Rolling Stone left out the reason why FBI raided journalist's home | Hacker News Reader

Rolling Stone left out the reason why FBI raided journalist's home

npr.org

162 pointsleephillips156 comments

I hate to sound like a grumpy old man [especially because I'm not...] but I'm increasingly discouraged by both (1) the media's willingness to abandon any sense of ethics or integrity, and (2) the public's willingness to unquestioningly consume everything that such media produces.

We somehow crossed over an invisible line that separates "cheeky hyperbole" from "outright deceit and lies" and nobody noticed.

There was never period in history in which there were no media lies. Not because media are uniquely evil, but because media people are kinda like everyone else. There might be more or less lies depending on various factors, but literally every single year in the past, including when we were little, there were some lies being widely read.

That being said, there are whole lawsuits going on about lies in media right now. Pretty big ones and widely reported about ones. So, if you think that nobody noticed, it is just not true.

Yeah, and it was way worse in the era of yellow journalism… but this is all beside the point.

We’re on a backslide where journalists are far more shameless than eg. 10-30 years ago.

Have we checked old media for it's shamelessness now that we have hindsight? Easy to say that they weren't shameless back then, when we didn't have a global network feeding us updated information on what they were reporting.

This case is hardly an instance showing that. You could maybe argue by Alex Jones stuff for that. But the sort the the missing reasons like this did happened in 1990-2010 too.

That’s always been happening. Only real difference is now you can write a blog post calling it out and nobody cares (and you aren’t assassinated) because everyone is onto the latest hotness.

I also don’t think the public unquestionably consumes everything, getting people to wear a mask has been unfashionably difficult. It’s just that while it’s easier to misinform now, it’s also harder to correctly inform people. There’s a general distrust now of everything, insular bubbles created by algorithms, and rising anti intellectualism to boot. All of this creates the perfect storm to post whatever whenever without much care even if the real world consequences are great.

This is basically how the media has operated forever, in America during the debates on ratification of the constitution there were federalist and anti-federalist newspapers and they published outright lies and whatever accusation they could find about people on the other side every week in order to make their case.

As far as I can tell, this idea of newspeople as morally pure monk-like defenders of the truth is isolated to a handful of decades in post-war America, mostly confined to a few personalities and outlets, and was far from universally-held even then (lots of people blamed, or still blame, the media for our losing the Vietnam War, for instance—Agnew and others were openly attacking them as corrupt and biased for those and related reasons, in the 70s).

Their traditional depiction in fiction is, and long has been, as about one step up from pimps, con-men, and used car salesmen, as far as ethics and trustworthiness are concerned. I doubt some Golden Age of news objectivity ever existed, really, though the perception of it may have, among some set of people, for a time—hell, you can find people today who think Fox News does great journalism, so the perception of that clearly doesn't require it to be a fact. I'm fairly sure it's exactly the same kind of longing for a past that never existed that one can see all around.

> I doubt some Golden Age of news objectivity ever existed

Maybe that's because you haven't read any of it? I mean, it's hard to find on the Web these days. And easy to find counter-examples even from that period.

Just like it's easy to find some Victorian-era pornography and leap to the conclusion that everything then was just like now.

I've read good reporting, sure. Good reporting isn't mythical. People worried about modern journalism's lack of objectivity or reliability just strike me as folks learning for the first time what journalism's usually like, is all, and being surprised and thinking that it's a new development because they just learned about it.

I'm not claiming there's no such thing as good reporting.

when was this Golden Age of News Objectivity, then? because from where I'm standing, it sure seems like it was more of a Golden Age of There Only Being A Few Accessible Sources of News, Most If Not All of Whom Were On The Same Page When It Comes To Major Stories, i.e., The Time Before Smartphones.

case in point: the post-9/11 invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. the entire United States media apparatus united to gaslight the populace into consenting to an foreign-soil military invasion on incredibly shaky grounds, that were later proven to be completely false. they even gaslit us into disapproving of our own allies choosing to not join us in the invasion—remember "freedom fries"?

yet the only lesson the majority of the public seemed to learn from this is "George W. Bush is a bad guy", which is also true, but misses the point entirely—plus, in recent years, now that's not even entirely true, because look, he's bffs with Michele Obama, see, he's not that bad of a guy, right?

the cycle continues unabated.

