Associated Press corrects big error in #MemoDay piece Brit Hume calls 'breathtakingly slanted'

Brett T. | 9:32 PM on February 03, 2018

In the great rush by journalists to counter any momentum conservatives might have enjoyed from the release of Rep. Devin Nunes’ memo Friday, an old misconception about the Trump dossier was resurrected.

MSNBC’s Katy Tur got it wrong, tweeting that the dossier was first paid for by the Washington Free Beacon. CNN’s Jim Sciutto also made the false claim on air.

To its credit, the Associated Press added a correction to its piece on the dossier after also claiming the Free Beacon had first paid for it.

There is a correction at the top of this link which, while welcome, still leaves the story an almost breathtakingly slanted piece of work: https://t.co/5yGYoZVf8P

— Brit Hume (@brithume) February 3, 2018

The AP’s story, which credits three writers, now adds this correction:

In a story Feb. 2 about a Republican memo on the Russia investigation, The Associated Press erroneously reported that a former British spy’s work on an opposition research project was initially funded by the conservative Washington Free Beacon. Though the former spy, Christopher Steele, was hired by a firm that was initially funded by the Washington Free Beacon, he did not begin work on the project until after Democratic groups had begun funding it.

Let’s get it right: The DNC and the Clinton campaign hired Steele to compile the dossier. This was reported last October by The Washington Post. Why can’t the mainstream media seem to grasp this?

This lie—that Republicans funded the Steele dossier first—has been spewed by media figures for months. It had been immediately debunked by—among others—the @DailyCaller. This is not just a correction for the @AP: it is a self-indictment charging gross bias and gross incompetence. https://t.co/S0foCuRyDf

— Jack Smith (@TrumpABZ) February 3, 2018