Bob Woodward condemns media's Russiagate coverage, reveals reporters ignored his warnings about Steele dossier

Veteran journalist Bob Woodward revealed in a new interview that Washington Post reporters essentially ignored his warnings about the shortcomings of the infamous Christopher Steele dossier, amidst the feverish Russiagate media coverage that dominated the Trump administration.

In a lengthy report for Columbia Journalism Review, Jeff Gerth interviewed media and political figures wrapped up in Russiagate — the sweeping term for the allegations of Trump-Russia collusion in the 2016 election — including Donald Trump himself, finding in particular where the media went wrong. Woodward, one of the reporters famous for breaking the Watergate scandal for the Washington Post, told Gerth that viewers and readers had been "cheated" by the coverage.

"Bob Woodward, of the Post, told me that news coverage of the Russia inquiry ‘wasn’t handled well’ and that he thought viewers and readers had been 'cheated.' He urged newsrooms to 'walk down the painful road of introspection,'" Gerth wrote.

The Steele dossier came in for a particular shellacking. The series of memos by ex-British spy Christopher Steele containing unproven allegations of Trump-Russia coordination to defeat Hillary Clinton, as well as salacious sex tape rumors about Trump in Russia, was funded by the Clinton campaign and circulated among intelligence officials, journalists and political figures for weeks in 2016 before BuzzFeed News published its full contents in January 2017.