I usually see it associated with Cronkite's era on TV, about '60-'80. Such strong association with him is part of why it smells like nostalgia and selective memory, to me. And, again, you'd find plenty of people who think he was biased and doing slanted anti-American reporting in the second of those two decades. I would hope most people wouldn't regard the '90s and '00s as part of any kind of even-imaginary golden era of reporting.

I've got some half-formed notion of this sentiment coming from a kind of hang-over from WWII propaganda and tight media control involving much more direct action by US government through media, but haven't exactly researched it and wouldn't stand behind that firmly. Just a hunch. Broadly, my suspicion, if that does indeed have anything to do with it, is that the fallout of that propaganda effort coupled with a crushing victory for the US resulted in a durable credibility for sufficiently official-looking news personalities, that took some time (and the loss of a war in Vietnam, and a huge shift in politics that really took shape starting with Nixon's campaigns) to erode, but was never especially real, as in, wasn't strongly related to some actual difference in circumstances and quality in news media in postwar America compared with the first half of the century.

I completely agree with your assessment, but my point was, in the 90s and 00s, we were still in the bubble. we still thought of our news media as being completely trustworthy. even the post-9/11 invasions being predicated upon news media consent manufacturing wasn't enough to shake us out of it—nobody blamed the news media, Bush (and some of his cabinet) "took the fall" for the whole thing. we can look back on it now and obviously it's almost hilarious how terribly complicit the news media was in manufacturing consent for war crimes, but at the time, we didn't think about it that way. nobody thought about it that way. it was The News, which we had trust in, because we (90s millennials) had grown up watching it, and so had our parents.

the popular idea that the news is largely full of shit did not come about until Trump popularized the term "fake news", and then they threw it back at him, and so on and so forth. (hopefully it's uncontroversial to state that Trump would not have been likely to be elected if people didn't have smartphones with which to consume sources of news other than that of the mainstream legacy news media.) before that, people still generally trusted the news media, even while still actively having boots on the ground in the Middle East due to the previous round of gaslighting. both Obama administrations, as far as I can recall at least, were still in an era where most people more or less trusted the media. sure, maybe you weren't a fan of FOX News or MSNBC or whatever, but you still felt like, no matter what your political affiliation was, you could tune into a cable TV news program and more or less get the truth about what was going on in the world. I had a one-semester Current World Affairs class in high school in 2007, and we spent most of it watching cable news, reading newspapers, and talking about it, without any of the default critical position you'd (hopefully??) expect today.

I think some of that's the difference between high school and college. Even today's more even-tempered history and civics classes in high school really downplay problems in our history and our systems, overall, including problems with the media, but as soon as you hit your first serious media studies textbook or course or just slip into a subculture that's into that sort of thing so assumes some familiarity with it as a background (politics nerds, certain flavors of history buffs, basically any leftist movement) you get a rather different idea of how things are going, and have gone, and realize that contemporary media criticism is part of a long tradition that's advanced similar complaints and made similar observations about structural problems with the media (access-related conflict of interest, slant via selection of what's "newsworthy", bias toward reporting violence or the otherwise shocking, ownership- or advertiser-related conflict of interest, susceptibility to lazily repeating propaganda from official sources, et c.) for pretty much the entire time this has been a field of study.

High school history class might cover e.g. yellow journalism as some temporary historical phenomenon, but won't usually dig into, say, the fact that the idea of "unbiased reporting" or "just presenting the facts" or "we report, you decide" are all kinda questionable to begin with—which facts? Which stories? When and how ought media provide context for a story, or leave it out? I can lie with facts all day long, it's not even hard. Half the lies on the actually-kinda-news segments of Fox News (yeah, sorry, still picking on them because they're an easy target) are just them reporting things without the context that makes it plainly a non-story—they're "just" reporting the facts, but it's slanted as hell, and they're deliberately implying things that aren't true by leaving out the context you need to tell that they're wrong. Take it another direction, and you can lie by providing the wrong context (not a lie in the sense of an outright falsehood! Just selective presentation). The history of media as largely explicitly partisan for much of the country's history will likely also barely be covered, and will almost certainly not be connected to the current state of media.

... but not everyone ends up seeing that expanded view. Maybe what I'm not accounting for is a recent popularization of a kind of shitty, partial, divorced-from-scholarship-and-history version of that POV, through the mechanisms and circumstances you mention, the holding of which might convince someone that this is a recent development, for lack of the rest of that context. "Now the media lies sometimes! That's new!"

