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Comment by ehsankia | Hacker News Reader

Take a minute to step back. What do you think is more probable. That every single news organization out there, every single journalist, including NPR as you mention, are trying to hide this very real story and are wrong, while the one publication is in the right. Or that maybe, just maybe, it's the other way around and NYP published something that has not been well vetted?

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I'm inclined to agree that this story probably leads to nothing, either because it is absolutely nothing or because the corruption here is too vague to nail down (that's the smart kind to do).

But after living through the media's credulity toward the war on terror, credulity toward the war on drugs, credulity toward the satanic panic of the 90s, credulity toward the broken forensics that have gotten innocent people executed, dismissal of Juanita Broaddrick and vilification of Edward Snowden, I'm inclined to believe they are totally capable of a kind of mass group think without any need for a belief in a kind of conspiracy.

I may not have first hand experience with some of the older examples you give, but "vilification of Edward Snowden" makes no sense, considering 3 of the biggest news publications were the ones who were tasked with spreading Snowden's documents in the first place. How are they vilifying him if they're literally helping him spread the word?

I think you're using "The media" very liberally there. Were there pundits on some cable channel vilifying him? Sure. But that is in no way equivalent to every single major news publication refusing to back NYP on this report.

That's a fair argument and Snowden is the weakest of those examples. But I think the credibility media outlets lent the security apparatchiks in responding to the crisis colored the revelations in a negative way for many Americans.

Try this 30 second test on WaPo about the "Majority Illusion":

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/business/wonkblog/ma...

Then, with this in mind, look at the fact that almost all media is controlled by less entities than you can count on your two hands (assuming you have ten fingers):

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F...

In a democracy majority should decide what to do. But it’s not the majority who decides what _is true_.

Marc Twain used to say: “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”

(Interestingly you’re demanding the same: taking time to step back ;)

Your analogy doesn't really apply. These publications are all top of their field reporters. That's like saying 99% of scientist agreeing that vaccines work doesn't mean the majority is right.

In a normal population you may be right, but in a field of experts, I'm happy sticking with the majority than with the one random scientist who believes in satanic rituals telling me hydroxychloroquine works.

So do you believe in second opinions? Have you ever heard of a patient having to go to several different doctors to get the right treatment?

Reporters 30 years ago might have had standards. I think those standards have slipped tremendously.

The North Koreans trust their journalists. They are the top of their field after all.

Democracy doesn't die in darkness. It dies in uniformity and groupthink.

As so we got the replication crisis in multiple sciences.

Every single journalist? What about Glenn Greenwald? How about Matt Taibi?

Err, sorry I meant publication. What other large real publication has been willing to back up NYP?

No mainstream publication has been willing to do so.

And IMO, that should be seen as an indictment of the state of the modern corporate press, as opposed to an indication that the story lacks veracity.

As we've seen repeatedly over the last four years, the mainstream media is happy to amplify absurd stories - the Trump "suckers and losers" story which was quickly debunked, the entire Russia Collusion narrative, etc - if it serves their own interests.

So to view what is reported in the mainstream media as the barometer of what is true is to commit an enormous error.

I'm sorry, I'll still rather take their word than those of a random internet stranger. And I'd like to see your proof of the "suckers and losers" story being "easily debunked, when it not only came from multiple sources, but it even matches very easily to actual public things Trump has said or implied, or the fact that he himself is a war dodger.

And again, as stated above, take a moment to consider what you're actually implying. That publications such as NPR, AP, BBC, Reuters, some of the least partisan and most trusted news source with the hardest working journalist dedicated their life to communicating the facts. You're claiming that they are hiding the truth in some big conspiracy and that your one flaky source is the one telling the truth? Cmon man, don't be an old facebook grampa...

For suckers and losers, there is an e-mail that has been verified that confirmed that due to weather Trump never made the visit. The story was also denied by Bolton who is very anti-trump.

Were you around for the early 2000's Iraq War? Because that's exactly what happened.

What an idiotic statement. You could have said the exact same thing about the second Iraqi war. Also the conservative media is jumping all over this. Perhaps it’s only the media that you choose to believe.

The "conservat media" is reblogging it, not investigator it.

