Never heard of ‘pizzagate’. I doubt most people have.
…well you could try reading the thread. Perhaps you could start with the OP. Ravenman introduced pizzagate to the thread. I was responding to him.
But thanks for letting me know that you have never heard of pizzagate. Just like how Evan Drake just had to let me know he hadn’t heard of Buzzfeed. These are very constructive contributions. I will make sure that if you happen to bring up something that I have never heard of before I will most certainly let you know immediately.
Now did you find that cite that the worlds media got the document from either Steele or the people who paid him?
Asking about cites is a little too ironic.
…Christopher Steele isn’t a member of these boards. I can’t ask him for a cite.
You are a member of these boards. I can ask you for a cite. You are, however, under no obligation to provide one. Especially if revealing your cite will put your sources in danger.
What. No, the reason the media went after Trump the way they did, and didn’t go after the other republicans in the running, was because all of his non-outsider Republican rivals lacked the most crucial failings that Trump had. They were not politically incompetent. They seemed to be able to tell the difference between the truth and a lie. They didn’t push quite as many insane conspiracy theories. Trump faced a stalwart opposition from the part of our society responsible for speaking truth to power. He faced unprecedented opposition from those groups. Why? Seriously, spend a second really thinking about that. Why did the media put up such opposition to Trump?
The disconnect is because I’m talking about two different things. The media was really harsh to Trump. They needed to be harsher; the guy’s a fucking lunatic. But you’re acting like this is an indictment of the media. Like they didn’t do their job. That’s just not true. Clinton was also savaged by the media, with the distinction that most of what she got attacked for wasn’t actually reasonable to attack her for. The media spent a week or two crowing about how shady and problematic her charity organization was, because of what? Because one of the donors, who happened to be a personal friend and a nobel prize-winner, was able to talk to her when she was secstate? The media was more than fair to Trump. They were not to Clinton.
The correct time to believe something is when there is evidence for it, not when we have a reason why no evidence will be forthcoming.
…what is it you think that I believe?
When an article starts off by calling a news item a “conspiracy theory,” and a “false rumor,” how can you even contend that the Times isn’t taking a position on the truth of the story?
If pizzagate were to be treated consistently with the dossier, a news source should not question the truth of the allegations. As Buzzfeed wrote, just throw it out there and let the readers decide.
Lighten up. I’m just having some fun by referring to a movie in the course of debating a ridiculous proposition.
Have you seen the Netflix special about Amanda whatshername, the one accused of the murder in Italy? In which a British journalist explains why he ran with stories that were unverified? I’d be curious as to what you think personally of the most despised person in that documentary.
Does this qualify as a fake thread ?
“Fake” in that the proposition is framed as a discussion of journalistic ethics, when really it is about proposing that there should be zero limits on anything anyone wants to say about Trump.
As I’ve been insinuating, somehow I don’t think unverified, uncoorborated stories about Hillary Clinton running a child abuse ring or having brain tumors would be seen as responsible journalism by the OP.
…I didn’t contend the Times isn’t taking a position on the truth of that story. I said:
“It is full of unverified information. None of it was censored by the New York Times because they didn’t believe “Americans could handle it.” Primary sources are linked to and displayed. Some of it isn’t even debunked. None of it was kept secret.”
Buzzfeed chose to publish. The other media didn’t choose to treat the dossier consistent with how it reported pizzagate. They chose to not discuss the dossier at all.
In 2010 the Pike River Mine exploded. 29 miners were killed. An Australian Journalist during the press conference asked "“Superintendent Knowles, that leads to another question, there have been comments today by a variety of sources by Laurie Drew, by other members of the families, by Andrew Vickers, a mining unionist in Australia and by an Australian mining expert. If this was happening in Australia, the people that would be in charge would be the mining manager, and with the assistance of the union and technical support and was put – the people that actually know what’s going on.
“And the question was asked by all of these people, why are they not making the decisions? Why are they not calling the shots? Why is it the local country cop chief doing it? To use their words.”
