Hacker News Reader

Comment by gizmo686 | Hacker News Reader

At this point, an unbiased observer who just looks at, say, NYT would likely come to the conclusion that one of the following statements must be true: a) President Trump is a pathalogical liar or b) The NYT is a pathological liar when talking about Trump.

There is no middle ground where NYT is being fair, and Trump is being reasonable. This means that any reasonable person with a position on this issue must take at least one of the two extremes.

View on HN

It's -possible- this is an intentional strategy: people who want to believe the administration are peeled away from news media that aren't 100% in line with the administration's agenda. If you like Trump and want to believe what he says, reading the NYT has got to be an exercise in frustration.

Once all remaining supporters don't watch any media that isn't Trump Approved(TM), they're locked in permanently.

It's the annihilation of truth and its terrifying.

I genuinely believe that we are entering the "disinformation age".

There is another potential strategy: attack the concept of honesty. If we get to a point where a significant portion of the population believes everyone, media and Trump, are lying then Trump has much more reign to do what he wants because any reporting on it will instinctively be branded as a lie. So will Trump's defense, but the net result is still a win over believed reporting on <bad thing>.

What makes things difficult is that the legitimacy of corporate media was seriously in question before Trump was elected. There seems to have been massive collusion between the mainstream media & the DNC to keep Bernie Sanders a fringe candidate. And it's tough to say "the mainstream media is rigged, but a president saying so openly is bad."

"Massive" is overselling it, unless there's a large body of evidence that I missed (which, given my preoccupation with Trump, would not be impossible).

Trump did not force the media to be douche canoes for years on years.

Not did the media force Trump to lie continuously, yet here we are.

> attack the concept of honesty.

This. When others are lying, they make a “decent” effort to hide that fact, while Trump doesn't even try. The resulting confusion, when everyone is fighting over who lied about what, is one of his most effective weapons. People are distracted, cachink, goal achieved.

While I'm firmly in category A I'm not sure that is a fair comparison because the NYT is a huge organization that could very well have employees set on spreading as much biased, misleading or overblown news they could to hurt Trump politically. Also there is the news part of the NYT and the editorial which could have different quality.

I'm not saying you're wrong, just that it might not be that simple.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com