Reuters' position on covering Trump | Hacker News Reader

Reuters' position on covering Trump

reuters.com

328 pointsanjalik244 comments

Reuters is consistently my favorite news source. What I love about them is how they sell news to everyone, so they've got to make it as factual and unbiased as possible. Of course, like any news organization, they have a few biases, but I think that purely because of the position that they're in they are the least biased news source today.

They might sell the same article to Russia Today, the New York Times, Fox, Al Jazeera, and the Times of India, so they can't cater to one crowd's political biases. I'm serious; all these news sources pay for Reuters articles.

And even if you don't like Reuters, you've got to respect the speed at which they get out correct news. Before the Twittersphere erupts, before CNN loses its mind, before the alerts on the radio, Reuters has it. And if they don't know something, they say that they don't know it. It can make for frustratingly light articles, but any time I'm annoyed how empty the article is I realize that if it was bigger it'd be fluff or unverified claims.

As a supplement to that, it's also good to get news from diverse perspectives (not just left/right). For example, Techdirt and Reason might have ideas that neither NBC nor WSJ are going to give you, and talk about niche topics that don't otherwise hit the radar. R/neutralnews is also a great community for people who want to discuss news with documented facts as a requirement.

NeutralNews is all right, but there are some substantial biases in the comments that people get away with.

I almost exclusively read Reuters and have turned all my friends onto Reuters. If I could read the AP feeds I would read those too.

I'm not looking for what to think, I'm looking for what happened, and Reuters tends to give me that, even if I miss out on some stories.

I read AP here: http://hosted.ap.org/

Excellent! Thank you very much

AP is probably the most partisan of the USA wire services.

Here's an example: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/3c437475b6384b91913d5ffee2b91...

Note the partisan wording and contrast that with their past, fawning articles about the Pelosi-run House.

"GOP pushes..."

"Republicans jammed..."

"... a warning shot that they might deploy brute political muscle..."

"With a near-toxic vapor of divisiveness between the two parties across Capitol Hill, nasty showdowns broke out..."

"Busting through a Democratic boycott..."

"...dominated by confrontation, even as lawmakers braced for an even more ferocious battle..."

"...fueled the fire by urging Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to 'go nuclear'..." (note that AP calls it the "nuclear option" when Republicans even consider it but used no such terminology when Reid actually implemented it in the last term)

"...Wednesday's abruptly called Finance Committee meeting..."

etc.

Today's SF Chronicle used a more severe headline for this article: "GOP Pastes 2 top Cabinet picks..." ("pastes" being American slang for a violent, successfully-landed punch, not adhering two items together)

Interesting, thanks for the information. Seeing as I haven't read much of direct AP content I wasn't aware.

> What I love about them is how they sell news to everyone, so they've got to make it as factual and unbiased as possible.

As a side point: this is the origin of the "unbiased news" stance: the rise of the third party reporting agencies (Reuters, then AP UPI, AFP), massively accelerated by the telegraph. Previously papers were connected to parties (as they often still are in many countries), but the appearance/practice of being impartial increased sales opportunities.

It since became cited as an inherent virtue; obviously not everybody agrees that it is (or if it's even epistemologically possible). Personally I think it's worth trying for.

> but the appearance/practice of being impartial increased sales opportunities.

Is this based on any real data? Have there been any credible studies that show unbiased reporting = higher sales?

You can sell an article to both fox and cnn... duh

> They might sell the same article to Russia Today, the New York Times, Fox, Al Jazeera, and the Times of India, so they can't cater to one crowd's political biases.

All of that is mainstream news. This whole fake news thing is a part of the cultural war. Religious/Conservative people simply don't trust Mainstream media. To them, all of them are liberal and highly bias. Enough to omit facts for their narratives.

Example: https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2012/05/19/just-another...

Sources, Reports, Officials, Reporters, etc - News is HUMAN god dammit! No such thing as non-bais, and every story should be investigated, and not appeal to the authority of the organization publishing it.

When you follow Reuters method of manipulation you end up with this analogous example: If a stranger said she saw you at McDonald’s eating a cheeseburger; and your neighbor said he also saw you eating a cheeseburger at McDonald’s; well…….

….. as long as the CCTV system at McDonald’s is broken then you can say “evidence fails to show that I ate at McDonald’s”.

Though I am not a trial lawyer, it seems to me that the last sentence would be absolutely correct. But when you have a narrative to support...

"Religious/Conservative people simply don't trust Mainstream media. To them, all of them are liberal and highly bias."

People on the left don't trust the mainstream media either. To them, the mainstream media is way too far to the right and highly biased.

For many examples, listen to CounterSpin, a show created by media watchdog group FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting).[1]

Also, though it's not specifically media-focused, Democracy Now! often reports many instances of right-wing bias in the mainstream media.[2]

[1] - http://fair.org/counterspin/

[2] - https://www.democracynow.org/

Reuters is certainly not nearly "unbiased". It may be better than US partisan news sources in covering US events, but their biases show elsewhere. E.g. when a terrorist attack by vehicle happened in Israel, Reuters reported it as "Palestinian dies in ramming attack"[1]. The Palestinian who died was the terrorist, but Reuters found that unimportant to mention. Another instance is where Reuters invented a quote from Israel officials out of the blue [2]. There are more examples of this, I just took first two I had at hand. Reuters relies on local freelancers and local reporting bureaus, and some of them fall way short of their proclaimed standards.

[1] http://honestreporting.com/reuters-headline-palestinian-car-... [2] http://honestreporting.com/reuters-turns-rocket-fire-into-fi...

From a site whose raison d'etre is "Defending Israel from media bias", these examples are not very convincing.

Why not? It's like saying "surely, from the guys whose raison d'etre is to research nuclear physics, these accelerator data are not very convincing". These people find examples of media bias and publish them. How the fact that they are specializing in doing it somehow invalidates their results?

Your analogy is not quite correct. I'm not saying Reuters didnt slant those articles in those particular examples but it could be a honest mistake; this site will never report when Reuters slants towards Israel because that is against its raison d'etre, so your examples are unconvincing as to Reuter's purported bias.

So Reuter's position is that the media environment in the US is rapidly becoming like illiberal democracies in Egypt, Russia and Iran, and so its time to use skills applicable when operating within typically third world authoritarian regimes. What heart warming times we live in.

Another way to look at it is their reporters on US press have been caught flat-footed on daily news gathering. They don't have the same skills as their non-US counterparts and are rattled.

This is a call to arms. We are facing darkness now, and I believe this will have a lasting impact in what reporters are capable of and willing to do to offer free press.

The press was asking for this though, at least the mainstream press like CNN and MSNBC.

Not only did they push the Hillary Clinton agenda, but it was obvious to anyone with a brain that the liberal news networks didn't mind that they were helping Trump win the republican nominee, because they thought he would easily loose, and be a great figure head to point at next time someone tries to claim not all white men are racist.

Their plan back fired though and now this is what we have.

The left kept saying the right was going to destroy our rights and every day it gets worse and worse. They act as if we're in the end times. What's going to happen when Trump actually does something insane? No one will take the media seriously then (most have already lost faith). It's like the boy who cried wolf, but the media who cried fascism.

Part of me wonders if maybe the media is trying to destroy the American empire, they seem to be spiraling out of control.

It really cracks me up whenever I hear the extreme right lambast the mainstream media, who (at least in the US) is mostly right wing anyway.

Trump should be kissing the feet of the mainstream media, who were the single biggest force responsible for his election. Without "Trump" being the most often repeated word on every mainstream reporter's lips ever since he started running for office, he wouldn't have stood a chance.

Trump got virtually non-stop, world-wide, free advertising -- the kind that even his money couldn't buy. His election is proof positive that there's no such thing as bad publicity.

Trump should be grovelling before the mainstream media. But to pander to his base, who long ago swallowed the "liberal mainstream media" conspiracy theory, and to deflect criticism, he has to pretend that he's a victim of the mainstream media, when he's really their beneficiary.

That's a very sensationalist way of putting it, especially when they say "Don’t take too dark a view of the reporting environment..."

But it's true. Reuters is going to treat media reporting in the US like they treat reporting in countries heavy on censorship and hostile to the media. Let's see if that improves the reporting of facts.

Reuters simply said they have experience reporting in authoritarian countries and they don't yet know how 'sharp' Trump will be regarding the media. They're basically saying Reuters is prepared to deal with that, assuming it becomes a reality. They are not saying it's currently the case.

As far as I can tell the 'war on journalists' has almost entirely been words so far. The administration has been light with facts yes but that is a far cry from the type of media control exhibited under authoritarian regimes. So yes the OPs comment is a sensationalist interpretation.

I get the impression that people are a little too eager to characterize themselves as repressed, as if America has suddenly turned into an all-out authoritarian regime in the last week, where they are becoming a bit disconnected from reality, or at the very minimum jumping the gun. Reminds me of the classic Monty Python scene https://youtu.be/Vl4ufIrMtXg

You might be right about things, but there's plenty of time.

Part of the issue, for me, isn't so much what Trump has done so far policy-wise, it's the environment this is all occurring in, and what Trump is setting up and what he has done in the past. If the legislature was in Democratic control, I wouldn't be so concerned. If Trump had actually divested his business, I might rest easier. If Trump weren't so much in the pockets of Russia for obvious reasons, it might not be so bad. And so forth and so on.

Instead, we have all of it happening simultaneously. To summarize:

1. You have a white supremacist in a central position in the white house.

2. There are concerns about Trump's vulnerability to Russia, with reports of his involvement in hacking, and evidence prior to the election that this is true.

3. To make (2) worse, you have a visible schism developing between Trump and the people who would know about those things, the intelligence and military communities. The president is actually essentially siding with Russia and distancing himself from US military and intelligence.

4. At the same time, he's bringing the FBI, who is in charge of domestic enforcement, more under his control, and eliminating segments of it that disagree with him. He rewards Comey, who arguably was complicit in using his position to sway the election.

5. The FBI itself reports concerns about white supremacy in law enforcement. So now you have white supremacists cuddling up to the people who are supposed to do something about white supremacy.

6. The other person who might be in a position to do something, the AG, also has a history of white supremacist positions.

7. Trump refuses to actually divest of himself of his business interests, creating huge conflicts of interests.

8. He places people with massive financial conflicts of interest in certain cabinet posts, essentially letting foxes run the henhouses.

9. He's actively hostile toward the press, who are simply doing what they should be doing and holding public officials to the high standard of scrutiny they should be held to.

Do I need to go on?

Essentially, there's no checks and balances anymore. At all. The person in the white house, who lost the popular vote, is behaving as if he's an organized crime boss. And the GOP is acting as if the ends always justifies the means, even if it means dismantling democratic processes. See NC for an example of this playing out.

