"$50,000 - Discredit a journalist" wow.
But if you want some examples, have a look round the UK political punditry scene for anti-Corbyn articles from before the election, many of which look much less credible now.
-a lot about what was written in the presidential election last year seems to have been wishful thinking or meant to influence not inform. And this is from somebody who doesn't like Trump.
- Swedish police has no-go zones, firefighters gets attacked - journalists keeps telling everything is fine.
- and bad reporting from the Middle east has plenty of crazy examples. (Journalist: "Israelis, the most advanced army in the area, actually tries to kill civilians". Fact is of course, for anyone who bothers to think for 15 seconds that if the Israelian army tried to kill civilians then I must say they have failed spectacularily.)
This still isn't true. There are many legitimate issues with integrating immigrant populations into fairly insular and homogeneous societies. People lying about the magnitude of those problems really, really discredit efforts to make them better though.
Swedish police are incredibly well trained.. it's absurd to think they've just abandoned parts of major cities, especially when those cities are safer than most large cities in the US. Malmo, the 'center' of all of the alleged police no-go zones has a murder rate equal to that of San Diego.. It's 90% lower than the murder rate in Chicago. The overall murder rate is dramatically lower than the rate in the US:
It's really bizarre how the right wing in the US has chosen Sweden as the symbol for their refugee distrust when there's very little evidence that their problems are anything more than those seen by every major city with large impoverished populations of any background.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/195542/americans-trust-mass-media...
Later part of Iraq war trend really takes a dive.
To be frank, it's surprising someone would ask for "non-anecdotal evidence" of journalists discrediting themselves. It manifestly happens fairly regularly.
("most of their day" is hyperbole obviously, but still).
https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/the-life-and-death-...
They make no mention that any malware was found in this email and I seriously doubt that anybody would be stupid enough to make a spear phishing attack so obvious and suspicious. Who in his right mind would click confirmation link on an invitation to a service he didn't request?
As I see it, there is zero evidence that it wasn't just some random idiot typing this publicly known email address into the signup form but they don't even consider such a mundane possibility.
James Andrew Lewis, the expert they quote, appears to be more of a politician than technologist.
edit:
And some verified fake news:
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/09/ru...
The new Russia doesn’t just deal in the petty disinformation, forgeries, lies, leaks, and cyber-sabotage usually associated with information warfare. It reinvents reality, creating mass hallucinations that then translate into political action. Take Novorossiya, the name Vladimir Putin has given to the huge wedge of southeastern Ukraine he might, or might not, consider annexing. The term is plucked from tsarist history, when it represented a different geographical space. Nobody who lives in that part of the world today ever thought of themselves as living in Novorossiya and bearing allegiance to it—at least until several months ago. Now, Novorossiya is being imagined into being: Russian media are showing maps of its ‘geography,’ while Kremlin-backed politicians are writing its ‘history’ into school textbooks.
Problem is, Novorossiya indeed existed on the territory of modern Ukraine. There is an English Wikipedia article on it dating back to 2005 and I've even confirmed it with a dead tree book from the '80s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novorossiya
edit:
I guess the above doesn't really pass as evidence that "most journalists spend their days discrediting themselves", but it does show that at least sometimes they are pretty happy to skimp on fact checking and basic sanity if a story fits whatever narrative they personally believe.