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Comment by SpicyLemonZest | Hacker News Reader

It's different because it was written by a major American newspaper. Twitter should not be exercising editorial control over the news.

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The New York Post is not a serious newspaper; it is a sensationalist tabloid. Sometimes the NYPost will report on real news, but I believe absolutely nothing they report until it is verified by the New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, or other major broadcast outlet with actual journalistic standards.

Agreed, and I don't mean to imply any sort of endorsement of the NY Post.

None of them are serious. NY Times made a big deal out of trumps taxes when everyone knows depreciation offsets revenue in real estate, its 101 stuff. You get taxed when you sell the asset which happens infrequently but in large magnitude. Most people in the industry were laughing at the gaslighting they did on that story but they fooled their little pawn readers. Just one example out of many. Every news source is full of shit even the ones that are supposed to be reputable.

You realize the real story re: Trump's asset depreciation is that he reported one valuation to the govt and one to his banks when seeking loans, right?

The story headline that was coordinated and gaslight was "trump didnt pay any tax". Everything else was anecdotal, I didnt look into this specific matter because I was rolling my eyes from the start. If they cant be honest about the main story I'm not following them for the rest of the allegations.

I do the same:

In my tax report I think my house is valued at 400 000 NOK.

When I talk to the bank it will probably be worth 4 200 000 NOK.

Tax authorities here know as banks update them every year.

Also in accounting it is common. I remember asking my teacher about it when we had basic accounting and it is simple: if you depreciate (?) an item to less than it is worth you just have to report a profit when you sell a "worthless" asset. (I'm not an accountant and English is not my first language but I think it should be possible to understand.)

I am fairly sure that is tax fraud lol. I don't think I could take out a loan on a property by giving one valuation and in the same year give a vastly different one for my taxes.

No, it is even the tax office who came up with the much lower number in my case.

It is like this for everyone!

Same with depreciation rules, when I learned the rules here my teacher was actually working with the tax authorities.

Depreciation in accounting is a technicality. And if you happen to sell a thing that is technically worth 0 in the books that just becomes an extra inflow of money to the company, which is taxable and so the tax authorities get their money.

Unless you have learned accounting, be careful :-)

Reporting one set of finances to the government and another to banks is a crime.

We have no information on this except what the NYT's reports in half truth. For instance if there was a time gap between reporting that could cause a mismatch as finances change over time. You can also have retroactive amendments as almost every major company has which are reported in different years. I havent dug deep into this as its not an important topic for me but I just wouldnt take the around the edges reporting at face value from a source as biased as the times.

One way to get a more complete picture of the tax situations would be for Trump to release his tax returns, as he had promised repeatedly in 2016, and as every other president since Nixon has done.

This story is exactly why he hasnt released his taxes

No it is not. Inventory, for example, can have two basis values, taxable inventory, and fixed asset inventory value. One is what the IRS requires via GAAP reporting, and the other is used to secure lines of credit.

Yeah, that’s not true, though you may wish it were. Many industries operate essentially three sets of books - one for the IRS, one for regulators, and one for the street. The requirements for valuation and burdening can be different based on audience. I don’t know whether it applies in trumps case but the headlines and righteous talking points got pretty silly. “Trump offset gains by losses” - yep. Meanwhile let’s talk about how many of these senators (particularly some of the most self-righteous) after decades of only federal employment have somehow become multimillionaires.

I feel sorry for you for getting downvoted, anyone with a basic understanding of accounting and tax should know this. Also the issue picked on in later comments, yes you absolutely can report different valuations to different entities, in the US, UK, and probably everywhere else too.

Tax accounting is completely different to accounting you show to a bank for a loan. This is normal because they are used for different things, and are accounting for different things. For example - the tax rate and taxes paid have a real impact on cashflows which would impact your eligibility for a loan. In tax returns taxes paid are not included in profit and loss, because that would lower the tax paid by businesses.

So yes, NYT was absolutely gaslighting.

> New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, or other major broadcast outlet with actual journalistic standards.