This is why some people are freaking out. Because even if it's not currently fascism nationally, it's feeling very similar to it. I know those terms were used by those on the hard right about Obama, and maybe diluted the meaning of the term, but at the moment there's too much unchecked power. Way too much.

My political beliefs actually don't align well with either major party, but to me this is a very very very bad situation.

We shouldn't have to worry about whether or not we're jumping the gun. That's the point.

I don't find the parent comment sensationalist. The letter compares the current situation in the US to what Reuters has dealt with in Iran and other oppressive countries. It's hardly sensational to point that out explicitly.

Also, "very sensationalist" is not only redundant but itself sensationalist.

Look at it this way... they just called Steve Bannon a rank, timid amateur when it comes to intimidating the press. They said, very loudly, we are not afraid of you. Good for them.

I would not underestimate Bannon. He is a very smart guy.

Oh, I don't doubt he's very smart. But there are both laws and traditions in place to prevent the kind of subservient lapdog press he wants to have. And he lacks the cajones to just toss the First Amendment out the window on a broad scale (yet).

Reuters' point was that even without the First Amendment and other protections afforded journalists in America, they're capable of publishing important, relevant news anyway. So that's not just a statement of intent. It's deliberately poking at Bannon's bluster. We are not afraid of you. He's trying to intimidate the press, and Reuters, at least, is having none of that.

So Bannon is smart. So what? That won't keep Reuters from doing their jobs.

edit: I should probably add here that I think assuming one's political opponents are stupid is a pet peeve of mine. Of course Bannon is very smart, or he wouldn't be where he is today.

First, it's cojones. Cajones would be something related to boxes (from "caja" - note that Cajon Pass in California is named for a box canyon).

Second, it may or may not be that he lacks the courage. He may lack the desire to go where you suspect that he wants to go. Mostly, though, what he lacks is the freedom to do so.

Just tossing the First Amendment out the window, at the current time, would not have the support of the courts. It would be declared illegal in no time. It would then require using the power of the office to suppress free speech by force - literally having police or military shut down radio stations, TV stations, newspapers, and the internet (don't forget cell networks and ham radios). The military is unlikely to undividedly follow such a course. Now you very likely have a civil war.

So even if he wants to, he can't blatantly toss the First Amendment out the window, and not because of lack of courage. It's because the people won't put up with it (at least not yet).

My pet peeve is when people assume that being smart is the most important thing in politics (or any other endeavor). Clever people may make fewer mistakes, but when they do make them they are much more difficult to fix. Just as true for software as it is for running a country.

I am not saying that his smartness is a good thing but a thing to consider. Al Capone was a very smart guy too probably. Even if you don't agree with him you should not think he is dumb. He may be smarter than his opponents. I remember the same thing happening with Bush. A lot of people who opposed him called him dumb but in reality a dumb person won't become president. Never underestimate people.

The mainstream media are already lap dogs. They've been taking orders from the rich and powerful for decades, and are a complete and utter joke.

Trump calling them to heel is just a method of pulling the already right-wing mainstream media further to the right. The far right will never settle for anything less than FOX, and for some of them even FOX is "too liberal".

It's not the smart that people should be concerned about. It's if he's going to go as far as some governments do in suppressing journalists: Harassment, imprisonment, or execution.

Covering the current administration is so far not a life-threatening exercise. That's what people mean by "amateur". There are other countries where reporting carries real, immediate risks to one's safety.

Consider the luxury of being a US-based reporter when there's people like Raif Badawi facing execution just for blogging: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raif_Badawi

Exactly. Bannon isn't tossing Wolf Blitzer in jail for saying something bad about the administration. Lesser journalists aren't just disappeared off the streets and never seen again.

Amateur, by standards of suppressing the media.

As much as that's true today, I have no idea what tomorrow brings. They've already terminated a high-level judge for obstructing the administration. What if they "detain" a reporter for "leaking classified information"? What if Manning-like detention becomes the norm for those that speak out?

I'm extremely concerned that in the next few weeks the President will appear with generals flanking him at some big military event and he'll make some incoherent speech about something or other and, at a quick glance, you might not be able to tell him from Muammar Gaddafi.

Once he crosses that line there's no telling what will happen. There are too many utterly terrifying historical examples to draw on.

What are you talking about? This type of incoherent rambling gives normal liberals a bad name.

People I know who've had to escape tyrannical regimes would say this isn't incoherent rambling.

If Glen Beck and Newt Gingrich are raising concerns this is not a "liberal" problem. Get a grip.

Are you talking about the firing of the acting Attorney General? Not a judge.

It wasn't really that big a deal, it was as much a political statement on her part as it was on the administration's. It's concerning, but it is unlikely to become part of a pattern, the top officials at the Justice Department will soon be appointees of the administration rather than people that agreed to carry out necessary functions during the transition.

> ...it is unlikely to become part of a pattern...

And that's where we disagree. I think this is the first of many.

They don't have to suppress the media if they just undermine their credibility. I think this is the strategy and they are successful with it. If people view the New York Times and breitbart.com as equally biased then you have a problem.

America is a country where you can read Hillary's emails (via wikileaks, that you won't get in trouble for visiting) but she can't read yours. (Nor can Trump.)

We can really only read those emails due to leaks.

Public officials' communications should be in the domain of the public by default unless there is a real urgent need to keep something secret.

Wow, that is a pretty extreme position. (I can't dismiss it outright as obviously the senate can debate things and come to conclusions and make policy, even if all the debates and hearings are public.)

In your opinion should politicians be allowed to meet each other and talk privately (about politics) at all? Or should there be no private meetings allowed? (Or at least no talking politics if they do meet.)

I would actually strongly disagree with that. Officials need to be able to exchange ideas freely amongst themselves and within confidence in a non-media environment. They need to be able to say things to each other in person, on phones, and in email communications in less discrete terms that otherwise would need to be crafted to appease their political coalitions and oppositions. They need to be able to ask and say stupid things. If you take that away from officials they lose their ability to actually deliberate and think about policy in terms of the merits of the policy. There is a balance to strike in terms of transparency and public accountability, but a transparency free for all in which no communication is private can easily lead to bad policy and outcomes.

Its not too different from not having a client see your business's internal communications. 99% of the time you aren't trying to screw your client and are trying to do a good job for them, but you really don't want to show them the sausage factory in any case because it will make it harder to do a good job for them if everything you do or say is presented to the client.

However, the public should have the ability to request through Freedom of Information channels access to emails or documents about particular topics. Not necessarily in real time or in short time frames, but being about to oversee the political sphere is important too.

The impossible grey area would be what defines 'urgent.' Nevertheless, I would welcome less abuse of state secrets privilege.

> but she can't read yours. (Nor can Trump.)

Lol, how quickly we forget: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A

They can read your email at their discretion, via a warrant from a secret court whose proceedings you can neither contest nor attend, and order companies to comply without exposing who for or why they are doing said orders.

Only truly off-the-record end-to-end encrypted communications are safe channels in the United States. And email ain't one of them.

I should note that if you lean to the Right and/or don't worship the Clintons and the Democratic party, then most of the US media has seemed like a third-world Party Line news for a long time.

It's a damn shame that our country is so split into two parties (or worse -- "moderates") that we assume you're either Left or your Right. I know many people who would feel more involved in the political system if there were viable parties that represented beliefs that cross (or often are completely unrepresented in) party lines.

The two party system coerces us into false dichotomies far too often.

If you view people who don't agree with you politically as strawmen who "worship" your least favorite politicians, then you've already failed at understanding the world. Everyone disagrees on stuff, but if you want to understand people and the world, the only way to do that is to see things from other peoples' perspective. They have plenty of reasons for voting the way they do that have nothing to do with being brainwashed or worshipping false idols or whatever. You may or may not agree with those reasons, and those reasons may be based on true or false premises, but if you don't understand your opposition you will never defeat them, if that's your goal. You might even find that better government is a higher goal than beating whatever group you've lumped into a single hate bucket. What you said is no different from how you think "those people" view you.

I don't think parent poster has a problem with people having opposing views, but with media organisations affirming they are unbiased while they are not. And this criticism is not limited to the right wing -- see Chomsky.

I don't object to people disagreeing with me politically. Yes, the "worship the Clintons and Democratic party" part is a bit tongue-in-cheek. Are you sure your own political position isn't blinding you?

I do object when those who disagree with me politically smear my side, or even anyone on their side who doesn't agree with them enthusiastically enough, as racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe, ignorant, redneck, while they claim to be the most intelligent people in the world and the sole source of compassion and tolerance.

I'm happy to have a reasonable discussion with anyone who has at least put some thought into their position and doesn't devolve to slinging insults around when they see facts they don't like.

So long-running papers such as the Wall Street Journal, regional / local newspapers with long conservative histories (example: the Chicago Tribune, Dallas Morning News, etc.), several long running political analysis magazines (National Review, Weekly Standard, American Spectator), even the vast tabloid (New York Post) and AM talk market, are Clinton / Democratic party worshipers? News to me.

Heck, Fox News itself is over 20 years old. So I'm not sure what "long time" you are referring to.

I note what you picked (newspapers and news magazines, plus talk radio and Fox). But you left out MSNBC, CNN, and even the New York Times for some reason...

That is: Yes, there are center-right or right-wing press organizations. Despite that, it is still true that the bulk of the "mainstream" press is no longer center - they have become biased, and sometimes even actively helping Democratic campaigns. That's not what "mainstream" used to be.

The United States traditionally has enjoyed a wide variety of opinions in its various regional daily newspapers, and some studies in the past have shown very little bias overall (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1460-2466.2000....). Obviously there was individual bias, but not in the meta.

Maybe something has happened of late (would love to see data, aside from cable news which I think has obtained strong bias of late). But personally, I believe that if there is a problem, it is more the consolidation of media outlets into very large corporations.

This is a lack of diversity problem, not a bias problem. If "mainstream media" is defined by Big Corporations, you have to include Fox News (News Corporation) and AM talk radio (largely Clear Channel) with the liberal side of MSNBC (Comcast), Time Warner (CNN), Disney (ABC), and CBS. I can easily buy that the fact we have much fewer voices than we used to driving the narrative might lead more to monolithic opinions and groupthink.

Incidentally, I personally find the charges you are making about media actively helping campaigns a bit weird as well, given Steve Bannon's role in the Trump campaign.

I never considered Breitbart as part of mainstream media, so I ignored that. CNN is in a completely different position than Breitbart.

"Mainstream" used to be NBC, CBS, and ABC, plus AP and UPI. Of those, UPI's gone; NBC, CBS, and ABC have more-or-less abandoned their role. Fox and CNN are new-ish (at least to a person of my age). So to claim that "the mainstream media" all abandoned the center means "almost all the original ones did" - not counting Fox (or even CNN) in the reckoning. Never the less, CNN and Fox are far more mainstream than Breitbart, which is a marginal fringe player.