I don't think the media landscape's wholly unchanging, and do thing some things like the loss of the fairness doctrine and our allowing some pretty incredible levels of media ownership consolidation has had some ill effects (though the death of the fairness doctrine would have little effect on the Internet, anyway, and the main outcome of losing it was the rise of partisan commentary and opinion without balancing counter-point, not more-slanted news—basically, it allowed the current much-maligned "media bubble" effect to get a running start way back in the 1980s, well before the rise of the Web as something normal people used, but that was mostly accomplished through commentary shows, not reporting). I'm just skeptical that we were ever a ton better off in terms of, specifically, news media honesty and integrity than we are now.

> I had a one-semester Current World Affairs class in high school in 2007, and we spent most of it watching cable news, reading newspapers, and talking about it, without any of the default critical position you'd (hopefully??) expect today.

Schools have to be damned careful how they treat current events. Parents get pissed off in a hurry over some really, really dumb shit, like "acknowledging basic things about reality that definitely shouldn't be controversial" sorts of shit, and if there's one thing schools hate dealing with, it's pissed-off parents. Start analyzing slant in media reporting in high school, as a teacher, and you're courting a reprimand even if you do your job perfectly and entirely objectively (somehow). "The closest thing to a widely-agreed-upon-to-be-neutral source we can find, presented with minimal commentary" is often the best they can realistically manage, and even that will get angry phone calls from time to time.

> shitty, partial, divorced-from-scholarship-and-history version of that POV

Does "scholarship and history" mean "the Howard Zinn view of history?" Yeah, I can understand why some people would be sad that that's not taught in Texas and everywhere. Although as far as I can tell, it IS taught in many blue counties.

> I'm just skeptical that we were ever a ton better off in terms of, specifically, news media honesty and integrity than we are now

I think I've already dealt with that, including a proposal on how we'd test that. Just saying, "no, it was never any better" is otherwise untestable.

> Does "scholarship and history" mean "the Howard Zinn view of history?" Yeah, I can understand why some people would be sad that that's not taught in Texas and everywhere. Although as far as I can tell, it IS taught in many blue counties.

"That POV", from that sentence, referred to a POV about the nature of the news media informed by the scholarship and history of the field of media studies, not, like, world history. I was noting that perhaps some of the sentiment that we're in some exceptionally-bad media environment, now, is because some folks have recently realized that the media effectively all have some kind of bias and often lie or fail to be skeptical of things Important People tell them, but lack the context to realize that's not a new thing, so may decide it's some new development (beginning, curiously, roughly the time they realized it was a problem). That is, as I wrote, they've come to some of the same conclusions as one might from reading works in media studies, but, because they've come at it via a "shitty, partial, divorced-from-scholarship-and-history" road hyper-focused on recent events (and, ahem, who made them aware of it in the first place? Ahem) it looks to them like it's something that just started.

My observations about the quality of high school history and civics instruction were separate, and no, I don't think they ought to teach Zinn.

>case in point: the post-9/11 invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. the entire United States media apparatus united to gaslight the populace into consenting to an foreign-soil military invasion on incredibly shaky grounds, that were later proven to be completely false

The invasion of Afghanistan was over their harboring of Bin Laden, and there's very strong evidence he was there until shortly after the start of the war. I have plenty of criticism of the Afghanistan war, for starters the invasion was illegal under international law, but the "reason" we invaded was likely true.

bro they gaslit the whole country into being islamophobes for a solid few years there so we'd agree with the invasion of Afghanistan, predicated upon a former CIA asset supposedly having had some hand in 9/11, and then got us to invade Iraq because of unsubstantiated and ultimately false claims as to the existence of "WMDs," and then, afterward, they told us how shamefully evil we were for having spent half of the 00s being islamophobes (which was the case only because they gaslit us into being as such).

and we just rolled with it, blamed Bush at the end and called it a day, because hey, look, this hip young black senator is running for office and he's gonna Hope and Change everything and make it better (which didn't end up happening).

the news media has not been a force for good in my entire lifetime, but almost nobody (myself included) started seriously questioning it until a few years ago.