"Actual journalistic standards" yeah right! They literally carried out a fake news story about Nick Sandmann without any sort of verification. CNN settled 250 million $ lawsuit followed by Washington Post. Other publications are in the line next. They have zero credibility... especially after causing irreparable damage to a child's reputation by labelling him a racist when he was anything but. The real racists at the rally were those who accused this kid of racism. For full video of the actual altercation you can watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwNyOD8FIQk and decide for yourself.

Demonstration 1 of so called "Journalistic Standard": https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/24/business/media/washington...

and

Demonstration 2 of so called "Journalistic Standard": https://thepostmillennial.com/breaking-new-york-times-rollin...

They settled the lawsuits but there is no indication it was anything like $250M (more like $25K!). And notably none of the organisations was required to retract or apologize as part of the settlement.

> (more like $25K!)

Source or I call bullshit on this one.

> And notably none of the organisations was required to retract or apologize as part of the settlement.

Because that is the settlement. To save themselves from embarrassment and having to admit they faked the entire thing. I give credit to Nick Sandmann for being the bigger man here and settling instead of taking it all the way and making sure these media houses get crippled.

Anyways, the point here is not the amount of money settled. The point is that they faked the news and labelled an innocent boy a racist. You still haven't given a reply on that. Not that you are required to, but that is what is the crux of the matter here, not the money.

Not too mention The 1619 Project.

Yep!

Do not dismiss tabloid journalism. There's a long and happy history of Democrats being undone by lurid tabloids. Think Drudge Report breaking the (Bill) Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, or National Enquirer breaking the John Edwards affair, or NYPost breaking the Anthony Weiner sexting. This is tabloid journalism at its best.

The difference is those stories had supporting details, with the reporters attempting to follow up.

His point is not that if a NYPosr posts it's untrue. He's saying that they also post a lot of untrue stuff.

Bayesian reasoning. What is the prior probability that a story that only appears in the New York Post is correct? Nonzero, but low.

The three outlets you cited lean left and regularly avoid articles inconvenient to the left (and paint much of the remainder as "Republicans pounce on reports that..."). Consider balancing with centre-right outlets like National Review.

Centre-right, National Review.... You made me spit out my tea when I read that. I'd ask you to go to the op-ed section, and tell me it's even close to "centre-right" and not fully right.

NYT's op-ed section is quite left-wing too.

They lost an editor for posting a mainstream opinion by an elected Republican... Note that they then shared the same sentiment about supporting police cracking down on protests in Hong Kong and received no internal pushback whatsoever.

The op-ed section isn't the news section. NYT is centre-left, NR is centre-right.

Anyway it won't hurt you to read things from the other perspective. The truth is often "in the middle" or only something you can triangulate after reading both sides.

If you look at the NYT op-ed section, there are right wingers on there too, see Ross Douthat, et. al, as well as plenty of centrists, and lefties. National Review does not have the same diversity, and only features prominent right wingers.

Maybe I'm getting too bogged down in the op-ed section, like you say; but, it does make you think about the effect an op-ed section has on the news content as well.

Oh man you are seriously foolish. NYT, WaPo, LA Times are all far left propaganda machines.

It could be easily argued while they are not rewriting the story they selectively choose the facts they present as "fact checked" information. In the recent past both FB and Twitter have linked to "fact checked" articles/sources that represented only the narrative they wanted you to read. If they wanted to show neutral behavior they could have linked to articles that represented both sides of an argument which would keep their independence and educate their audience better since rarely is one side 100% correct.

The "both sides" of an argument thing does not work when one side is intellectually dishonest and bases arguments on misinterpretations and mistruths.

Problem is that both sides see the other as exactly this. I’m sure I can argue the point on behalf of either side selected by a coin toss. In today’s example though we have the side that dominates academia, media, big labor, healthcare, public sector workers, and big tech using that dominance to censor a story harmful to their candidate with very disingenuous reasoning.

Only one side has come up with 'alternative facts' and argued that conclusive science is 'still out'.

I've seen hypocrisy on both sides for sure but the intellectual dishonesty is only coming from one.