Surely, Trump mouthing off couple of guys from White House press corps makes US media as tightly state-controlled as in Russia and Iran. How does it even make sense? Media environment in US is nowhere nearly similar to Russia or Iran, and is not "becoming" anything like it, regardless of what Trump tweets. If Trump nationalizes CNN or bans access to NYT website, then it would be one small step towards where Russia and Iran is. That kind of exaggeration is exactly why it is so hard to take many MSM outlets seriously.

I'm a Trump supporter so take this with a grain of salt.

When he said the media was dishonest, he was referring to CNN, WaPo and the mainstream media (excluding Fox News). Anyone who follows Trump know these are the folks he's referring to. If he didn't like ALL of the media, he wouldn't even have a press corps. Reuters isn't really engaging with what Trump's saying.

Are Trump's claims substantiated? I would say, Yes.

During the last election cycle, anybody who knows anything about the DNC leaks, Podesta emails, CNN feeding Hillary questions during townhall meetings against Sanders, Hillary's gliding past the FBI investigations, "bleaching" her email servers (which were under subpoena), Bill Clinton's unprofessional meeting with Loretta Lynch... knows that there's some serious corruption happening at the top of these major news companies.

As a litmus test... the fact that almost every liberal in America is yelling at Trump more than they're yelling at the DNC (and Debbie Wasserman Schultz) shows the state of mainstream media. The DNC sabotaged Bernie Sanders nomination, and he was the only candidate that would have a chance of beating Trump (a very high chance since he had young vote). When the DNC sabotaged Sanders' nomination, and doubled-down on Hillary the loss wasn't just technical––it was a landslide[1]

Mainstream media is really broken in America. There really needs to be a breakup of corporation-owned news companies. It really is a swamp in Trump's idiom.

[1] http://www.politico.com/2016-election/results/map/president

While I may not agree with your position, I appreciate your perspective. Thank you for sharing.

Bernie supporter here, so obvious bias, but the way they (CNN, Fox, etc.) talked down to Sanders in the primaries was disgusting, so I have to agree there. However, the trump administration wasn't attacking Fox news which I think we can all agree from an objective standpoint is several times worse than CNN in their distortion of the truth.

Can you give examples of Fox distorting things? I gave many examples of issues that the MSMs didn't seriously cover.

I don't believe that there isn't "true" objective coverage but Fox News with Hannity and Carlson are really providing coverage that is sharp, and enlightening. They're actually informing the public instead of participating in the media churn.

There's been studies showing people who watch Fox are uninformed. I actually think they're half decent this election cycle, completely unlike the Pravda they were for Iraq/GWB, but they publish more misconceptions and lies than the others (I do not believe for a second WaPo or CNN are unbiased)

I don't know why you're getting downvoted, it's a good question. I am not a fan of trump, but I also want to see and verify examples of Fox distorting things.

I would argue that presenting one (obviously biased) view as the ground truth would qualify as distortion. For example, consider how Fox reports news regarding separating religion from public, tax-funded institutions, such as removing the 10 commandments from schools, as infringements on religious freedom.

Of course, liberal news organizations distort the truth as well.

How about Fox News reporting that the Canadian mosque shooter was a Moroccan Muslim who chanted allah Akbar while murdering people at the mosque? In fact he was a white Canadian citizen self described trump supporter.

To my understanding they didn't retract their erroneous position for more than 24 hours after accurate details were known. Many of their listeners still believe the shooter was a Muslim immigrant. Trump's press secretary, knowing this falsehood is widespread, has cited this incident as a reason to support the travel ban. The level of disinformation that comes from Fox News approaches that of Russian state run media.

Fox didn't invent that claim - Radio Canada reported it[1], and so did CBC. Of course, this claim was wrong, but it's not Fox's fault for repeating Canadian reporting the words of eyewitnesses. Of course, eyewitnesses are often unreliable so one has to be careful not to take it as the final truth. That applies to every "hot news" reports from any source. And certainly Fox is not responsible for anybody in the government using this claim to justify anything - they could as well use it if Fox didn't exist at all, since it was reported by the Canadian source.

[1] http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-city-mosque-gu...

Well -- none of the American so-called "biased liberal media" reported that false fact.

You are wrong to pretend this incident is an isolated case of biased reporting. It's part of a pattern of deliberately misleading reporting from Fox News that obscures the truth or over represents what is known.

If the media is biased to liberal side, it would be very reluctant to report on crime committed by somebody yelling "Allahu Akbar", at least this particular detail. In this particular case it worked to their favor, since the report turned out to be false. That doesn't mean the bias is good, it just means in one case this bias accidentally filtered out false information. There are plenty of cases where the same filter filtered out true information and passed on false information.

BTW, Reuters reported the same too[1]. So did The Times in UK[2]. Not exactly bastions of Republicans.

[1] http://www.reuters.com/article/us-canada-mosque-shooting-sce... [2] http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/world/suspects-shouted-all...

> You are wrong to pretend this incident is an isolated case of biased reporting.

I'm not pretending anything of the sort. On the contrary, I am clearly stating this is not an evidence of Fox being biased, but of Fox relaying information from a reliable source, which they had no reason to suspect was wrong, but still turned out to be wrong. It happens.

If Fox reported "somebody committed a mass shooting, must be a Muslim" - without any evidence - that would be biased reporting, inventing facts with no basis. Making a mistake is not a proof of bias, per se - unless there's a pattern of mistakes that always points in one direction regardless of the evidence. Then it's the definition of bias.

You simultaneously argue that liberal bias accidentally filters out this mistaken report from left wing outlets, without acknowledging that fox's bias plays a role in poor framing of unverified salacious details that they are strongly motivated to publish -- and publish they do, early and regardless of accuracy, when it supports their desired narrative.

This is absolutely a pattern in their reporting - one of many ways in which they misrepresent events.

I honestly can't believe I have to argue the case that Fox News is a biased media outlet -- the argument has been made by better people than me in far more depth. I don't think Fox itself would even deny they are biased...

There is this hilarious O'Reilly report about Amsterdam (Yurop, of course, so not that relevant but it still shows complete disconnect from reality)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLJ56BfPoSg

There's been studies showing people who watch Fox are more uninformed

What you're saying is anedoctal. Ultimately, Fox News were the few news organizations that knew that Trump was going to win by a landslide. Every other news organization were all singing that Hillary had a 99% chance of a victory (I'm not being hyperbolic with the 99%).

ONE news organization had 99%. More reasonable and measured ones had 60%.

Which ones and when? I know the LA Times did, but I think you can count the major national ones on one hand.

Nate Silver has taken a major beating from pretty much everyone in the press when he put Clinton's chances as something like 2/3 IIRC (don't remember the exact number, but it was high, but not as high as 90%). Lots of pundits all around were berating him for being contrarian for the sake of being contrarian and inflating Trump's numbers just to draw attention to himself and so on and so forth - right up to the day Trump won. I don't remember any measured ones with 60%. Of course, I can't claim I've seen them all. Which ones were?

Can you point me to some concrete examples of times CNN or WaPo has been dishonest? Not counting editorials.

> The fact that almost every liberal in America is yelling at Trump more than they're yelling at the DNC (and Debbie Wasserman Schultz) shows the state of mainstream media.

Plenty of liberals in my liberal social media bubble were yelling at the DNC and DWS when they were doing news worthy things. But why should we still be? Trump is now the one doing things we think harmful.

I listed several examples in my comment. CNN for sure did not cover these issues proportionately to their gravity. These were serious issues that were skirted by them.

Had they been responsibly covered, public sentiment would be more favorable towards Trump... since he's really been rapping on this MSM corruption for a while. If anything, Trump is at least an iconoclast and whether you like his policies it would at least command respect.

>CNN for sure did not cover these issues proportionately to their gravity.

This is a very reasonable statement, but ultimately does not encapsulate the rhetoric that has been levied against the media by Trump specifically, nor his more ardent supporters.

Not covering proportional to gravity is not:

Anything similar to lies, fabrications, false news, misconstruing the news, or presenting the topic with a completely false narrative.

While it does certainly affect the narrative, and while CNN gives far more weight to articles favoring the left, this does not hurt Trump in any way as far as his getting elected was concerned. At the very least, the song played by the left leaning MSM (and that is a VERY IMPORTANT distinction, as Fox News represents the right leaning MSM; their viewer numbers have them as a larger body than CNN--how would they not be the true MSM?) lulled many Clinton supporters into a false sense of security. The post-election meltdowns by people who claimed they did not vote directly as a result of this false security, while anecdotal, points directly at that narrative.

And even if you allow that CNN reports on left leaning issues in a positive light while decrying conservative viewpoints, and Fox reports on right leaning issues positively while pointing out the issues in progressive topics, one cannot use them as direct opposition to each other, as neither tends to focus both on the positives and negatives in an issue in a way that could be considered equal. Equal airtime doctrines have also caused a negative skew, but that is another topic altogether.

Thank you. Misjudging the proportional "gravity" of an issue is not equivalent to lying. But when affect has replaced logic as the value system you use in evaluating media, then I guess it is.

The amount of attention given to an issue is just as relevant as lying, because it's even more responsible for which candidate someone will vote for. People are more persuaded by what they see and what their attention is drawn to than the cold facts.

Humans are not "rational" and pretending they are doesn't give you a moral high-ground.

The problem is he's a hypocrite. How can you accuse the media of lying and lie all he time yourself? His IRS lie being the worst. He kept saying he couldn't do it, but that's just a straight lie.

I don't see the argument you're making.

A free citizen has a right to keep their tax documents private. We can't feel entitled about that.

There's a difference between saying "It's my right not to do this thing" and "I can't do that thing". Either can be true or false. In the case of the taxes, he said the latter, and it was false.

No, you are wrong. He's simply choosing to not reveal it.

This is a perspective issue IMHO.

See: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/02/0...

Because of strong media polarization in the cable television news sector, coverage -- while it will show up on both sides of the fence -- will be prioritized to one topic or another entirely depending on politics. So MSNBC spent a huge amount more time exploring the Access Hollywood tapes / Russian hacking angle regarding Trump, while Fox News will cover Clinton's email scandal more.

This is not exactly surprising. I wouldn't call this "corruption". Having an opinion / bias is not corruption.

I will say that from a personal perspective, I find all of American cable news fairly awful, and one of the reasons is this "gotcha" fatigue when it comes to their outrage cycles. At some point, it's hard to figure out what is really a genuine fault and what is just some tabloid fluff designed to get the viewer demographic angry. This especially applies to the "gotchas" that devolve into outright wild conspiracy, such as the Podesta emails you reference (devolved into Pizzagate and who knows what else).

Although not my primary news source, my impression is that Reuters is much more sober than the current state of cable news.