>bro they gaslit the whole country into being islamophobes for a solid few years there so we'd agree with the invasion of Afghanistan, predicated upon a former CIA asset supposedly having had some hand in 9/11

The invasion of Afghanistan started like a month after 9/11, and there's basically no evidence Bin Laden himself had CIA connections. The Afghans that harbored him did, but not Bin Laden.

I am very critical of the US in these matters, but in a discussion about the importance of facts you should aim to be factual.

that's easily the least-interesting part of my post though (and a quick web search will show plenty of evidence both for and against it).

again: our news media temporarily gaslit the entire country into being bigoted against an entire major world religion (not to mention other groups who were unfortunate enough to resemble, at a glance, the caricatures we were gaslit into hating—like Sikhs), solely to further the agenda of foreign-soil invasions, and then told us we were wrong for having ever held these beliefs after the fact, when they were the ones who instilled those beliefs in us in the first place. when you sit down and examine how crazy this all was, it's mind-blowing, both the actual series of events and how quickly we forgot and moved on from it as though it never happened. most people forgot they ever held these beliefs at the time (understandable, as it was quite shameful—even if it wasn't our fault), and, I assume, people who were not born yet will never truly know what it was like, because I guarantee that shit ain't going in the history books. even saying "freedom fries" or playing American Idiot on Spotify today rarely truly jogs people's memory and makes them remember that chapter of their lives and how quickly our beliefs shifted as the result of blatantly state-backed media indoctrination enacted on a susceptibly trusting populace.

>that's easily the least-interesting part of my post though

It's still wrong. I'm not disagreeing with your overall narrative, which is why I'm not discussing it. We weren't gaslit into starting the War in Afghanistan, the Bush administration presented a clear reason for the invasion that probably was true. That doesn't forgive all the administration's other faults.

Please reread the point about Victorian porn, and how that "proves" sexual mores have never changed (it doesn't).

If we actually wanted to argue this: citing a few stories from back when, in which one really cannot discern the reporter's politics, will not do it. You can just argue, "that's one example. Look, here's this biased shit from the same period, see? Nothing's changed!"

No, if we wanted to argue if things have changed, we'd have to find someone who practiced journalism back then (as I did not). OR - we'd look at what the Journalism schools were teaching, except that many working journalists didn't get degrees in Journalism. OR maybe the manuals that media outlets gave to their reporters, if such things existed.

As for "post-9/11", you're already 30-40 years too late.

I'd actually be pretty interested in a kind of statistical study of new media bias over the decades. I think that'd be hard as hell to construct, owing in part to there being a lot of ways news media can introduce bias, some of which are really hard to spot without a great deal of context, but it might be interesting.

I do think some of the shift has been not in the availability of quality news media, but in the kind of news media people actually "consume". It's not like doctor's waiting rooms were playing 24/7 cable "news" in 1965—because there was no such thing, and because the doctor's office waiting room probably didn't have a TV in it. AP Wire and several news periodicals and a few papers of more-or-less decent quality do exist, but if you don't seek them out your ambient, if you will, exposure to "news" will mostly be shit, that much I'd agree with. I do think there's been some "the medium is the message" effect in news becoming a 24/7/365 product rather than something more focused, but I also think that's more on top of or in addition to the decent aspects of older news media, not instead of.

But, you might be right, and I might be wrong. Maybe our news media really was wildly better than it is now, in a narrow window of time in post-war America. Or maybe we're just interpreting "100 'units' of news available, 40 of which are pretty good" versus "10,000 'units' of news available, 1,000 of which are pretty good" differently—depending on one's perspective, either of those could be regarded as worse than the other. Or—I can see this being the case, for sure—maybe I'm not giving enough weight to what's popular, versus what's available, when evaluating differences in the news media landscape. What's popular now is, kinda, a product that didn't even exist before the late '80s or so. A new category of news that needs, as raw material, almost more "news" than actually exists, and needs to compete with hyper-palatable available-on-tap entertainment, for eyeballs and attention. Maybe the expansion of entertainment-availability in general deserves some consideration, when it comes to what media's like now. Maybe too many options are a bad thing, actually (see: Fox News insiders fretting that reporting the truth might lose them some of their audience, and so, money—because there are plenty of other outlets willing to lie, readily available at the click of a mouse)

I've thought of another test, actually, and that one is easier to carry out: what are journalists today saying on the topic?

https://nationalpress.org/topic/objectivity-journalism-new-n...

https://dailycaller.com/2023/01/31/major-news-outlets-object...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/to-regain-trustthe-n...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/01/30/newsrooms...

