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Comment by PIKAL | Hacker News Reader

Decades ago, the news networks used to beam AV via satellite directly from the remote station in the field back to headquarters to be broadcast. They didn’t encrypt those signals, so anyone could pick them up if they knew how. This was raw footage, so there would often be candid segments showing people setting stuff up or getting ready for an interview.

Someone recorded a lot of these and later published a multi-hour compilation of them on YouTube. I forget the name of that compilation, but I can tell you that the following is by far the most interesting segment from it.

https://youtu.be/VCUIlV-AKY4

When I try to tell people about this segment, they don’t believe me. They write me off as being insane. Decide for yourself. Don’t believe what the news media tells you.

Edit: DanG, why is my comment being collapsed when it has ~20 upvotes?

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You can see a number of these here https://archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%22Brian+Spri...

"serve" him in a cabinet position. Hope that clears things up!

And you would say the same thing if the same footage came out but it was Bill O Reilly, Rupert Murdoch and George Bush instead of Clinton, King and Turner?

Um, yes, of course. Isn't it obvious what the context is?

In what context should billionaire media moguls be serving, colluding or collaborating with politicians of any kind, let alone a presidential candidate?

There is a long history of presidentially-appointed people saying they "serve at the pleasure of the President." It simply means that they hold the job only so long as the president wants them there.

This has extended "serving" to broader, more casual usage when speaking about people who work for the president as you can see here. It's not "serving" like working as a servant/a billionaire doing whatever the president says in a controlling/exploitative way, it just means that Larry King thinks that Ted Turner wouldn't turn down a cabinet appointment.

You can also infer from the way King says that "what's he got left in life to gain," and Clinton's surprised "you're kidding," that they both consider this kind of service to be a major downgrade from the billionaire life - King saying here that Ted Turner has nothing left to gain indicates a separation in his mind between personal gain and working for the Clinton administration. Clinton's surprised response tells us he feels the same way, surprise that a billionaire would want to work for the president.

A very substantive comment.

Has the comment you're replying to made you change your interpretation of the clip?

"Deciding for yourself" doesn't mean jumping to conspiratorial conclusions based on an ambiguous, off-the-cuff remark from 1992, though. And just looking at the comments on that video you can see what sort of agenda these people are bringing to their judgments.

Raw video footage doesn’t have an agenda. You have clearly decided for yourself what the footage means to you. Good for you.

No leaked videos are even necessary. It should be obvious to any critical thinker that CNN is the Democrat version of FOX news with a small amount of viewing.

Most journalism has an editorial line, which is usually aligned with the people that pay the bills. It is the case for newspapers, radio, TV... even websites.

Very rarely you have journalism with neutral editorial lines.

There's no such thing as neutrality. Usually when people talk about neutrality, they really mean status quo, or worse giving equal weight to "both sides" (implying the major US political parties are the only possible views on a subject), without even trying to assertain the truth of the matter.

Journalism isn't simply putting facts down on paper, but it's also interpreting how it affects the reader. Even if you pretend to simply write the who what when and where of a story, you still have to choose what to cover. That in and of itself has no right answer, you inevitably make an idological choice.

You can argue "there's no such thing as neutrality"... but consider the following:

News Station A:

1. Heavily edited clip of political candidate saying something.

2. News anchor provides a 10 min opinion of what happened.

3. An analyst is invited to give their opinion about what happened for 30 min..

News Station B:

1. Video of what happened.

2. News anchor describes when it happened and where. No accompanying opinion is provided.

What is more neutral? News Station B, for sure. The first format is the only one available in the US, in my country that format is considered yellow journalism and is unacceptable.

If this hypothetical political candidate is saying something that's not true (or is disputed), and news station B just runs a raw video of their speech, you could argue it's favoring that candidate by allowing their message to spread without providing the appropriate context.

It is the duty of each citizen to develop an informed opinion about each candidate.

Rights = Duties

Right to vote = Duty to make an informed opinion and vote wisely.

Freedom of the press = Duty to inform events with journalistic integrity.

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

An important part of journalistic integrity is impartiality. Any news station taking sides is unethical and you should stop watching it.

But in this scenario, the news station is not providing enough information for the citizen to develop an informed opinion. I guess there's room for a service like that that just has raw video (as one element of a wider media ecosystem), but it's also valuable for the news to actually explain events in a larger context.

I don't see anything wrong with this. I mean it's like I'm talking to Elon Musk. And I have a friend who really wants to work at Tesla. Yeah I'd be a good friend and mention him to Elon Musk.