Trump's is/was a womanizer. I don't think that's in doubt. While that is a bad quality in a person I would distinguish this from criminal actions like deleting subpoenaed evidence.

Hillary's actions still haven't drawn the coverage that was deserved. A lot of them (see my top-level comment) would individually be deemed a national scandal had it been Trump.

CNN said “it’s illegal to possess these stolen documents [the Hilary emails from wikileaks]. It’s different for the media. So everything you learn about this, you’re learning from us.” Thats fake and a lie, and they were exposed quickly about that.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...

Yes, sometimes the media can say something that's not true. But this example was immediately pointed out by, guess who, the rest of the media. And it was a kind of weird thing to be wrong about too, so it seems more likely that the speaker genuinely believed they were telling the truth as opposed to being dishonest (I mean, who does it benefit to be dishonest about that? Nobody). Though that doesn't excuse the fact that they really should have double-checked that before saying it. They absolutely were wrong, and they absolutely deserved to be called out by everyone else.

But even if they were dishonest that one time, one example, no matter how widely-reported, indicates systemic dishonesty.

That's like asking to point out some concrete examples of humor in the complete works of Mark Twain. It's there, it's everywhere. Asking someone to point out concrete examples is a waste of everyone's time. If you really want these examples (and I don't think you, or the countless redditors who I have seen make this exact same argument, really do) then I would advise you to go read the Washington post or the New York Times. Pick an article at random.

To the extent this is true of those media organizations, it is infinitely more true for Fox News.

Who are these people spreading ridiculous propaganda on hacker news?

So like, you presume to have access to a set of countervailing facts about reality that any given NYT or WaPo article is dishonest about, whereas Fox or Breitbart gives you the straight take on these facts. But why are you so certain that you are the one with access to those true facts? What are you cross-referencing the Breitbart articles against to ensure their trustworthiness?

I used to watch CNN because I found them somewhat unbiased, but this last election cycle they completely came off the rails. I'll have to find examples, but leading up to the election I was digesting a lot of news and routinely noticed where CNN would leave facts out or let a left leaning guest say something false with zero correction.

So now, I've given up on TV news since MSNBC and FOX are a joke.

I saw a ton of liberals yelling at the DNC. Before the election, they were upset that they mistreated Bernie. After the election, they were upset that it handed the victory to Trump.

It has faded away, but that's only because more important things are going on. Trump is an immediate threat to the nation in ways the DNC could never be.

How is Trump an immediate threat? I'm really curious. All of his policies are about protecting American interests, and rebuilding America's manufacturing complex.

If you're referring to the Immigration EO... please read it first. It's a really well-written bill. For those curious about whether it was a religious discrimination see this pie chart of the Muslims that are excluded[1]. The goal of the EO is to mitigate the influx of refugees from states that foment anti-Western ideals. It just happens to be this group are radicalized, and violent Islamic people.

[1] https://i.redditmedia.com/09_97z77yJ2MRBOVMVYvkcVEi66uJI5KSw...

Trump is a more long term threat due to the long term fallout and international perception of the United States as a result of his actions.

Yes, his Immigration related EO does not affect nearly as many people as the rhetoric would indicate -- but what it does do is prevent travel to the United States for some 22,000 persons (and counting) at the very least while, by consensus, not really being likely to prevent entry to actual terrorists. It is not that the bill is truly discriminatory, just that it is likely to be ineffective in its aims while damaging international credibility of America as a land of inclusion (or, to rely on imagery from the plaque of the Statue of Liberty, a golden door, to accept your tempest-tossed refuse).

Second, while his threat of 20% tariffs on importation from Mexico may seem like it originally promotes "buying local", there are several long term ramifications. First, construction materials and machinery [1] for American factories will ultimately increase the price of American produced goods as a result of this measure. Second, this bill will, directly and immediately, grant China greater bargaining power--with the United States. Thirdly, it causes Mexico to negotiate more aggressively with its local neighbors and with overseas partners, potentially closing trade avenues altogether with America.

Ultimately, it boils down to one thing: Trump's measures appear to be reactionary, with little view for long term fallout, international reputation, and future trade relations with partners that are not directly related to his current target (eg: trade relations with Mexico deteriorating, giving China greater negotiating power).

[1] http://www.cbsnews.com/news/what-does-the-u-s-import-from-me...

> Yes, his Immigration related EO does not affect nearly as many people as the rhetoric would indicate

It potentially affects, well, everyone, really: while much focus has been on the effect of the refugee ban and the 90-day shutdown from named countries, the order directs certain executive officers to determine information that foreign countries (all countries, not just the specific ones addressed by the 90 say ban) must share with the US regarding potential immigrants and orders that those officers provide recommendations of countries that should be added to an immigration ban list because they do not share the required information.

So it impacts all potential immigrants to the United States, and all third parties (including US citizens about whom a foreign government has information) about whom (because of direct or indirect relationship ship to a potential immigrant) the US might demand information from a foreign government as a condition of allowing immigration from that country.

No, you're wrong. You can preempt intentions of a bill. A bill is a bill. If Trump wants to overreach he'll have to introduce another bill. This bill is specifically to curb nations that have been havens for radical Islamic people.

The E.O. is not a bill, and no new bill would be required to implement the parts of it that I related. (Well, it might be legally required just as new legislation might be legally required to do what is called for in the 90-day ban, which is being challenged as a violation of existing law; but that's an after-the-fact constraint that doesn't prevent overreach, it just potentially provides a basis for responding to it, provided the courts are doing their job more faithfully than the President is doing his.)

There's always going to be some unwanted effects of any kind of legislation. I agree that those are bad side effects... but you have to look at the general thrust of the legislation: curbing unwanted immigrants to America. There's no deterministic way to discover whether someone has terrorist sentiments... so a blanket statement is used. It's sloppy but accomplishes the goal, no?

Reactionary? Yes, I agree. Trump's most shining quality is that he acts quickly. Obama didn't accomplishing this much in his 8 years, as Trump has in 2 weeks... I would anticipate he has a very lean and agile approach to legislation and everything is subject to iteration.

Obama's inability to get much done can be, objectively, attributed largely to an obstructionist Congress. While not wholly to blame, it certainly both slowed his agenda, and often caused him to gut key provisions from legislation in order to get it ultimately passed. Looking at initial drafts of the Affordable Care Act early in its history versus what ultimately passed Congress is a depressing reminder of how willing Democratic partisans are willing to compromise their values in terms of playing ball with an enemy team whose explicit, stated, and recorded goal was paraphrased to "Take the other side's ball and go home."

While many bills have unintended consequences and side effects, these are often not recognized at the time. Pointing out the negative consequences for people who have already passed American vetting procedures, preventing access to persons already in flight when it passed, detaining persons in airports immediately, and the failure of the bill to provide any tangible benefits as far as anti-terrorism measures are concerned were hardly unforeseen. These were immediately pointed out by security professionals.

I am still of the hopeful and optimistic opinion that Trump does not use his "very lean and agile approach" to unilaterally void NAFTA and impose a 20% fee on Mexican imports, as just the foreseeable consequences of that action are far reaching, negative, and highly deleterious to the United States' reputation internationally. The unforeseen consequences? The economic fallout that we cannot immediately predict? If they are mere extensions of what we already can see, I am afraid.

"Looking at initial drafts of the Affordable Care Act early in its history versus what ultimately passed Congress is a depressing reminder of how willing Democratic partisans are willing to compromise their values in terms of playing ball with an enemy team..."

They made no attempt to compromise on the ACA. They didn't need to -- they passed it with zero GOP votes in the House and almost zero in the Senate. They didn't even let Reps or Senators see the bill before the vote!

The ACA itself was just one big compromise, since it was basically the Republicans' own plan from the 90s.

>Obama didn't accomplishing this much in his 8 years, as Trump has in 2 weeks

This may be an accomplishment for people who wants immigrants out, but not for America or everyone. Also, what i hated most about that particular EO is that, it also bans people with Green cards and student visa's. There are numerous students who were stopped and detained which doesn't make any sense, but again this is what you get when you want to act fast without thinking through.

I say time will tell how this step affects things in general.

I would point out, 9/11 hijackers were all here on legal visas[0] - so using that thinking is faulty. Our visa process seems to have faults, and I think this EO is a stop-gap to try to amend the issue. I don't particularly agree with ever choosing "religion" or "race" as a litmus test (which, as I have seen seems to be the underlying motivation, right from the horses mouth), but you have to agree there is justification at closer scrutiny of some sort for visitors coming from known hot-bed countries.

I think from certain angles, you could argue Trumps response hasn't been strong enough (why wasn't SA included in that list; everybody tends to agree that is completely absurd)?

[0] http://www.factcheck.org/2013/05/911-hijackers-and-student-v...

Most of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis, who are not subject to the travel ban.

I'm reminded of the old proverb: "Do not remove a fly from your friend's head with a hatchet". Banning thousands of people who haven't done anything and may actually help our cause, just to prevent a few dozen people who may be able to find other means to get in the country if they had to anyways, is not a smart policy.

There hasn't been anything like another 9/11 attack since and we've had 16 years, so maybe two Presidents and all of our allied governments with the same policy know more about what to do to keep the country safe than a two week old presidency.

No, at least three were in the USA illegally on 9/11.[0] It's another example of Factcheck.org's unreliability.

[0] http://www.fairus.org/issue/identity-and-immigration-status-...

I don't think that contradicts the other comment. They said that the hijackers all entered legally. You're saying that some didn't have legal status on the day of the attack. Both are true. That some of them overstayed or didn't meet the terms of their visas after arrival is interesting, but not very actionable unless you want to set up an internal passport system or something.

  I don't think that contradicts the other comment.

Sure it does; "were all here on legal visas" is false.

  That some of them overstayed or didn't meet the terms of their visas

Even those that did have legal paperwork all obtained it via fraudulent means by lying on their applications as to purpose of visit; technically speaking, none was here legally.

The point was that ignoring people with visas would not be compatible with a goal of keeping terrorists out. I (and I think the other commenter) don't think it's a good idea or worthwhile, but it does fit the stated goal.

>Obama didn't accomplishing this much in his 8 years, as Trump has in 2 weeks

Err, no.

He has put out some Executive Orders, and done some hiring and firing. Even that has been enough to massively damage his Administration, such is the level of decision-making that we've seen so far.

I seem to recall Obama passing a rather major health care reform. Trump hasn't done anything nearly that big yet.

What you describe as a "lean and agile approach to legislation" appears to be not bothering with legislation at all. Has there been any legislation passed during the Trump administration yet? I certainly haven't heard of anything big.

The waiver for Secretary Mattis, a couple of bills that appear to be quite minor (I only skimmed them for a second):

https://www.congress.gov/public-laws/115th-congress

Thanks. I didn't realize it was so easy to look up. Obvious in retrospect.

My secret agenda was a PSA that they do a pretty good job publishing that stuff.