So obviously they themselves are aware that they're doing something differently.

>Nonpartisanship was particularly important for a paper that was a national leader in covering politics and government. As the final gatekeeper for Post journalism, I stopped voting or making up my own mind about issues. As Bradlee had, I insisted on noninvolvement of Post journalists in political activity or advocacy of any kind, except voting. I also worked to make The Post newsroom more diverse, and encouraged everyone to have a voice in our decision-making.

The bit about not voting is something that today's "journalists" would reject completely, I'm pretty sure. I wouldn't lie down on the tracks for "objectivity" if instead we got "nonpartisanship."

Or maybe it's because that wasn't real.

Major mass media sifted through a few government- and corporate-ad-constrained bottlenecks during what people call "the golden age." It was the golden age of censorship.

People get upset about censorship much more easily now because they got used to the wild west mentality ushered in by the Internet and relaxation of the fairness doctrine. So returning to government- and corporate-ad-based censorship feels constraining.

If it helps you feel better, this is in a thread about them getting caught and called out. There are some horrifically bad actors in our media landscape right now who are more than happy to lie or label opinion shows as "news" if makes their stock price goes up.

It's good to see serious, well respected news outlets like NPR doing the hard work and calling others out on their BS.

I was going to point out how NPR dropped the ball [1] on the Hunter Biden story, but then found this followup [2] and i'm not sure how i feel. Is it a correction? A copout? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[1] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/npr-explained-why-its-not-... [2] https://www.npr.org/2022/04/09/1091859822/more-details-emerg...

I mean, the whole laptop story was clearly held back and conveniently timed by political actors in an attempt to manipulate the media. I have my problems with NPR, but I'll go on the record and respect them for not playing ball and doing proper due diligence.

It was being manipulated from both sides.

If you had serious evidence against the son of the sitting president, your first reaction should not be to mail the thing, untracked and uninsured to TUCKER CARLSON.

Sure, but they certainly seemed to apply less scepticism and due diligence to the Trump Russia stuff.

FWIW: NPR was also pretty hands off on the Steele dossier.

But I don't know what level of due diligence you need on the other stuff. Most of the incriminating connections between Trump's orgs and Russian agents were pretty largely substantiated - sometimes by Trump's own words and actions.

NPR almost never ignores stories outright. They will slip things into a vague half a sentence quickly between segments, only cover one viewpoint, and uncritically repeat government statements. All news sources do this kind of stuff though, so it's important to read and listen widely and critically.

A save-face

> It's good to see serious, well respected news outlets like NPR doing the hard work and calling others out on their BS.

While I agree that NPR News bats above average they are not without their blind spots. While they may not chase clickbait or obvious ragebaiting trash, their journalists still latch onto convenient or lazy explanations all of the time.

It's a human institution. It absolutely isn't without flaw. I can think of a couple stories they did I wasn't a big fan of. But this is part of how the system works and why well funded, ethical, serious media is crucial to a functioning society. News agencies will report on each other and help raise the standard of how they are run. Some, NPR included, with have news desks that are devoted to just that and will even report non-flattering news on themselves.

The author of this article is really good about it. He's aired some pretty unflattering, dirty laundry about NPR/PBS, not just other news orgs. Sometimes his pieces are a bit too inside baseball for me, but I appreciate the value they bring to the system as a whole.

An introspective news ecosystem is a healthy one. A healthy news ecosystem helps build a healthier society by rooting out corruption, waste and injustice.

I recall that NPR had the "Weed is actually bad" book guy on and was pretty much letting him say whatever unchallenged. No opposing viewpoint guest, a bunch of softball questions, and no pushback in general.

This guy totally gave off vibes of using this kernel of truth, these studies on THC in developing brains, and wrapping it in a bunch of FUD to sell his personal brand and books. Oh, and his wife is the scientist not him..

Honestly it felt like a paid advertising spot or a bit of propaganda. At the time I was wondering about the latter because it seemed that NPR had somehow taken a stance AGAINST legalization around the time all that activity was occurring a couple years ago.

Yeah I'm also sad that the Fairness Doctrine is dead. It's healthy to hear dissenting viewpoints, even if it makes people uncomfy.

You and I and a huge fraction of humanity noticed, but not a large enough fraction to make such unprofitable?