That question caused an uproar. He was labeled “boorish”, “disgraceful”, and a “tosspot.”
Ean Higgins was despised by everyone in that room. And he was despised by every New Zealander when we heard (an abridged version) about what he said. And in a burst of patriotic fervour, he was even despised by me.
But Ean was the only person asking hard questions those early days. And the Royal Commission into the disaster eventually showed that Ean was correct.
I haven’t seen the documentary you are talking about. But a journalist being despised isn’t uncommon.
What does this story have to with the Trump Dossier? It has as much in common as some random documentary on Netflix. As in fuck all.
So we’ve done a movie, we’ve done a conspiracy theory, we’ve done a Netflix documentary, and we’ve done a mining disaster.
Whenever you want to actually discuss what I wrote in my OP I’m up for it.
Have you actually read the OP?
Not rocket science. And it’s not about “truth”. It’s about independent verification. Can any of the allegations in the report be independently verified? If not, then you don’t publish (unless you are of the National Enquirer caliber). This is SOP for media outlets that want to maintain credibility. There are plenty of media outlets that don’t care about that, especially in this day and age. But I think we are well served when outlets like the NYT do not position themselves at the lowest common denominator. YMMV.
Well since Buzzfeed published the specifics, Christopher Steele has gone into hiding (he was the officer in charge of litvenenko). I can’t imagine how it’ll not make it harder to ever know the truth when everyone who might actually know something has to hide from polonium cocktails.
Are you certain?
In your recounting of this episode, I have no damned idea why he was criticized.
Because the journalist in the documentary had the same approach to his job as you advocate: he rushed salacious stories that were unverified, but they were printed because the shitty London newspapers he worked for thought the sources were credible, and they also didn’t want facts to get in the way of a scoop.
And the bullshit that they printed was later found to be false. And someone found to be innocent had her reputation tarnished in probably irreparable ways because of the poor journalistic standards that you advocate.
I’m not forcing you to respond to my posts. If they are so awful, disregard them. And I’ll just keep destroying your support of an irresponsible, B-grade press that only cares about allegations and saucy stories, instead informing the public with facts.
Actually, he did quite a bit of it for free because he felt Trump was such a security risk, and now he’s in hiding because he fears for his life.
Yes. You’ve been tu quoqing to defend Donald Trump.
This may be unverified information, but, as long as it is reported as such, there’s nothing wrong with that. News inherently posts on preliminary stories.
Pizzagate is an obviously fake story. It was a bullshit meme on Twitter. And you have only to look at it to know it’s absurd, without any additional info. It’s not remotely the same as info gathered from a real source.
Trying to equate the two is just doing Trump’s propaganda work for him.
Speaking of posts barely worth responding to, I think we have gone way off the deep end of advocating fact-based journalism is portrayed as a defense of Donald Trump.
One really has to embrace he essence of Trump’s Twitter rants in order to come up with such patent bullshit being presented with a straight face.
…what isn’t rocket science?
I was responding to this: “It’s the reputable media’s job to sit on information until they can confirm it’s true.”
So it is about truth. Until you decide it isn’t about truth.
Okay. Gotcha.
Why is it all about independent verification? The media broadcasts news without independent verification every day.
Do the American people not have the right to know that this document exists? That it was given to the FBI and that the FBI allegedly did nothing with it?
If Christopher Steele had released this this document himself would the media have an obligation not to report it? Would the media be obliged not to publish it?
Credibility is subjective.
The media is positioning itself as a “gatekeeper”. As the people who can decide what the American people can and cannot handle. As a “censor for the Trump Administration.”
…I will rephrase. There are people who were in the intelligence community who do not know of/have worked with Steele who cannot vouch for his credibility. But all those that have worked with him have vouched for him.
Fortunately for you I provided a cite that explains why he was criticised. You could have read it. He was criticized for saying this: “Why is the local country cop doing it?”