It worked!

> The goal of the EO is to mitigate the influx of refugees

Yet it blocked MIT professors with work visas (initially even green cards until they backpedaled) just because they were born in Iran/etc.

The EO is ridiculously hamfisted.

Though if you read Art of the Deal or have studied how Trump operates, his initial position on anything is always more than he wants. So they "backpedaled" on green cards and legal visas and still have what they really wanted.

Yes I know about "talk past the deal".

But that's not how democratic leaders are meant to act, that's how dictators act.

I feel like America is selling its birthright - a democratic republic - for the illusion of security. It's been happening ever since 9/11 but now it's even worse.

No, that's not how dictators act. How dictators act is they do what they want and if you resisted, they put you in jail or kill you. Dictators don't need negotiating tactics because negotiation is part of democratic process which requires consensus. Dictators don't negotiate, they dictate.

Consensus ... crowd pleasing ... dictators can do that. The hallmark of the dictator is their disrespect for individual rights, but you can totally please a crowd while stepping on individual rights, see Chavez:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/01/27/...

Consensus and crowd pleasing is not the same. And dictators aren't usually as good at pleasing the crowds as they think they are, otherwise there would be no need to suppress freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of elections, etc. which dictators (including Chavez, of course) routinely do.

And if anyone running things in the Trump administration actually knew the law, or history, they'd understand that treating people equally no matter what country they came from is not negotiable. You can't run a government like a business deal.

Every time this book is mentioned, I feel obliged to add the caveat that it was ghostwritten (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/07/25/donald-trumps-g...)

I disagree with the EO, and reading it fully I think the green card issue was more of a lack of experience on how to govern. It was clearly rushed out with little planning.

The reason I bring this up, is that Trump has plethora of issues that do not need embellishment. Hyperbole will do nothing but make Trump supporters dig further in and reaffirm their beliefs. A woman on my FB feed the other day said that as a woman, she was likely to have her right to vote taken away by the next election. That type of comment does nothing but make people think 'crazy liberal'.

Maybe I'm overreacting but as a green card holder myself, the cavalier attitude this administration has to people's lives fucking terrifies me.

I don't want to go on vacation and then find I can't get back into America (where I have a job, a mortgage, a spouse, a social network and have lived for the past 9 years) because Trump suddenly took a dislike to my country of origin.

I'm not even from a Muslim country, but we have some Muslims, and plenty of non-white people, so given that Bannon was partly behind the EO and is openly white nationalist, who knows?

I don't know the future, but it is important to remember that the list of countries came from a failed nation list made by congress and the Obama administration (they also included Iran) [1]. Trump did not just pull it out of the air.

Green cards are also permanent residences so legally that is much harder to stop than not extending or granting new visas.

With that said, I'm against it and think it is bad policy on many fronts.

[1] http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/29/politics/how-the-trump-adminis...

You are not overreacting. It's unnerving that a two-week old administration isn't willing to listen to anyone in their own government, or in our allies, and just thinks they know best. If they had people with experience, they'd understand just how much this policy messes with people's lives, and for no real benefit.

It was not lack of experience, it was deliberate, and only rolled back due to protests. After the order was put out, DHS decided that it didn't apply to green card holders. The administration then clarified that it did, and that's when SHTF as it were:

http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/28/politics/donald-trump-travel-b...

What worries me about the EO is how incompetent it was, and his running excuse that terrorists would just jump into planes to fly to the US if they heard about it first! That's nuts and it's the beggining of an excuse for him to do this over and over again, eroding the ability of Congress to vet his actions. "There's no time" does anyone actually believe that?

I am not blind to Trump's virtues. Economically he has a lot of good ideas. I agree that PC was going too far! But he's a lying son of a gun who's trying to screw us all.

> The goal of the EO is to mitigate the influx of refugees from states that foment anti-Western ideals. It just happens to be this group are radicalized, and violent Islamic people.

I don't understand this reasoning. Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, to take only two examples, are also places where a lot anti-Western activity comes from, both in ideology (via jihadist religious schools), and logistic support. If what you say is true, they should have been included in the ban.

Equally illogical is Trump's argument [1] that they couldn't take the time to consult the relevant parties from Justice, State, and Congress because that would have meant "the "bad" would rush into our country" before the EO's enactment. How does that not apply to the Muslim countries left out, like the two mentioned above, whose citizens have been the source of documented attacks on U.S. interests multiple times in the past (as opposed to the 7 countries included in the order)?

[1] https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/82606014382566605...

I read the EO first. It pretty clearly excludes people who should have the right to be here, including people on work and student visas, and permanent American residents. The White House has since walked that back a little bit, no doubt due to the massive backlash, but the order itself is clear enough, and the order continues to block people who should be allowed to come here.

I don't know what "well-written" would mean here, but it's not a good order by any means.

The threat posed by Trump goes far beyond this, though. Right now, my hope is simply that we're all still alive to vote again in 2020. I'm quite serious about that. Trump has shown himself over and over to be highly insecure, obsessed with revenge, and unable to let any slight slide without a response. Put such a person in charge of the world's most powerful military and there's a good chance of a catastrophe.

Ignoring the threat of nuclear annihilation, there's also the threat to the foundations of our democracy. He constantly attacked our electoral system and refused to commit to accepting the outcome of the election. We didn't find out how he would have handled losing in 2016, but how would he handle losing in 2020, or hitting the 22nd Amendment in 2024? I wouldn't be at all surprised if he refuses to leave and precipitates a crisis.

There's plenty more, for example his offhand desire to strip American citizenship as punishment for flag burning, but those are the two main ones that concern me.

His stated goal is protecting American interests.

It's not at all clear that his policies do anything to accomplish that goal. His executive order on immigration was quite likely counterproductive to American interests. Sure, it disrupted travel for a large number of people that had already been through a thorough vetting process (the claims that doing this made us safer are weak, the existing vetting process was effective, people who went through it had killed 0 people in the US), but it also made the US look foolish and capricious.

> I'm a Trump supporter so take this with a grain of salt.

Immediately predict lame rhetoric about how bad the media is.

> When he said the media was dishonest, he was referring to CNN, WaPo and the mainstream media (excluding Fox News).

Oh right, the bastion of correct reporting, fucking Fox News. Questioning Obama's birth certificate. Warning about his terrorist fist jabs. Rightly admonishing him for asking for Dijon Mustard.

> As a litmus test... the fact that almost every liberal in America is yelling at Trump more than they're yelling at the DNC

The current president vs something that happened 8 months ago.

> doubled-down on Hillary the loss wasn't just technical––it was a landslide[1]

It wasn't a fucking landslide. 13th closest election in history by electoral college, massive loss in the popular vote. This is why Trump supporters need a fucking reality check and should maybe try some of that mainstream media. You are hooked on his propaganda and lies.

You're busy in this thread, but you only seem to bring anger and ridicule. Maybe calm down a bit and foster useful discussions?

But looking through your history it seems like that may not be what you want.

> massive loss in the popular vote

Can we stop talking about the popular vote? As long as people know the electoral college is what matters, the popular vote is tainted. People who live in states that are not going to swing either a) don't vote or b) vote their ideal candidate.

HN is a place where we are typically critical of any studies methodology yet we hang on to a number as skewed as the popular vote. Imagine if you were polled and told "No matter what you vote your state is going red/blue. How do you plan to vote?" That is basically the question and it means the popular vote means very little in the end.

>the loss wasn't just technical––it was a landslide

1984 Reagan/Mondale, Reagan gets 59% of the popular vote and 98% of the electoral college -- that is a landslide. Trump getting 46% of the popular vote and 56% of the electoral college sure doesn't seem like a landslide.

> doubled-down on Hillary the loss wasn't just technical––it was a landslide

Is this your first election? Consider even just the last one: Obama vs. Romney. Obama performed far worse than he did in his previous election, and it was absolutely no landslide. Maybe 2008 was a landslide, but not 2012.

Yet in 2012 Obama won more electoral votes than Trump (332 instead of 304), and won the popular vote by 3.9%, instead of losing it by 2.1%.

Trump won, yes, but the idea that it was a landslide is patently foolish, and makes the rest of your message weaker. If you're so easily misled on the details, why would I have any confidence in your bigger picture?

I've seen several people suggest that covering Trump is an unprecedented challenge which news orgs have no understanding of how to handle. This is a good reminder that this isn't true; even a presidency which is exceptional by American standards is well within the familiar scope of international news organizations.

International news organizations are used to covering tin-pot autocracies around the world. Before it just always seemed bemusedly distant.

Yes, apparently the new administration isn't especially different in approach from covering warlords, post-Soviet dictators and Middle-Eastern autocrats.

I realize that it may be a lot more fun and topical to blame Trump, but the HN gestalt has been discussing the increasingly hollowed-out nature of American news reporting for years now. Public trust of the press has been dropping for decades.

If this manifests as "hey, we've all got to get back to real reporting", then it will be positive. (Not a mere rhetorical sop; that is genuinely my preferred, best-case outcome.) If this is a socially-acceptable way of saying "we've really got to double-down on the things that have been making HN discuss how crap most of the press' output is and has been causing our public trust to notch down another couple of percent every year for the past couple of decades", then it's just so many words on a screen. Given that people have been commenting that Reuters seems pretty good, which I tend to agree with, if this is a declaration that they're going to join the rest of the media, that's not going to be a positive.

Just because you suddenly like the political orientation of the press in the last couple weeks doesn't mean anything has changed. It is still the same shallow, click-bait-driven, hype machine it was last year, it's just that now it's hitting you in a direction that many of you are less prepared to apply skepticism about. That doesn't mean anything's gotten better in the past couple of weeks... in fact as a whole, that is a sign the situation has gotten even worse.

It's not the same click bait driven hype machine. The press used to be able to cover "real news". However, with their revenues declining many in the media have no choice but to use click bait driven headlines and the like. However, if users show an interest in "real news", the media will cater to that.

I'd also argue that most of the people complaining about the media rarely if ever read the news. They sit around making claims like the media lied so that's why I don't read any of it. It's like yes people make mistakes. The news media in particular will generally go out of its way to correct mistakes in coverage or correct a mischaracterization of a story or fix errors.

Remember if everyone was just discarded every time they made a mistake at work, there would be no one working. The media and people will make mistakes but you don't discard them simply because they made mistakes especially when they will correct the mistake once they are made aware of said mistake. I would be skeptical of those who don't believe in correcting their own mistakes when they happen and those who think they do no wrong.

Absolutely agreed.

Depending on whether that 'you' is actually me or a general reader, I think my comment may have come off wrong. I'm not suggesting that the current tone in US news is a clear improvement, I'm just rejecting the claim that with this election we're in an unprecedented death-of-news situation.