There is a huge difference between noticing abuses of the media and being able to immunize your self to the effects of such behavior. Many of use on this site like to think we are purely logical being but we are fooling ourselves. We are fuzzy logical beings full of emotions and complex human psychological traits. Just because we intellectually understand the problems around advertising and click bait does not make us immune.

true!

>(2) the public's willingness to unquestioningly consume everything that such media produces.

What? The predominate pattern today is nobody believing anything the media says. Nothing is true. The earth isn't even fucking round.

The media became untrustworthy before people stopped trusting it.

Not really. There was a concerted effort by media figures (Limbaugh, Fox, Beck, etc.) to push a false narrative that media is untrustworthy, in order to push their radical views. In a way it was self fulfilling prophecy as more and more folks listened to them it became apparent that media is failing, and other orgs have slid down that path as well.

> The predominate pattern today is nobody believing anything the media says.

perhaps in your social circles. plenty of people, especially older people, get 100% of their news nightly, out of habit, by watching cable television, and are aware of the existence of "bias" in the news they consume only insofar as, hey, if I watch CNN and MSNBC and FOX, then I'm getting a balanced news diet!

I disagree with that in general. Most people distrust some media, not all, and typically it's the "other side's" media.

The fact is most people are stupid and woefully undereducated. That's why media gets away with this - the populace is dumb, and therefore so too is its media. It's just moral panics all the way down, on both sides.

You missed the third leg of that particular stool: the public's urge to deny the truth of anything because it comes from the media.

Source: Do your own research. -- a grumpy old man. :-)

Do you know what the truth is? Because I sure don't.

The problem with blaming 'the public' for being stupid is that we're both the public and we might be the stupid ones. Media outlets lie, they also tell the truth sometimes. I think the biggest mistake we can make is to think that the media we're paying attention to is the 'right' media.

The simple fact of the matter is that we're being lied to almost constantly and the only amazing consequence of that is that any of us have any sanity left at all. And the main reason for that is because we all think that we're right and those other people are wrong. But what if we're wrong? What if I'm the stupid sucker that believes the lie.

Or maybe I've just read one-too-many Philip K Dick novels :-)

> We somehow crossed over an invisible line that separates "cheeky hyperbole" from "outright deceit and lies" and nobody noticed

It's been around forever. As good recent-ish example is the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect:

" Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

    — Michael Crichton"

I agree about this with Michael Crichton, author of the novel State of Fear, and famous Climate Change denier.

Regarding point #2,

How have you vetted the NPR article? Is there some ultimate source for this information that would reveal gross negligence or omissions by the author of the article?

I'm not trying to be a jerk about it. It's just that it's incredibly hard to properly fact-check anything you can't look up in an encyclopedia. It feels like this has been a major issue since time immemorial.

> It's just that it's incredibly hard to properly fact-check anything you can't look up in an encyclopedia.

You can't even use that. Encyclopedias only put the facts they think are important and have space for in the book - it's possible they omit or obfuscate information that would change how one views a person, place, thing, or event.

I looked back on Google news and Twitter in Oct 2022 to see contemporary news stories and tweets related to James Gordon Meek to confirm this. While the Daily Beast and the Independent ran stories in this timeframe saying he wasn't raided by the FBI for his work, nearly everyone on Twitter was just tweeting the same clips from Fox News or parroting Tucker Carlson verbatim.

It really goes to show how that aspect of the media just takes over the thinking for their viewers. I wonder how many of these viewers eventually connected the dots that they were so outraged over someone getting arrested for CP.

Is it possible that this has seen an uptick after 2013, when the "Domestic Dissemination Ban" was removed from Smith-Mundt, because, well, "the internet, and stuff"?

over the last 10 years, i've found myself reading and watching news next to 0 minutes a day. I listen to a news analysis podcast (mostly for the jokes), and i see excerpts on places like reddit, my personal fediverse server (with 1500 journalists followed), and HN.

I also currently am possibly hallucinating from food poisoning. The wikipedia article for smith mundt doesn't decry in large letters that one of the more important rules it set out doesn't apply anymore.

in fact it says "the smith-mundt act has been used to show that Voice of America doesn't have to reply to FOIA transcript requests"

Congrats on 10 years. I stopped routinely reading/watching the news in 2016, and have been much happier because of it. I still remain reasonably informed and aware, but on my own terms.