I know a dozen people who would agree with you and thirteen who would argue the opposite and cite sources. You might not be as objective as you think here.

What's even the point of this "one should be more balanced, both sides!" etc etc. From my EU/Nordic perspective the US right-wing are more or less "crazy-right" (I mean just look at the Trump administration?!). I can't see why one should need to be somewhere in-between just because there are two parties.

The whole Extinction Revolution stuff?

Na, they are actually based in reality. We're killing our own biological support system. Sad, sorry, and true facts.

Which side?

Let me guess: "The Other One!"

Which one is the side that is tentatively supportive of the whole QAnon stuff?

A downvote for pointing out the obvious, I guess? :D

Democrats base their arguments on some bombshell mistruths. Like trillion dollar mistruths. The idea that America underinvests in schools and social welfare, for example, when we spend more than European countries per person on both metrics.

What nations spend and what the people actually receive are two different things and you know it, yet you keep repeating this time and time again.

Democrats argue we need to spend more and pay teachers more. The argument that we need to do a better job making sure the money we spend actually benefits kids, that’s a different argument, and will get you branded a Republican.

Yes, and it might be very reasonable that some areas of those are underfunded while other are wasteful. The reasons for this discrepancy might very well be policies that are upheld by republicans, like inflated healthcare costs, who knows? You're just providing a generalization. The meager output with the same input suggests that there's too many middle men and I wouldn't just assume that Republicans are more willing to stop the siphoning of taxes into private pockets.

Does anyone care to explain the downvotes? This seems like a reasonable argument to be made.

Less discussion, more downvoting!

It's so sad that the divisiveness of this topic makes it impossible to be discussed in an friendly and respectful way.

Is the NY Post considered a serious newspaper over there?

It's one of those papers in the strange intersection of "mainstream tabloid". It's clearly not serious, as you can see from a quick glance at their typical cover pages, but it's also not one of the papers everyone knows is untrustworthy schlock.

And it's a paper whose headlines are more widely cited than the articles, because it's known for the catchy headlines.

Yes, it's a serious newspaper.

But it is known to use sans serif fonts and hire people that went to public schools.

>hire people that went to public schools.

You say this like it's an insult.

Parent was being sarcastic, insinuating that people who don't like Rupert Murdoch's decades-old propaganda empire are elitist.

Is information being gated by private universities, that only the elite have access to? This may have had validity in the pre-internet era, but information is everywhere now. There's nothing wrong with "public education".

I don't think you're disagreeing with me.

No, it's universally considered a far-right tabloid, similar to the Daily Mail or the Sun in the UK.

To clarify further, NY Post is owned by the same person as The Sun, Rupert Murdoch.

Isn't it distribution control rather than editorial control?

Limiting distribution to filter out what you don't want to rise to the top has the same effect as explicitly picking winners.

Think of it like shooting the tires of all the cars you want to lose in a race. Sure you didn't push the winner across the finish line, but you made it damn near impossible for anyone else to even get there.

Yeah, but that's still not editorial control. And maybe we do actually want Twitter to pick some winners. I don't think the platform needs any more death threats, Russian-backed misinformation campaigns or other bullshit.

What if Russian missinormation is a Russian misinformation campaigne to induce paranoia and there are no actual misinformation ...

How about a straight forward algorithm for the feed instead of some hugely adbiased mess.

And this is exactly what social media does all the time, or rather their recommendation algorithms. Which, for some reason, is no problem at all. Now that the bias of these algorithms is changing, also by directly intervening, it is a big problem.

I don't think so. You could perhaps make an argument that banning all NY Post articles would be distribution control, although even then I'm skeptical. But if I picked up a physical copy of the New York Post, and found that the newsstand had snipped just this one article out with a pair of scissors, I'd call that an unambiguous act of editorial control and censorship.

if a news network with a 1B viewers only gave free airtime to one side, it would clearly be in violation of campaign finance laws, among others

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Post

The fist sentence has a word "tabloid" in it. It's not reputable source of news by any stretch.

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