The state of most media in the US is deplorable. 'Fake news' sites aside, sources have been abandoned for access, and optimizing cost per click metrics has been interpreted as a reason to run unverified nonsense and press releases under the guise of actual journalism.

That's even without the complete failures of domain knowledge, context, and objectivity; the NYT recently left my jaw on the floor with a piece about how US involvement in Honduras is making "the most dangerous place in the world" safer. The legacy of US coups there, and CIA backing of brutal paramilitaries, was not mentioned even once - an unfamiliar reader was left to believe that the country was hellish by its own efforts, and saved by American intervention. Passing that sort of myopia off as a feature story is an ugly reminder of just how bad "good" journalism gets.

Good journalism still exists, with some effort. There are sites like The Intercept which report thoroughly and carefully, and which approach stories with a clear and predictable viewpoint - something I greatly prefer to the mock-neutral tone many groups use to bury the inescapable ideological choices of reporting.

If we're lucky, Reuters just means they're going to refuse a personal stake in covering US political news. I wouldn't mind a movement towards a more distant, anthropological style of coverage. If Trump's 'opponents' line reminds reporters that good journalism is adversarial to power, we might see some of the old style come back.

"Depending on whether that 'you' is actually me or a general reader,"

My apologies for lack of clarity. Meant in general.

I often wish that was two separate words in the common English. ("Y'all" is actually the correct word, but is dialect, so people who don't know that dialect may not understand its nuances correctly.)

One item on the Do list tickled me pink: > Give up on hand-outs and worry less about official access. They were never all that valuable anyway. Our coverage of Iran has been outstanding, and we have virtually no official access. What we have are sources.

I'm excited to read what they print using this policy.

Yes, me too. "Access journalism" has always seemed like a dead-end to me anyway, as it gives the subject a powerful veto on stories they don't like simply by threatening to limit or remove the access. Access feels like privilege, but in reality it's just a gilded cage.

(I wrote a whole thing on this subject, a couple of years back: https://jasonlefkowitz.net/2013/01/rick-reillys-lance-armstr...)

Of course we'll see how this plays out in the coverage Reuters provides going forward. And we'll even have an interesting example to contrast it with: Axios (https://www.axios.com/), the just-launched operation from some of the big wheels behind the success of Politico, which has positioned itself explicitly as an insider, access-oriented outlet.

Here's a longer take on the concept of rejecting access journalism and getting the real story using other sources, including leaks: http://pressthink.org/2017/01/send-the-interns/

I remember being on Twitter on most of election day and seeing evidence of all sorts of manufactured rhetoric from Reuters, and was really disturbed (proof below). There are a lot of other explanations for why this happened, but I'm not inclined to believe them given the reality of what happened on election day.

It looked like Reuters' polling towards the 8th showed Trump taking the lead, but they deleted the data and replaced it with Nov 1 data. Plenty of people caught it and called them out - several people took videos as well so the chance of them being a coordinated effort to doctor screenshots seems low. I don't know if they ever responded to this issue, but it forever changed my opinion of Reuters. If we're to assume the worst about this then it's pretty disgusting if this is the kind of shady stuff the media is pulling. I sympathize in principle, but in reality the question is whether this breed of media deserves anything but contempt.

Tweets with screenshots / photos (more in the same thread): https://twitter.com/Blazingcatfur/status/796071971700244480 https://twitter.com/ProtectthePope/status/796068457137733637

Also of note (posted elsewhere in the comments here, but downvoted): They posted this article on the 8th, saying there was a 90% chance of a Clinton win. Their data didn't support this claim.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-poll-idUSKBN1...

The linked Reuters article said their polls showed a 90% chance of a Clinton win, but the polls across all boards proved to be unreliable after the fact. What they did that advanced the idea of unbiased journalism is twofold:

First, they reported on early election numbers in North Carolina which directly contradicted their poll numbers and showed Trump performing better than predicted.

Second, they outlined a clear and realistic path to Trump winning. While their own poll numbers did not support this fact, they ultimately included it. They also did not rule out a Trump win in any way.

It is always important to note that a 90% chance of winning is in no way a guarantee, and I do not believe Reuters ever truly ruled out Trump as a contender. They used the only early data available, polls--and when every poll is wrong, and psychics are still not a real thing, they did what they could with the data they had. At least, in my reading of the article you linked.

Regarding the polls you linked, those are not the Reuters/Ipsos polls of 15,000 participants. Those are much smaller polls (850 users) with far larger margins for error.

While I cannot speak to the censoring of the 11/6 poll mentioned in the second tweet, having Trump leading in popular vote nationally (eg: what polls generally check) was ultimately incorrect, regardless of what you believe. Polls need to be carefully read, interpreted, and corrected for -- which is why fivethirtyeight gave Trump a much higher chance to win than any other body.

> I don't know if they ever responded to this issue, but it forever changed my opinion of Reuters.

I didn't write the code so I don't have first hand knowledge but I work for the guy who did. It was a data glitch.

Just out of curiosity, would deliberately hiding polling data showing Trump was taking the lead help Trump or help Clinton? I'd assume it'd help Trump, given that showing Clinton slipping would tend to encourage her supporters to get out and vote.

I think what's been said is admirable. What is being unsaid?

"[covering Trump] is an opportunity for us to practice the skills we’ve learned in much tougher places around the world"

Hint: they already recognize that Trump is an authoritarian in all but name. Long live the King, I guess.

"We always put out the official western establishment party line for those places, and we'll do the same for Trump's administration".

Do you actually think saying Iran is a repressive state is false? Do you actually think Bannon's statements are normal?

It's at least Nixon level bullshit at the moment; I expect it to get worst.

>Do you actually think saying Iran is a repressive state is false?

In a way yes. Some peoples (populations) are predominantly conservative an religious, and want to be in a state that works that way.

Calling it conservative or backwards etc (and with a qualifier "according to our standards" etc even better) is OK. Calling it repressive, as if the people there do not want it, can be downright misleading if not calculated.

Not everybody has the "American dream" or western style democracy as their operating vision. And of course, it's easy to find some minority that is in opposition to the government everywhere, and present it such as it represents the majority. But it doesn't always, and seldom in such states, where some westernized affluent outliers (usually with twitter accounts) are paraded as "the voice of the new generation" etc, when they are as rare as hipsters in Salt Lake City.

Trump has the Presidential office, at least 30%+ of the voters, and some major outlets etc supporting him, would you say he is the "real voice of America"? I guess not, and that's fair. But people and media do it all the time with some minority groups in arab states, latin america, etc., that don't reflect the general sentiment in their country at all (but are convenient for foreign interests).

Even worse when this misreading turns a relatively stable country (Iraq, Libya) into a hell whole of civil war, chaos and fundamentalist muslim wackos of different fractions. Because some big powers interested in destabilizing the region or securing some natural resources for cheap convinced "do-gooders" that they are a "repressive state" and they need to "fix it". Millions have been murdered in fixing "repressive states" into far more repressive hellholes with the aid of such media reporting...

Honestly I feel way overwhelmed by the administration related news and it has barely been over a week. It's also a constant reminder that oh yeah this really did happen and it continues to get worse.

I think the evolution of how the media operates over the next 4ish years will be very interesting to watch.

This is entirely intentional. The God Emperor is overwhelming you with shock and awe to make opposition seem pointless, which it is of course.

I don't know why you are downvoted, because it's clearly true. It's part of his playbook, The Art of the Deal. Scott Adams continues to be an annoying but fairly accurate narrator of the Trump narrative:

http://blog.dilbert.com/post/156399716951/outrage-dilution

Yep. I'm downvoted because anything even remotely right is on here.

I was amused by this line-

>We try to avoid “permanent exclusives” – first but wrong.

Funny way to phrase it!

I'd like to see reuters/AP etc. not only take the same approach, but even use the same language to US reporting as they do in other "regimes". Here's a slate.com series that I thought was doing a great job but for some reason hasn't continued into the Trump regime.

e.g. When Justice Scalia died:

WASHINGTON, United States—The unexpected death of a hard-line conservative jurist on America’s constitutional court has exposed deep fissures within the ruling regime and threatens to throw the country’s fragile political system into months of chaos.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/02/17/how_the_u_...

"Deep fissures within the ruling regime"? Deep fissures, sure, between the President and the majority of the Senate, who are of the other party. It seems a bit of a stretch to call Democrats and Republicans together "the ruling regime", though.

"Fragile political system"? More fragile than it used to be, but not yet fragile. We weathered that mess with barely a sweat.

"Months of chaos"? Not even.

That is: The language doesn't fit the reality in the US, whereas it often does fit the reality of the third world.

"That is: The language doesn't fit the reality in the US, whereas it often does fit the reality of the third world."

Yeah... this is what we keep telling ourselves.

The problem is that many of the people who voted for Trump don't read any news other than news explicitly designed to make Trump or the GOP look good.

If the media generally practiced the principles outlined in this post, the criticisms levied against the industry wouldn't be credible. Not that Trump has any moral authority to complain about anyone's integrity, but many have been complaining about the increasing partisanship among the U.S. media for a long time, and their complaints are largely valid.

Isn't everybody in media and business making "position statements" and being angry at you, the best way to show that you are "against the establishment"?

That is kind of a false statement, though. If he were to say that Freedom of the Press is no longer protected, the press would be very angry with you -- but I don't think it would improve your image of being against the establishment.

"The best" way to show you are against the establishment is to either a) prove the media's criticisms wrong, or b) have several actions that would stand against whatever "the establishment" is in our example.

What Trump has done is very seldom given examples of what is wrong, he has just unilaterally declared that the MSM is crooked. He has not eroded trust in an article or statement, or in most cases proving the left-leaning or progressive media wrong, he has made declarations that reach far further than his original aim. This is very in line with his character, which has been largely reactionary and often quick to pass judgments without truly "aiming" them first.

The parallels, for example, between his declarations of the media being wrong having much broader effects than intended, and his immigration bill which ultimately affected masses of people it shouldn't have, are difficult to ignore. Both were made in haste, both were aimed at a specific goal, and both had broad implications that were not originally intended.

I think these are excellent guidelines. If Reuters adheres to them, they'll continue to rise above the other mainstream media outlets. I suspect they'll be unlikely to come under fire from the current Administration, whose feud with the media seems to be concentrated on "info-tainment" organizations like CNN that for years now have eschewed factual reporting for titillation and talking heads.

We can probably dial that in a little more: Fox News is certainly no better than CNN as far as talking heads goes, but the Trump Administration isn't feuding with them. Trump is feuding with talking heads who don't advance his agenda.

No disagreement about Fox.

But is the feud really because those media outlets aren't advancing his agenda? The tone from the press started with mockery during the primaries and advanced to hostility once Trump became the forerunner. Look at the election night coverage from most of the networks: it looked like a funeral, which is rather surprising given the supposed objectivity of these organizations.

