Well, Scarborough’s whole purpose in mentioning the claim about Trump’s nuclear-weapons-use query was in setting up the question for Hayden, right? But outside the context of the one interview, do you even need that claim? Just put Trump’s other, known remarks in that spot; the bottom line works out about the same.
DinoR:
I do give Scarborough credit for at least making clear that it’s unsubstantiated. The lack of reliability is that he doesn’t have any knowledge of the event himself. He doesn’t mention that he’s been able to confirm the source even briefed Trump. He can’t cite a different, even if still unnamed source, that was there as outside corroboration. At best we’ve got an assesment that the source has relevant experience/background that he might have been asked to provide that briefing.
It’s not quite as unreliable as citing Jenny McCarthy about vaccination risk but the story doesn’t do well by the Society of Professional Journalists code of ethics.
There’s no indication of even the slightest bit of work done to verify his lone source.
There’s no effort made to provide context for the information provided. The very limited discussion certainly raises doubts about whether it’s oversimplified or misrepresented. Scarborough makes no attempt to even address those potential doubts.
There’s no attempt to justify why anonymity was granted to this source. We’re left to assume.
There’s the labeling of advocacy and commentary standard … but the 24 hour news networks all have serious issues with that one. I give Scarborough, but not the networks, a pass on this one since his format pretty obviously falls into commentary not hard news IMO.
Maybe it’s my experience on Army staffs that makes me automatically question stories as weak as this. I had “The first report is always wrong” beat into my head by my first battalion XO. I still find myself following the mnemonic VAD (Verify, Analyze, then Disseminate) when dealing with new “BIG” information. I remember publishing and reading orders where both reliability and credibility of sources are explicitly spelled out in Intelligence annexes. I’d have been verbally flogged for briefing information as weak as what Scarborough brought unless I also clearly brought up potential issues with reliability/credibility and could answer questions about what due diligence I’d done to get better information. I’ve done that flogging myself as both XO and Commander.
Maybe Scarborough has done that due diligence and simply didn’t present it. That’s sloppy and unprofessional presentation but there’s still a case for bringing the story. It’s on us as a society to at least question reliability and credibility before we swallow it as fact, though. It’s on us to hold our journalists to their own professional standards. It’s especially on us when the information we’re accepting so easily fits our pre-existing biases. We generally don’t …but I’m not going to stop howling into the wind.
When we surrender expectations of journalistic professionalism we create incentives for journalists to undermine the important information we need.
Worse, IMO we also strengthen incentives for people to misrepresent facts, or blatantly make stuff up, and feed it to those less critical journalists.
When we focus on the sensational but unsubstantiated information the noise obscures substantiated information. A prime example is the interview in question. Hayden, a retired Air Force General and former CIA director, makes a good case for not trusting Trump as Commander in Chief in that interview. His case is based on the observable things Trump has said and done. That’s largely been lost.
If it takes our culture dropping to the level of Trump’s arguments to try and beat Trump we’re well and truly fucked for longer than he’d be in office. We create an environment where the follow on Trumps have more fertile ground to work with.
scrolls to the top of the page “Fighting Ignorance”
The thing is, we have that situation already, where bias overrides actual, respectable journalism, coming from a million places. Any reasonable reader should realize he/she needs to take into account the source(s) in making any judgment on the veracity of claims. Scarborough, for example, is shown as having a number of pursuits, but none of them is journalism.
Personally, it matters not a whit to me one way or the other whether the report is accurate. If it’s not, it’s karmic justice for Trump pulling out the “Many people are saying…” card. If it is, it doesn’t surprise me at all.