The 'Washington Post' 'Blacklist' Story Is Shameful and Disgusting | Hacker News Reader

The 'Washington Post' 'Blacklist' Story Is Shameful and Disgusting

rollingstone.com

47 pointsDowwie23 comments

>A lot of reporters over the summer were so scared by the prospect of a Trump presidency that they talked – in some cases publicly – about abandoning traditional ideas about journalistic "distance" from politicians, in favor of open advocacy for the Clinton campaign.

You'd think people who work in an industry in which credibility is your only enduring asset would realize what a terrible mistake this is. If you're a journalist who believes the facts support your position, why would you need to cross over into advocacy? Why not give your readers the evenhanded facts, i.e. why not do your damned job?

Fear of Trump, and the threat he represents to a free press, probably has a lot of do with this. But you are right: they need to strive to be objective.

They need to strive to be accurate and true. Objective implies neutrality, but the facts aren't neutral.

If a politician says that black is white, the headline "Politician: Black is White" is objective, but not accurate or true.

The reporter knows that black is not white, the editor knows that black is not white, heck the typesetter knows that black is not white. The politician obviously knows too--or at least they should. So the headline should read "Politician Lies About Black Being White." That's really what happened.

Once a upon a time, journalism viewed itself as a check against government--an institution dedicated to holding leaders responsible and accountable. Somewhere along the way the concept of "objectivity" turned them into mere stenographers for the powerful.

Journalists must adapt to the reality that information is not scarce anymore. If people want to know what Trump said on Twitter, they can follow him on Twitter! It's free and just as easy as loading up a news website. So news outlets don't need to just repost what Trump said.

They need to do reporting (and write headlines) that provide accurate context and tell their readers the truth about what Trump said.

And then we get every news outlet nitpicking the statements of the outgroup while tolerating the ingroup [0]. We need to add fair.

[0] http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/14/beware-isolated-demands...

>Objective implies neutrality, but the facts aren't neutral.

No, I don't think this is true. "Truth" may not be neutral, depending on who your favorite philosopher is, but facts are neutral.

Yes, journalists need to adapt to a reality where information isn't scarce, but throwing away all semblance of objectivity is exactly the wrong way to do it. That doesn't mean they just report what people say (which is more laziness than any attempt at objectivity). It means they dig into political scandals for both parties in an evenhanded manner. If as a consumer of news I can't trust them to report the facts, they are entirely unfit for purpose.

Do you think President Trump will harm freedom of the press?

The way he has spoken about the press, his stated desired to make libel easier, and his thin-skinned reactions to criticism - I do believe there is a slim chance he could try to damage press freedoms. Hopefully, it will all turn out to be much ado about nothing.

Taibbi is responding to what he calls a disgusting anonymous smear job against fellow journalists, by perpetrating a disgusting anonymous smear job against fellow journalists.

Neither of the stories he links to in that paragraph actually says what he claims they do. One is his own story, which does not name a single name or include a single quote from a journalist going into the tank for Clinton.

The other is a NYTimes opinion writer exploring how the media's dedication to "balance" and merely reporting what politicians say might be played by a politician who repeatedly and blatantly lies about everything. This is true! Rutenberg nailed the challenge, the media failed it, and the results are plain for everyone to see.

They managed to one-up CNN, which has still not apologized or even issued a retraction for telling their viewers that it was ILLEGAL for them to read Wikileaks and that they had to rely on the professional journalists at CNN to tell them what was in it. It's made even worse by the fact that CNN barely covered the most damning contents of the leaked emails. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DcATG9Qy_A

There is Supreme Court precedent establishing that viewing and distributing already leaked information, even illegally recorded personal phone calls, is protected by the First Amendment (Bartnicki v. Vopper is the most recent).

And Chris Cuomo, the one making that claim, has a law degree and multiple politicians in the family. So he was almost definitely lying, rather than just unintentionally spreading misinformation.

For those of us who were unsurprised by a trump win, The Post has nothing left to lose. The MSM has been acting this way for decades, and it is finally obvious to everyone.

The Post is fake news.

Ah, the sheer irony of RollingStone lecturing other media outlets about journalism ethics.

Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone has been one of the best journalists in a mainstream publication for some time now. He was writing informative and critical pieces on Wall Street after 2008 when nobody else was.

Papers like NYT and WaPo are dependent on financial firms and oil companies for revenue, so they're not going to bite the hand that feeds them. Rolling Stone's advertisers are record labels and lifestyle brands (clothing, liquor, games) so they're free to be critical of Wall Street. You wouldn't read them for copyleft and anti-DRM news though.

Yeah, pot shots are easy when mistakes are made, especially so publicly. Their recent kerfluffle was definitely a big one. Should Rolling Stone shut its doors? Or learn from its mistakes as best it can, knowing it has ground to make up, and continue to produce journalism?

They must really think the public is stupid enough to buy into their fake news meme. They're only destroying what little credibility they had left.

The WP,theguardian, huffingtonpost are the 3 self appointed guardians of humanity, savings us thru propaganda and fabrication The ends justify the means

Let's assume the Russian conspiracy is bogus. The question I want answered is: were all the news stories they claim to be fake really fake?

Several major stories at least from what I've seen were fake. Like the "PizzaGate" story which was entirely a fabrication that got legs. So, I think there's a legitimate problem but I think WaPo is spinning it to mean Trump won because of fake news which I seriously doubt since exit polls showed most people either decided their vote months in advance of the "October Surprise" crap or within the two weeks before the election (with the majority being months before). The fact of the matter is that modern news is trash whether it comes from the big newspapers or cable networks. No one does their job at least in terms of filtering leads, minimizing editorialization in articles, and keeping the headlines tuned to the subject. Just those three things have really made it hard for me to know whether I was reading someone's opinion or an explanation of the facts.

But the list as mentioned in the WaPo article is really not all that revealing. Some of the sites listed I know some of the people and they're far from Russian paid trolls like AntiWar.com. And Lewrockwell.com? That's Lew's blog for all intents and purposes. I don't like him but wow that list is utter crap. It doesn't target the real problem children like Daily Kos, Federalist, or Free Republic which I've seen them pass crap journalism or unfounded accusations as "news" just to name three news sites I've read in the past.

I have to admit I was absolutely fascinated with the PizzaGate story, and more specifically the people on Reddit who were adding to it. The sheer amount of will and investigation that went into to connect random points of information was astounding and terrifying.

Out of curiosity, how much time have you spent looking into pizzagate? Why are you sure that it's fake?

Also source on antiwar.com being funded by Russia?

No doubting you on any of this, just looking for more information.

I never said AntiWar.com were paid by Russia or Russian Trolls. I said they were FAR FROM it (as in not those things).

And yes, I have read about Pizzagate extensively. It's as fraudulent of a story as you can get.

Yes. The digital equivalents of alien tabloids exist. Did it decide the election? No. It's not some crisis or anything new.

The liberal-leaning media is trying to pull off a sleight of hand and bucket the entire conservative-leaning media with the alien tabloidesque ad-farms.

Which is funny. Because they named A LOT of non mainstream media. So are these people really implying that non mainstream media swung the elections in favor of trump where THEY failed? What kind of admission is that?

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