Tucker Carlson is telling absurd lies that he "lost the evidence in the mail" before making copies of it.

UPS says they found the missing package.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/oct/29/fox-news-tucke...

And the liberal media isn’t investigating either. All politicized.

He did not say "before making copies". I watched that segment, and he did not say that. Now, he didn't make it clear that he had made copies in the segment, but in other venues he did assert that copies were made.

UPS also acknowledged that the package was indeed opened and the contents missing (though they did find them later).

The point, as he admitted in a text to journalist Roger Sollenberger, was that he was convinced that someone was monitoring his texts. That may be paranoid speculation, but it is not a lie.

I think many of these institutions are probably experiencing some internal tension about whether to publish this story, but that they dominant culture and voices are so panicked about the possibility of a Trump re-election that they are highly resistant to granting the story any credibility.

By the way, the emails found on the laptop have now been authenticated by a 3rd party security firm that has been relied upon before by "mainstream" publications like the Washington Post[1]. Not to mention that there is Tony Bobulinski, the CEO of Sinohawk that was founded in partnership with the Biden's, who has publicly stated that not only was Joe Biden aware of his son's foreign business activities, but that he believes Joe Biden was part of the bribery scheme.

[1] https://amp.dailycaller.com/2020/10/29/cybersecurity-expert-...

> What do you think is more probable. That every single news organization out there, every single journalist, including NPR as you mention, are trying to hide this very real story and are wrong, while the one publication is in the right. Or that maybe, just maybe, it's the other way around and NYP published something that has not been well vetted?

Great thought exercise. I'm happy to inform you that I have actually already considered both scenarios and am confident that it really is this:

> every single news organization out there, every single journalist, including NPR as you mention, are trying to hide this very real story and are wrong

If you look back at the media in the last four years that shouldn't be as surprising as you are implying.

Although I take issue with "every single journalist", since the point of Greenwald's piece, among others, is that even if one journalist wants to tell the truth, they will be suppressed.

---

To go more concrete here though, are you specifically claim that the materials are not real, or that the story of how they were acquired is false? The former is absolutely undeniable; the latter is up for debate but I personally don't even think the laptop repair shop story is fabricated.

I personally watched (part of) the video of Hunter Biden smoking crack while receiving a footjob, so unless you think it's a body double or a deepfake there is no doubt in my mind that these documents are real. Furthermore the big smoking gun is the financial documents which should be trivially easy for a journalist to debunk. So if you want to question how the materials are acquired, go ahead, but the documents themselves are real, and they show very questionable business dealings in China, Ukraine, and Russia.

BTW, the existence for years now of the Russia Collusion hoax - namely, the debunked notion that Trump is a vassal of Vladimir Putin and directly colluded with Russia to win the US election - should tell us everything we need to know about the intellectual integrity of the corporate press.

No, every left wing news organization buried it. Even though those same organizations were happy to publish accusations of a supreme court committing gang rapes with no basis.

Fox covered it. NYP covered it. Independent journalists covered it. Left wing corporates did not.

Given the events of the past few years, with the media spending 3 years of our precious existence on salacious and false Russia conspiracy theories...maybe just maybe the NY Post has it right.

Fox and NYP are both Murdoch-controlled and are located at the same address. They don't count as independent verification from one another.

NYP has had access to the hard drive for two weeks. Independent journalists do not. Left wing corporates do not have access to the hard drive and don't run stories when they can't vet it.

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

Their editorial teams are independent. Yes they're right leaning, but you can't expect the left wing to report on its own these days. As for the laptop contents, they've been leaked on the internet already.

And yes they do run stories when they can't vet it. They lost a settlement with Nick Sandmann over it: https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/24/media/washington-post-sandman...

They don't have to physically hold every piece of evidence and forensically investigate it in order to report a story. No one did that with the Snowden story that Glennwald broke. That's ridiculous. You simply frame it as "Documents Reportedly Show Biden Family Involved with Chinese Business Deals" or "Questions Surround Biden Family Foreign Business".

"They don't have to physically hold every piece of evidence and forensically investigate it in order to report a story."

Do you consider fact-checking a form of censorship?

Was the Steele dossier "fact-checked" before being reported?

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