IMO the feud is about a lack of objectivity rather than a lack of full-throated support. Nobody should want a complicit, docile press: that's what we largely had for the last 8 years.

"Last week, New York magazine reported that Trump’s feud with CNN has roots in his relationship with CNN President Jeff Zucker, a former NBC president who brought Trump's television show “The Apprentice” to the network. Trump, the magazine reported, has told White House staffers that he feels personally betrayed by Zucker and that Zucker should tilt CNN programming more favorably toward him because of their long relationship."

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/trump-cnn-press-234455

Yeah, well, if Trump thinks anybody should tilt coverage toward him because of a long relationship, that's kind of a problem. Trump wanted the office, now he's got it - all of it, including having to face the music from the press.

I disagree. It's not about whether CNN and other outlets are "objective". It's about scapegoating an enemy. Beating on the "liberal media" has been a cartoon villain from the GOP ever since the rise of FOX News and right-wing talk radio two decades ago, but this is a new level. They can discourage even believing in facts, and focus supporters on "alt" media that isn't impeded by inconveniences like having to report the actual truth.

CNN may be kinda dumb, but at least they have a bedrock of journalistic integrity. Heck, I've started crediting FOX as a "legitimate" news source, if only to counter arguments that the "liberal media" isn't covering whatever crazy fantasy is floating through the "alt-right" at the time. If even FOX isn't covering it, it's fake news, people! (And honestly, FOX has gotten a lot better over the past year or so.)

This isn't about objectivity. It's about turning any journalistic outfit with a shred of integrity into an Enemy of the People. This sort of nonsense is exactly what makes Trump/Bannon different, and dangerous.

"CNN may be kinda dumb, but at least they have a bedrock of journalistic integrity."

You seem to have missed the email leaks. They cooperate exclusively behind the scenes with the Democratic party to ensure the defeat of Republicans. They have the journalistic integrity of cold war era "Pravda".

If that's the case, then they're not doing a very good job of it, huh?

They seem to work really hard. Every obsolete / dead political movement in history (religion, too) was staffed primarily by honest and genuine true believers. I don't think they're lazy or stupid or unmotivated. They just hitched their carriage to a dead horse, that's all.

People involved in current day ascendant political movements and modern religions like to think they're somehow different than the dead past, but sooner or later they find out the hard way they're not. (edited to add, in my study of history I've never found an aspect of human nature quite as cross cultural and universal as this, nothing, nothing comes close, not monotheism or the golden rule or dualism or progressivism, nothing so universally human)

See, when you start saying CNN (and every other major outlet, by extension) is basically Pravda, devoted to carrying the water for the Democratic Party at the expense of the GOP, I kind of assume you're totally blinded by partisanship and incapable of rational discussion of the subject.

See, when you say that CNN has journalistic integrity, and ignore VLM's counterexample, where they in fact were carrying water for Hillary, you seem to be incapable of rational discussion on the subject. They objectively did that. Whether they did "a good job" of it or not is completely not the point.

[Edit: I saw your parallel post where your definition of "journalistic integrity" is "don't make up facts, even if you report them in a biased manner". First, I think that's way too low of a bar. Strive for objectivity, even if you can't perfectly achieve it. Second, though, what CNN did is like a sideline reporter jumping on the field and tackling someone. It's totally inappropriate, well outside of what is acceptable for journalists, even if it's not creating "false facts".]

Link to your favorite smoking gun email?

Well, we'll have to agree to disagree (especially about CNN's journalistic integrity). But I appreciate you taking the time to respond, as opposed to those users who simply abuse the downvote button.

Partisan bias and journalistic integrity are separate issues. Whether or not CNN has a partisan bias (I think their "liberal bias" is a fantasy, but that's me), they have journalistic integrity. They don't knowingly publish outright falsehoods.

A news organization can be highly partisan and still have excellent integrity.

> Beating on the "liberal media" has been a cartoon villain from the GOP ever since the rise of FOX News and right-wing talk radio two decades ago, but this is a new level.

No, it's been that way at least two decades longer than that.

Their words, not mine: "We’re sending surrogates to places where we think it makes sense to promote our agenda."

Um, whose words? From what you said, I can't make out who you're talking about.

That's a quote from a White House official who was unwilling to put his name on the record, sorry.

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/trump-cnn-press-234455

Ah, I see. They, the White House, are not going to send "surrogates" (talking heads) to talk to the press where they don't feel like they're going to be fairly heard (for some definition of "fairly"). That's understandable, in a way, but it's also a very bad move. First, having to explain yourself to hostile questioners is part of what the White House is supposed to have to do, so that the public gets a more realistic view of whether their policies are sane than they would get from the White House alone. But second, if they think they're being unfairly treated by a biased media, not talking to that segment of the media is not going to make the divide any less...

How else would you expect the press to cover that event -- someone who has explicitly stated a plan to enact vengeance upon and hatred for the very idea of a free press receiving unstoppable and unchecked power?

Nobody whose job or life depends on facts, transparency, freedom, an open civil society in the US was okay with the results of that election.

They did their best but there's only so much you can do to pretend to be objective when something truly terrible happens and we all know it. Lawyers defend horrible people to the best of their ability because it's their job, but they sure aren't happy about it.

As indicated in the DNC email hack, CNN and the washington post and some other former journalist organizations are no longer operating as journalist organizations and are simply self funded partisan propaganda "fake news" sites focused solely on obeying the DNC to elect the most Democrats as possible. Naturally relations are abrasive between the leader of a party in power and the propaganda arm of a political party out of power, how could it be otherwise? Those orgs are no longer journalists by their own choice; I'm not seeing a problem.

I don't recall seeing many (any?) Reuters names in the DNC email hack. I don't recall an unusual amount of fake news coming from Reuters. I don't recall an unusual amount of friction between Trump and Reuters in general. AFAIK they are journalists operating as journalists doing the job of journalists and unless there are secret emails so far unreleased implying otherwise they should expect to continue acting as journalists.

I don't see the point in the news release. AFAIK at this time Reuters is in the real news business whereas the friction is entirely happening with fake news businesses some of which formerly were journalists but are now purely focused on propaganda. It would be as pointless as Ford issuing a press release commenting on the latest FireFox build, they're not even in the same industry....

> Give up on hand-outs and worry less about official access. They were never all that valuable anyway. Our coverage of Iran has been outstanding, and we have virtually no official access. What we have are sources.

I like this take, if nothing else because when you're being fed your information theres always the chance to be less thorough. Its how propaganda is made.

It's sad and unfortunate that considering the progress we've made as humans, that those in power are utterly afraid of the truth. It makes me ashamed to be a human being sometimes for this reason. We won't progress or 'evolve' unless this fact changes.

Fllllaaaaaaggggg

Press will never be the same again. Over the past year and a half, most mainstream press outlets have shown themselves to be nothing more than a propaganda wing of the party their owners affiliate themselves with. This was particularly obvious on the democratic side, where they worked really hard to shove a pre-selected, cheating psychopath into the White House, and failed, much to the chagrin of their owners.

If there was any doubt about the lack of impartiality and fairness, we're way beyond it now. No matter what they "report" now, their reputation is gone and only completely gullible idiots trust any of it.

This reminds me very much of Soviet Pravda newspaper, where you'd first read the article, and then try to read between the lines and guess what really happened.

I'm not sure what they are going for with this statement. I really wonder who is the audience. I just don't know what good they were hoping to achieve. I'm not being cynical, I just don't understand.

Reaction wise this is basically signaling to most conservatives that Reuters hasn't been doing their job. Its a positive reinforcement that they didn't properly investigate or cover the scandals. I imagine #3 (Give up on hand-outs and worry less about official access) is going to generate most of the commentaries about what has been reported with the prior administration.

"Get out into the country..." was supposed to be your job. Maybe if they had done it properly a lot of surprising things wouldn't have been surprises.

U.S. president calls journalists "among the most dishonest human beings on earth” or that his chief strategist dubs the media “the opposition party."

I think their reason to respond is self-explanatory.

Prior administrations have had some amazingly unkind things to say about the press. I don't think those comments are any reason to respond.

From my memory, what Trump said is unprecedented. If you have contrary data, please share it.

President Obama as his comments on Fox News (he went farther and included comments on their viewers). For a bit of history, President Jackson was fairly salty with his views of newspapers. Unprecedented has pretty much been they insulted my guys instead of their guys.

Look, I'm not trying to argue with you, I just don't remember. What, specifically, did Obama say about Fox News? (I don't care about Jackson; I hope that civility has improved since then, though recent evidence casts doubt on that position.)

Remember, the statement to beat is when Trump called journalists "among the most dishonest human beings on earth”.

President Obama was a bit more elegant but:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/obama-in-command-b...

http://money.cnn.com/2016/09/18/media/president-obama-fox-ne...

Sorry to disagree, but I don't see "Fox has a definite point of view" and "misinformation" as being comparable to "among the most dishonest human beings on earth". The first Obama quote says they're biased; the second Obama quote says they're lying; but the Trump quote attacks their character, not just their actions.

I see you cherry-picked the least problematic quotes:

"If all you're doing is watching Fox News and listening to Rush Limbaugh and reading some of the blogs that are churning out a lot of misinformation on a regular basis, then it's very hard for you to think that you're going to vote for somebody who you've been told is taking the country in the wrong direction."

"It's a point of view that I think is ultimately destructive for the long-term growth of a country that has a vibrant middle class and is competitive in the world. But as an economic enterprise, it's been wildly successful. And I suspect that if you ask Mr. Murdoch what his number-one concern is, it's that Fox is very successful."

You might think there is a difference between "attacks their character, not just their actions", but a person's actions are their character. President Obama was more elegant but his behavior is no different.

I wasn't cherry-picking at all, though I should have said "a lot of misinformation on a regular basis" rather than just "misinformation. I still think that those quotes are considerably less harsh than Trump's, and that the difference is not just that Obama worded it more politely. I also think the second quote that you gave is actually less of an attack than what I quoted from the same article.

> a person's actions are their character.

Agreed, or at least their actions reveal their character. But I think it is also true that, socially, questioning someone's character is a step past questioning their actions. It doesn't make logical sense if character = actions, but I think that it's true socially.

> I also think the second quote that you gave is actually less of an attack than what I quoted from the same article.

A quote the says Mr. Murdock is peddling destruction for a tidy profit is less destructive? This is one hell of an insult and a character attack beyond what President Trump said to the press.

Questioning your actions is every bit a character attack when you imply the actions represent a person of low character. Separating them is just a polite head fake. If the person was not of low character they would not do evil actions.

Separating actions and character gives us people saying "the end justifies the means" which is basically the motto of evil people and the definition of evil.

No mention that Thomson Reuters, owner of the Reuters news service, donated between $1m-$5m to Clinton.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2015/05/clinton-foundati...

