Wow. Far from discrediting WaPo it actually strengthened the validity of the accusers.
I wonder if this sort of pen-testing could be done more regularly across the industry (by non-shady organizations).
I wonder if this sort of pen-testing could be done more regularly across the industry (by non-shady organizations).
1. Proves fakers are making up stories against Moore
or
2. Is a false flag to try to discredit those claiming #1
When no one is considered credible by both sides I think you would just end up doing more damage.
Hasn’t the Rosenhan experiment been used as an argument against the validity of psychology and psychiatry?
On one hand, these groups are clearly out to slander and discredit hard-working, honest people. On the other hand, I don't think the field of journalism should be entirely self-governing. It would give me great peace of mind to see some score that said these news sources were indeed able to turn away fake sources with regularity.
The crazy "all mainstream news is fake" crowd will not be swayed, but if nothing is done to appease moderates, there won't be any left.
.. and if my aunt had different bits she'd be my uncle. Of course a perfectly executed plot with hard-to-fake corroborating details and no holes whatsoever could have fooled them. WaPo reporters aren't perfect.
But they ARE genuinely interested in the truth, and interested in doing due diligence to ensure they're reporting it. Above personal politics or personal likes/dislikes of public figures. Conservative media don't seem to understand that. Maybe they can't understand it.
The Washington Post interviewed 30 people for their original Roy Moore story. And they checked court records. It was a rigorously researched and thoroughly fact-checked story.
None of the women in that story sought out the Washington Post, who reached out to them first. That's why Jaime Phillips contacting the Post first herself raised some initial suspicions, and she deserved at least as much rigorous vetting as the other women who weren't actively shopping their story around, and who Roy Moore actually diddled.
In other words, it's not just that Project Veritas was extremely sloppy, but that their whole model and narrative about the "Liberal Mainstream Media" is deeply and totally wrong, but does apply to themselves, and they're not generally interested in the truth.
They believe their own lies, and project them onto their enemies. They were trying to prove something about the Washington Post that wasn't true, by assuming it was true, in a way that depended on it being true, but it wasn't true.
Jaime Phillips herself claimed on her GoFundie page: "I'm moving to New York! I've accepted a job to work in the conservative media movement to combat the lies and deceipt of the liberal MSM. I'll be using my skills as a researcher and fact-checker to help our movement."
But her job was actually to "combat the liberal MSM with lies and deceipt". (Or "deceit", as it turned out.)
She fancies herself a fact checker, not a spell checker, and presumes the MSM doesn't check facts even though it's their job, because she isn't really a fact checker herself, she just said that to get a job, and presumes other people like the Washington Post reporters who call themselves fact checkers are also misrepresenting themselves and totally incompetent, just like she is.
I guess they believe the stories they tell about the media? It doesn’t seem to have occurred to them that journalists actually do their job.
They just wanted the journalist to say something that they could edit into a narrative. Then all the right-wing rags would in concert publish stories about "secret tapes" that "reveal" the "hidden plot" by "liberal feminists" to discredit "brave christian soldier" Roy Moore.
Actually getting a story published in the paper probably wasn't their goal, what's that Richleau quote again? Give me 6 minutes of secretly recorded video of the most innocent journalist and I can edit it into something to have them fired. Something like that anyway.
That's why the actor was so keen to get them on tape saying that the scandal would definately take down Moore.
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/counter-sting-catches-...
edit: I just remembered that a previous fake video of his inspired someone to go into a Planned Parenthood centre with a gun, killing three people and injuring 9.
This situation passed 'fucked-up' a long time ago.