Superintendent Gary Knowles was a respected police officer who was leading the recovery efforts at the mine. The whole country was on edge waiting for news of the miners. And this “hick reporter” from Australia had the gall to insult the person in charge. He was literally kicked out of the country.
On reflection: (after the publication of the Royal Commission report) he was right. Knowles shouldn’t have been in charge. Decisions shouldn’t have come from Wellington. They should have been made by the mining experts that were on the ground. But Higgins is still despised here. But being “despised” is not an objective metric of anything. So you watched a documentary where a person in the media was despised? Well whoop-de-shit.
As an aside: the media fell over themselves to be “respectful” to the Pike River CEO: elevating him to “hero status”, and they fell over themselves to attack Ean Higgins. But the Pike River Mining Company were absolute shit. They cut corners. They didn’t do everything they could have done to keep these men alive.
The media, quite simply, didn’t do their jobs here. As revelation after revelation came out about the mine it became clear that the CEO as “hero” narrative didn’t hold water. Here is a blog post that talks about it.
This isn’t the approach I advocate. Buzzfeed did not rush this story. The media have had this document for months. The media do have a responsibility not to destroy lives. A hallmark of nearly every journalism code of ethics is to “do no harm.” But from the SPJ Code of Ethics:
"– Realize that private people have a greater right to control information about themselves than public figures and others who seek power, influence or attention. Weigh the consequences of publishing or broadcasting personal information. "
There is a difference between releasing a dossier about Joe Bloggs down the road who pull faces at kids and releasing a dossier concerning the most powerful person in the world. This is why your constant comparisons to other situations aren’t relevant. Because you are literally ignoring the facts of this case.
If a newspaper thinks a source is credible then they should publish the story. This happens all the time. A spokesman for the police will make a statement about a crime: it will get reported without independent verification.
The Amanda Knox case is something different. You refer to the documentary. Over at the (formerly) Randi forums they have been debating the Amanda Knox case since 2010. Discussion is confined to a single thread: because the participants (both “guilters” and “innocents”) are so insanely passionate that they would derail any other thread that the discussion would spread too. When the Amanda Knox thread gets too big (the server can’t handle it), the thread is closed and discussion continues in a new thread.
There have been 23 Amanda Knox threads. Thousands and thousands of pages and posts. The two sides have been fighting over the “facts” for six years now. The thread is still going strong, at the rate of a page a day. Recently one of the participants in the thread sadly passed away. In his memoriam thread the debate continued. They couldn’t help themselves.
I wish you would name the journalists and the incident you are talking about. So I can independently verify your recollections of an obviously (but understandably) slanted documentary.
And I’m not forcing you to respond to mine.
Destroying my support?
You haven’t “destroyed” jack shit.
Everybody wanted to publish this dossier: to talk about this dossier. But no-one wanted to be first. The existence of this document, how it came to be, what happened to it once it was produced, what the FBI did with it once they got it: these are all “facts” that the American people had a right to know about.
No one wanted to be first because they couldn’t verify that it was true. It’s really that simple. Any newspaper can publish it, but reputable ones didn’t. Because that’s their policy. It doesn’t matter who the story is about, that’s their policy.
…it really isn’t that simple. No one did because they didn’t want the blowback. Look what happened to Buzzfeed. Shut down by the President. Thrown under the bus by the rest of the media. I’m sure that a good part of the reason why they didn’t publish was because of a slavish devotion to “ethics.” But I’ve provided plenty of cites to opinions in the industry that show that it is more than just that. The Vice President of Poynter thinks the average citizen has absolutely no capacity to make up his own mind on this.
If it were that simple you would have attempted to answer some the questions I’ve directed at you. “Reputable” is subjective. This thread is about debating the “policy.” You agree with the “policy”. I think that they got it wrong.
I find it slightly reassuring (but only slightly) that the guy who didn’t compromise his principals over this election mainly agrees with me.
Nate Silver was right to hold firm with his prediction model. And I think he’s got it right here as well.