It seems quite obvious to me that Larry is trying to get Ted Turner a job in the Clinton Administration.

What are you seeing there that's so shocking?

yikes, what a sleazebag. Larry hit the anti-Semitic trifecta (Jews, Israel and media moguls in bed with politicians) in under a minute of just random chit chat. The mind reels at the shady backroom deals this man was responsible for.

I'm being 100% honest here. I'm having a hard time following what he said or the meaning behind it at least. Care to elaborate?

Long and short of it: Ted Turner is the guy who created CNN, a very influential news source in the US. Many people consider CNN to be a "left-wing" news source, and in the clip King talks to Bill Clinton, a democratic politician, about Ted Turner "serving" Clinton after he was elected president.

The use of the word "serving" is the issue, as it sounds like a quid pro quo.

>> Many people consider CNN to be a "left-wing" news source

Are their people that do see the clear bias of the network?

This is like saying "Many people consider Fox news to be a "right wing" network"

There is no doubt of the political leanings of either network. CNN is/was not called Clinton News Network for nothing.....

CNN is not really “left-wing” in a broad ideological sense. It’s the unofficial mouthpiece of the Democratic Party and the “liberal” side of the US culture war. Note for example how poorly they treated Sanders who was further left than any of the other mainstream candidates.

It is 100% NOT the liberal side of the cultural war. There really is no liberal side

The right side is theological authoritarian, the Left side is illiberal Identitarianism which is ironic because identitarianism started out as a "far right" ideology but in a real world example of the horseshoe theory of politics has become far-left authoritarian

I'm tired of fact-based and reason-based news being painted as 'left-wing". CNN is just the news. I miss when we all watched the same news and it tried to be objective and half the country wasn't watching provably false news and wanting to split off into madness and domestic terror cells and make the human race go backwards.

There is a difference between “this news source strikes me as not being too politically extreme in either direction compared to my own views” and “this news source is completely neutral and objective with respect to all political views.”

How can you be sure you’re not seeing the former and calling it the latter?

If you believe CNN is "just the news" then you are suffering from reinforcing confirmation bias as well as echo chamber.

You agree with the positions CNN takes there for it is "news" and outlets that have differing positions to those you agree with are "fake news" and "want to make the human race go backwards"

You have to see this through 90's lens: back then the media wasn't nearly as polarized, and the public had much greater trust in news networks, especially in CNN. "Fake news" was mostly relegated to the domain of conspiracy theories, and blatant promotions of political agendas as neutral news wouldn't fly back then (although, of course, the networks did have an agenda and did promote it, but they were... much more subtle and civil about the whole thing).

I was alive, and consuming news in the 90's

In the 90's the bias was shown in the stories they choose to cover and what they choose to ignore not in the coverage itself

this is still true today but now in addition to this bias there is almost zero "strait" reporting, everything has political commentary mixed in, some more subtle than others but it is still there. Even in places like APnews where it is more subtle

It could just as easily mean "serve" as in your administration-- in a cabinet position for example.

The way I interpret it, Mr. King is suggesting to Clinton he (Clinton) might be interested in establishing a reciprocal relationship with one of most prominent media moguls and politically influential billionaires, Ted Turner.

Teddy helps Billy with the optics on CNN, maybe funding various campaigns, and in turn Billy helps Teddy with his own projects, like I dunno, passing a bill to kill off competitors and so on.

The yin and yang that are Politics and Media.

You're reading QUITE a bit into that.

Nothing especially bad. He talks about how incredible it is he reaches so many countries with his broadcast-- at the time a staggering thought-- and to illustrate tells a story of seeing a praying Rabbi at the Wailing/Western wall in Jerusalem who turns to ask king about domestic US politics (Ross Perot, who ran against Clinton and Bush).

Then he basically says Ted Turner, founder of CNN, is a nice guy to work for and is a fan of Clinton (as if he is not allowed to be?) and could "serve you" whatever that means which I guess could be as ominous as your imagination allows but probably means in his administration.

There is zero antisemitism expressed. Only Larry King and the Israeli rabbi interested in American politics are Jewish. Clinton, Perot, and Turner are not.

The claimed outrage is absurd.

> There is zero antisemitism expressed.

I believe qqj was saying it’s ammo for anti semites that hits those 3 accusations, not that Larry King was expressing anti semitism.

I dunno, who do you think he was saying was the sleazebag? I don't see the "ammo" here-- neither Turner and Clinton are Jewish.

"Serve in an administration" is a fairly common phrase, I believe is the only important additional context needed.

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