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Comment by davidwitt415 | Hacker News Reader

Please try to suspend the snark-meter for a second and realize the truths being stated here by Wikileaks. For example, the supposed Manafort/Assange meeting was trumpeted by The Guardian to great fanfare, yet there is literally no evidence that it happened (ex. no security cameras inside or out showed Manafort entering the embassy).

https://theintercept.com/2019/01/02/five-weeks-after-the-gua...

Clearly, we are being played by the media and whoever is putting them up to it, with the understanding that most people hear a headline and think they now 'know' the story. Another great example is teh high-tech sonic attack on Guantanamo US personnel which is now being revealed as.. crickets!

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Speaking of just reading the headline, The Intercept piece you linked has the facts wrong, apparently relying on readers like you not having read the original Guardian story.

1. There is photo evidence, but the Guardian cannot publish it for one reason or another. They described the clothes he was wearing that day in detail.

2. There is an entry in the guestbook for him, it doesn't come up when you ctrl-f because they misspelled his name, it appears as "Paul Manaford".

This isn't "lack of transparency", it's protecting your sources.

But, then again, I wouldn't expect The Intercept to know how to tell the difference, seeing how they've burned Reality Winner and Terry Albury.

Reading this makes me sad. I thought the intercept was quality journalism. I didn't know they had this kind of history

Yeah. And those are only the famous ones. They also blew the cover of John Kiriakou and Joseph Hickman, leading to their arrests and imprisonments, and there may be others.

The Intercept isn't safe any more, and it's increasingly becoming sidelined, with the biggest leak since Snowden, the Panama Papers, being given to Süddeutsche Zeitung and ICIJ, by a source that is still anonymous 4 years later.

And those are only the famous ones. They also blew the cover of John Kiriakou and Joseph Hickman, leading to their arrests and imprisonments, and there may be others.

Including Reality Winner, right?

Well, first I think there is a difference between having the facts wrong and not protecting a source enough. And secondly, what exactly did the Intercept do to harm John Kiriakou and Joseph Hickman?

Could you provide evidence for your "evidence"? That is, I realize that The Guardian claims that they saw a list showing "Paul Manaford" as a guest to the embassy, but I haven't seen outside evidence that this list exists and is accurate. And I've seen others claiming that Manafort's name (misspelled or not) was not on the previously released guest lists: https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/11/assange-neve...

I currently trust The Intercept more than I trust most other news sources, and if your two points are true, then I clearly am trusting them too much. If you have have evidence that would move this beyond a "he said, she said" level (with the Guardian claiming one thing and The Intercept saying the claims are false), please point to it so I can update my beliefs. Currently it feels more like you are simply asserting that we should trust one source over another.

>2. There is an entry in the guestbook for him, it doesn't come up when you ctrl-f because they misspelled his name, it appears as "Paul Manaford".

No, that was a "separate internal document" that claimed that, it wasn't in the guest logs.

As far as the photo, I don't recall anyone saying there was a photo, only that a witness claims they saw Manafort.

These points are apparently false and specifically addressed in the article, including the claim describing what clothing was worn.

I think you mean "a group of scientists have theorised that a recording obtained by the Associated Press, which the AP claimed to be 'generally consistent' with the sound heard by some US diplomats who reported being attacked, could be a recording of crickets", which is a very different thing than suggesting the attack has been "revealed" as crickets.

For someone so concerned with not being "played" by the media, you seem strangely happy to play exactly the same kinds of games with the facts.

I could see the point in clarifying something like that where an important event is in dispute. Unfortunately this covers things that no sane organization should feel a need to clarify as a fact. I can understand why a person may want to debate these facts, but I think a sensible organization would let many of these things go: " It is false and defamatory to suggest that Julian Assange bleaches his hair. It is false and defamatory to suggest that Julian Assange’s mother is, or ever was, a “hippie”. It is false and defamatory to suggest that Julian Assange is a “hacker”. " It just sounds a little kooky.

As I understand it, the recordings are just being shown as crickets. They are not disputing that the medical issues were not real, just that this piece of evidence was crickets. That doesn't mean they are saying that the attack was crickets.

The rational heads are saying there was no attack.

That was a fiction to fit the narative anti-normalisation proponents such a Rubio wanted to push.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/01/the-real-story-behin...

Exactly. There are way too many people here jumping on the “evil Assange” angle while defending their pet media outlets, or only condemning the media they don’t agree with.

Like it or not, and whether this list is tacky or not, there are fundamental truths that should be the focus of this discussion. The media manipulated and lies and as a result we have a severely misinformed population. We probably would anyway, but that should be a choice not a manipulation.

But we've had media lying before, media lying about objectively important issues of life and death (far more important than allegations of Trump campaign colluding with Russians) such as headline NYT articles alleging justification for invading Iraq (the greatest crime of its century), and yet the discussants here and in corporate media want us to take this seriously.

One has always had to be careful reading the media. Only those who don't understand history take refuge in feeling sorry for themselves about lying media.

I’d say the power modern day media manipulation is at a point that is indescernable to a good chunk of our people. People aren’t capable of identifying the mistruths, it seems.

I often have friends try to convince me of something they read. After examining the article the source, I demonstrate how the words in the article don’t actually support the headline. It’s not that they didn’t read past the headline - it’s that the article is set up in a way that makes you think it’s convinced you, even tho it fails to do that. There’s somewhat of a pattern, like: claim, talking around the claim, declaring that the claim was proven. I’m not sure what it is exactly, but I’ve had doctors and researchers fail to pick up on this.

But why make it confidential? That is one thing I don't understand. Why didn't they just publish this list on their website and sent a link? Maybe it's just a stupid idea on someones part...

If they published it on their own website do you think we'd be looking at it now?

I think that's just a ruse to get more publicity, and it has worked.

Taking public notice of this kind of activity (and certainly making a list of things that are defamatory) seems to be regarded as a PR mistake, usually. (Of course, leaking a private list is worse...)

> The Guardian to great fanfare, yet there is literally no evidence that it happened (ex. no security cameras inside or out showed Manafort entering the embassy).

So, you've reviewed all the security camera footage inside and outside the embassy? Or, are you mistaking “no security camera footage has been leaked to the public showing this” for “none of the security camera footage shot shows this”?

Presumably the logic is more "nobody has published any footage, so there probably isn't any".

I have footage of Trump and Hillary leaving a Motel together. Do you believe me? Why not - have you watched all the footage? Didn't think so...

You haven't won a Pulitzer.

(There's a web of trust so to speak, with journalism and investigative reporting).

While that's true, there is also "antitrust". The Guardian certainly has squandered away most of the trust bonus it may have once had. (I think it was the Guardian making the claims?).

At least you haven't caught me lying before, doesn't that count for anything?

Even most o the journalism prices don't mean much anymore. Here in Germany there was just a scandal of a journalist faking many stories, who had also won lots of prices with them (Claas Relotius). In some articles about him it was also mentioned that by now there is also a kind of "inflation" of journalism prices. I think they also serve the purpose of creating a fake aura of trust.

There is no magical one-asshole-at-a-time rule.

>(ex. no security cameras inside or out showed Manafort entering the embassy).

rofl. you don't think there are video cameras both inside and outside of the embassy?

Quite the opposite. It is not the presence of video cameras both inside and outside that is disputed, but the presence of footage of Manafort.

okay. but if it did happen, how would you (or I) have seen this footage? governments don't open source all their intelligence gathering as it happens. Hardly seems like a relevant point that refutes the Guardian's description of it happening

So what reason do we have to believe the Guardian's description?

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