Controversial Trump-Russia 'dossier' sparks legal battle over press freedom

In the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, some of the most aggressive investigative reporters in the US were hard at work trying to verify an array of explosive allegations made in what would come to be known as the “Trump dossier.”

The series of confidential memos were compiled by Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer. He was hired by a Washington-based consulting firm that was being paid by the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign to unearth damaging information about her Republican opponent, Donald Trump.

Although a few news reports about the former spy’s work appeared prior to the November 2016 election, no news organization was able to verify the most alarming allegations – including that Mr. Trump and his associates were colluding with the Russians to undermine the Clinton campaign.

Despite this lack of confirmation, in early January 2017, the web-based media organization BuzzFeed decided to publish the entire dossier.

Now, more than 17 months later, BuzzFeed is a defendant in a Miami federal court case that is testing the scope of press freedoms at a time of acute public distrust of the media, and amid repeated presidential accusations about “fake news.” The fact that it centers around a controversial document at the heart of the Trump-Russia investigation makes it all the

Sixty-eight wordsFair report privilegeA victory this weekA gray area of the law