There's a slight inaccuracy here; by simply saying "donated to Clinton" you imply that the donation was to Hillary Clinton's campaign. The donation was, however, to the Clinton Foundation.

Given that the donations to the Clinton Foundation also came from conservative media outlets such as Newsmax and Fox, I'm confident that donating to the Clinton Foundation does not prove bias towards Hillary Clinton.

The Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Global Initiative are just two fronts the Clintons used over the years to receive bribes.

How else do you explain this:

http://observer.com/2017/01/the-clinton-foundation-shuts-dow...

As soon as Clinton was out of the race, all those donations suddenly stopped coming in. It's pretty obvious that the whole thing was pretty much just legal bribery und the disguise of altruism.

Since the Global Initiative has already shut down, it's probably only a matter of time until the Foundation shuts down, too.

By all means, let's keep focusing on the Clintons. That's obviously the important thing here.

The diametrically opposed interpretation that donors were afraid of retaliation by the Trump administration is frequently offered; and there are a lot of subtle shadings in between that one might also reasonably believe -- e.g., donors perceived the power of the Clinton brand as a key advantage of that organization over others, but the election defeat tarnished the brand and eliminated the advantage.

Giving money to a politician's pet charity for the opportunity to have lunch with (and presumably lobby) that politician is not bribery. It's not even dishonest.

If it seems like it is, remember that giving money directly to the politician's campaign for the opportunity to have lunch with them is both legal and commonplace.

It think it's pretty obvious that Hillary's foundation is basically her back pocket. Can you point to any charity work that was done by it? Any charity work of the magnitude of the millions it's received? With far less money many more organization have done much more charitable work. One such example is the NAACP. They've received ~16mill which is a stark contrast between the Clinton Foundation who has received in the ballpark of 500mill from 09 to 12.

Not only is the NAACP a charity that received funding that had a huge impact but also many many more. To name one I'd pick the National Parks fund.

There is also the Red Cross who has received writing 600mill but again has done so much more right it to the point where its name is ubiquitous in the field of aid.

Um, sure. The 2015 annual report is here: http://2015.clintonfoundation.org/

You're concern trolling. The information is readily out there.

Your question puts forth a sense of "genuine" curiosity, but then later you compare the work the of the Clinton Foundation to that NAACP and Red Cross, and make judgements around that. So you presume to not know any charity work that's been done by the foundation, yet you're able to compare it to other charities. Why be so disingenuous?

The Clinton Foundation website has a litany of literature on its efforts around the world. Charity Navigator gives the Clinton Foundation on overall 94.74/100 score [0].

In short, kindly fuck off out of here with what is either out right lies or willful ignorance.

[0]: https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summar...

"Your question puts forth a sense of "genuine" curiosity, but then later you compare the work the of the Clinton Foundation to that NAACP and Red Cross, and make judgements around that. So you presume to not know any charity work that's been done by the foundation, yet you're able to compare it to other charities. Why be so disingenuous?"

You're misunderstanding my point. If the money is going into the Clinton Foundation and what's coming out isn't on par with what other organizations are doing with their funds then something is fishy. I don't see how that observation could fly over you head so let's go over it.

I said "It think it's pretty obvious that Hillary's foundation is basically her back pocket. Can you point to any charity work that was done by it? Any charity work of the magnitude of the millions it's received?"

I am directly asking the question: how does the money Clinton's Foundation Inputs and Outputs compare to the Inputs and Outputs of other organizations. The NAACP and American Red Cross are two of the most ubiquitous charity and social benifit organizations out there. I'm drawing attention to the fact that they recive similar amounts of money and yet produce faaar more output then the Clinton Foundation and that's with the Red Cross being corrupt as hell.

"The Clinton Foundation website has a litany of literature on its efforts around the world. Charity Navigator gives the Clinton Foundation on overall 94.74/100 score."

What list of engagements and activities have they done. All I can find is the "Annual Report 2015 [0]" from the other responce. This shows off a few things...

   * We helped 31,000 U.S. schools get healthier.

I literally have no idea what they did. They just talk about some person and how people have access to healthcare to prevent obesity. Lets just assume they made some push to hire this person who advocated for this and lets say they got ~2 million to push this stuff through.

   * We reached 105,000 farmers in East Africa.

"The Trees of Hope Project in Malawi sold more than 40,000 carbon certificates in 2015, which are providing approximately $150,000 in payments directly to smallholder farmers who are supporting land restoration efforts, diversifying traditional sources of income."

This is more of an advertising heavy goal. Lets call this 1 million since it involves marketing which is the Clinton Foundations's (and any charity or political groups) strong suit.

   * Our social enterprises have benefited 450,000 people.

They lend people help to develop personal buisness seems like. Lets call that 5 million since it involves physical labor and experts in the field.

   * We digitized 1.8 million climate records in Kenya.

1 million in schollarships were donated to PhDs and also 2million in physical action (planting seeds).

   * We launched new efforts to improve literacy in Haiti.

"The Clinton Foundation has committed more than $30 million to support relief efforts and long-term development in Haiti. "

and

" The Clinton Foundation has helped to facilitate more than $120 million in foreign direct investment into Haiti and provides capacity building assistance and access to markets for Haitian businesses and entrepreneurs."

So that's ~30 mill + 1 million for a fund raiser. They also paid for financial education of 1000 women so lets call that 10 million.

   * The CGI community responded to earthquakes in Nepal.

This seems to have been done by an external group but it seems like the Clinton Foundation basically was a bank + gave them a water filter. The foundation says it "improved access to financial services or capital" so I assume that's either an internet thing to reach a bank or either them providing banking. The water filtration system actually pretty good, I can't rag on that.

Lets call it 500k for a water filtration system and 10mill for the Fin-access.

   * We partnered to reduce deaths from prescription drug abuse.

"In 2014, the Clinton Health Matters Initiative (CHMI) convened key stakeholders from government, industry, and community groups to identify opportunities to expand access to naloxone – an emergency treatment that can reverse the effects of prescription painkiller and other opioid overdoses. As a result, in 2015, CHMI launched a national strategic partnership with kaléo, a privately-held pharmaceutical company which has developed an innovative naloxone injector. In partnership with CHMI, kaléo will make the naloxone device, featuring easy-to-use visual and voice instructions, available at a discount to colleges and universities, public safety organizations, and community organizations."

So basically they lobbied to get the government to buy a large ammount of anti-OD nasil spray devices. Let's call this Hillary's job as a congresswoman so it should be covered by her salary.

   * We gave students a reason to bet on the future.

It's a propeganda building about Bill called the "Clinton Presidential Center". Lets call this 10 million since it's actually a physical building with priests... I mean educators.. inside.

   * We led the CHARGE for girls' education.

They're doing some kind of really vauge and scary data collection thing... or something? The page wasn't clear and the video was even stranger. Let's just call this 2 million because fuck it.

   * We invested in our youngest generation.

They sponsored a few TV episodes (~8) and printed out coloring panflets for laundromats. This could be around 200k for the design, ~250k/episode, and maybe 500k for distrobution. That's about 2.7 million.

   * We mobilized 4,050 hours of service.

So they ran a few letter writing, calling, and advocacy campaigns. Ok... but how much could that possibly take? No more then 1 million. If you take 500 people and make them work for ~8 hours you get to the ~4k hours figure. That's what I'd expect 1 million to buy you if you pissed it away.

Now when we bring all the numbers down it looks a little something like this:

2.7+2+10+10.5+41+3+5+1+2 = 77.2 million by my guesstimates (I totalled it up for you just in case you were too blinded by your aligance to a populairty contest).

Now sure.. lets say I was stupid and my numbers are bad so lets double it!

77.2 * 2 = 154.4 million

Ok... there's still a big gap here... lets add 40% for management overhead.

154.4 * 1.4 = 216.16 million

Ok.... I don't know what's going on here.... Hillary and Bill said they're fighting for the people but it seems to me that they're just rich people trying to exploit all of us and are in it for themselves...

No.. that can't be it....

In short, I should kindly fuck off out of here with what is either out right lies or willful ignorance.

But seriously, I don't think the figures I quoted were in the incorrect magnitutde for the funding of these programs. Do you? Could you please who the results of these ogranizations? Like tangable results? I mean I can do that for the NAACP LDF (http://www.naacpldf.org/events) and the Red Cross (http://www.redcross.org/about-us/news-and-events/latest-news) but I can't do that for the clinton foundation.

[0] - http://2015.clintonfoundation.org/#!/

It didn't go over my head. You're just deluding yourself.

>I'm drawing attention to the fact that they recive similar amounts of money and yet produce faaar more output then the Clinton Foundation and that's with the Red Cross being corrupt as hell.

Except they do not; at the very least you do not have any substantive evidence to back up that claim. Notice you could not source any of your examples, because they're not based on anything. They're just hypothetical scenarios with extremely arbitrary numbers and extremely contrived scenarios.

How come you did not source any examples from your other chosen charities to state they're actually "outputing" far more dollar for dollar? You were only extremely liberal with one -- going so far as to make up examples for it (despite most likely not having experience any relevant field for each charitable service). Why is that?

You claim the links you provided somehow qualify as "tangable" results, used as evidence for your overall point. Yet you chose to not link the equivalent pages from the clinton foundation website. Why is that?

Stop using conspiracy theories as facts.

"Clinton has 90 percent chance of winning: Reuters/Ipsos States of the Nation" - Nov 8 - http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-poll-idUSKBN1...

Which news outlet didn't say that?

seriously. fox news. cnn. msnbc. EVERYONE said it.

538 said it was 66/33 or 75/25 or something similar (i forget, but it wasn't 90/10 in favor of Clinton) and they got roasted over it when they don't even control any of the polls.

The most well-regarded poll-based predictor, 538, gave Clinton a much lower than 90% chance and pointed out the key error of those predictors giving that high of a chance -- they used models which assumed, contrary to evidence, that deviations from polling results in different states in the same Presidential election are independent, when in fact they are strongly correlated.

Trump winning doesn't prove they were wrong. That's not how p-values work.

OK, and your point? They said 90 percent. Not 100.

Exactly - I've played enough Dungeons & Dragons to know that it is possible to roll 1 or 2 on a D20.

If there was a 90% chance of winning, it is the 10% which happened. That's pretty clear by how crazy close it wound up being to. Just 80,000 specific votes in specific states are outweighing more than 3,000,000 across the rest of the United States. That really feels like something that had about a 10% chance of happening (or less really).

You got my up-vote; thanks for reminding us. Clearly lots of people still want to think Trump's winning was a fluke.

But the LA Times polls, which had a unique methodology, predicted it. And Scott Adams gave quite reasonable explanations of why. Any news outlet that didn't give him at least close to a 50% chance wasn't doing their job.

Personally, I made a few grand betting on https://www.predictit.org, because it was pretty clear there was widespread delusion going on.

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