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Comment by protomyth | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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