whether at least some of these allegations are true or false." ProPublica President Richard Tofel suggests the publication an hour prior to BuzzFeed's dump of a CNN story that reported Trump and President Obama had received a two-page summary of the reports last week, changes the game. He tweeted BuzzFeed "kudos ... Once CNN story out, citizens should have evidence to consider for themselves." Hogwash, writes Margaret Sullivan at the Washington Post. "It’s never been acceptable to publish rumor and innuendo. And none of the circumstances surrounding this episode—not CNN’s story, not Trump’s dubious history with Russia, not the fact that the intelligence community made a report on it—should change that ethical rule."