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Comment by jccalhoun | Hacker News Reader

Just because you didn't hear people call him racist for years doesn't mean it didn't happen.

I am willing to be that people called him racist when the Justice Department filed a housing discrimination lawsuit against his company in 1973. Or when his company settled that suit but in 1978 the government filed another complaint claiming his company didn't meet the terms of the settlement. https://www.salon.com/2011/04/28/donald_trump_discrimination...

This comment also shows another problem that is harder to solve than "fake news," which is the interpretation of facts. What you call just talking, I call bragging about sexual assault and even if it didn't happen is something that I would call someone a misogynist for bragging about in the first place. Other people don't.

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Say the company your work for or have shares in discriminates on the basis of race. Does this make _you_ a racist? Is there any evidence that he was in fact the decision maker when it comes to these policies? FWIW, the very same article you linked to (in a despicable fake news rag, BTW) says "Donald testified repeatedly that he had nothing to do with renting apartments". :-)

Once again, you are showing why it is so hard to talk about the actual problem. You've managed to distract from the issue by bringing up inflammatory statements about Donald Trump. You go on to accuse Salon.com to be a fake news site, which it is most definitely not, at least not in terms of the problem that lead to the issue of Fake News in the first place.

This, in a sense, is Donald Trump's fault. He is so good at controlling the conversation; his bombastic style demands a response; this is the same style you're using in your posts, and it has successfully redirected the discussion. It doesn't matter whether you're right; the topic has now changed.

How are my statements in any way "inflammatory"? They're as factual as it gets. Is there anything in them that's even up for debate?

I read general_ai's comments. I don't think your summary's fair and submit that your tone's a little aggressive.

This doesn't get things back on topic. Though, it took minimal effort to find instances of Salon running ridiculous reports. [0]

Here the real problem: these companies can't get their hands on content fast enough. WaPo produces 500 articles/day and 1200 items/day. AFAIK, because there's no real punishment for quasi-spurious claims, there's no incentive to spend marginal time vetting sources. Today, the story can be shared 100K times in the time a retraction takes place. But by then, the damage has been done, and again, the punishment isn't material. I don't think a retraction fully undoes the damage of spurious reporting.

[0] http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2013/01/23/salon_trut...

Slate.com is another example of a despicable fake news rag though. :-)

> Salon.com to be a fake news site, which it is most definitely not

Hence the problem. It is, it's not rocket science this is true.

But AI or not you seem like you won't change your mind. This is what the right thinks about Fox.

The issue is not whether or not he had anything to do with it. You stated, "he wasn't in any way called "racist" by anybody until he ran for president."

I gave evidence from a 2011 article that has a number of links describing how he was involved in things in the 70s that would make someone call him a racist.

"Would", if he ran for president against a democrat back then. As things stand, the article you linked to doesn't directly call him anything of the sort.

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