Is there an accurate, honest, reliable news source for "tell me what happened but don't tell me how to think or feel or react" anymore?

The only issue with "tell me what happened and that's it" is what if it's not in your wheelhouse? For example, do I personally care about a children's tylenol shortage? Is there an issue with precursors, demand, shipping, bottling? Just reading the headline and the "data and statistics" wouldn't really make me care one way or the other, and again, perhaps that's fine. Perhaps it's useful to just know there's a shortage or whatever the news du jour is.

I find reddit and fediverse good for getting the extremely polarized opinions out in the open on topics i have very little idea about. Don't get me wrong, i realize that i'm getting a lot of bad inputs, here.

But the flip side is i am not seeing advertisements constantly, and since i know where the extreme edges are i can actually have a conversation where someone more knowledgeable than me can correct my understanding - or attempt to.

RE: 10 years, i actually got rid of televisions in my house shortly after "mission accomplished" back in 2002 or 2003. I told myself that recording and going through news about the 9/11 attacks wasn't doing me any favors. So i'm technically 20 years without a "TV" connected to OTA or any other service. I mostly watch youtube reviews and my personal copies of TV shows and whatnot.

I tried around the start of the pandemic to get an OTA setup on my projector. I ended up just using it to record me.tv or whatever it's called, the "oldies" station. Wasn't worth the disk i was using for it.

Anything "national" or international, i got a friend that will set up an RTMP stream off their cable box and send me a link. This has worked fine for 5 years.

> the public's willingness to unquestioningly consume everything that such media produces.

Is this part true? I thought the public's faith in journalism was at historic lows.

The difference between "what I answer to a pollster with a clear mind" and "what I consume and allow to influence my opinions and emotions throughout the day".

I also suspect people answer the trust stuff while thinking of the opposition's news sources.

> willingness to abandon any sense of ethics or integrity

Doing that without punishment is what American Constitutional freedom of speech is all about. We have freedom of speech and incredibly lax libel laws specifically to protect press fabrications.

People have noticed.

It's a bit ironic that it's NPR calling out Rolling Stone. NPR willingly suppressed damaging news about political families just before an election.

We should not forget that illicit images are easily 'found' in convenient places to get people put behind bars.

I don't really blame this journalist for suspecting the illicit images claim may not be as true as it appears.

Based upon NPR's telling it seems like the editor was trying to hide details about a friend's story as long as possible, and not present the details of the story with skepticism like you're implying.

I know what you're referring to but don't think this is one of those cases.

The affidavit is very thorough about what was found. Starts on page 3.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1566416/downl...

To split the difference a bit...

They have him "on tape" IMing multiple other suspects, talking extremely graphically about pedophilia, and exchanging images and video of same.

"on tape" meaning they have a video of him in front of a computer engaging in the conversation?

I skimmed through the affidavit & couldn't find that claim. It was difficult to read the content so I didn't look to deeply into it. Could you post a quote of the claim if it's there?

They don't claim to have video of him engaging in the conversation, but they do claim to have a pretty damning picture of him.

To support the idea that it was he who engaged in these messages, they claim that you can only be logged in to kik on one device at a time and have evidence that he was using the device for other purposes around the same time and in the same location as kik for at least one of these conversations.

That's my reading, anyways. Not a lawyer and have trouble with the stilted language in these kinds of things.

On tape as in they have the phone with messages on it, and the ip addeess and device info used to send the messages.

(As opposed to testimony, where you have someone else testifying that they SAW him doing it, but no way of proving that post facto)

FYI to anyone curious, do not read the affidavit if you do not want to have pretty horrific images of infants etc in your mind.

So Dropbox found uploads, allegedly from Meek, containing CP. Then devices were found at Meek's residence containing CP. To there, you could fake it: pwn the box, open a Dropbox, upload pictures. Basic parallel construction.

In items 30-53 we have an allegation that Meek exposed himself to children on Omegle. This is more damning. Included in the evidence are pictures apparently showing Meek naked. Harder to fake. His face does not seem to be visible in any of the images. Some legitimate communications of Meek are also on the phone, corresponding with his known whereabouts (and might be checked against the other end if possible).

Conclusion: if this is a frame, it's a very well-made one.

Why would he be framed, though? He made a documentary about a military embarrassment (the Tongo Tongo ambush), and many years ago he documented a case of apparent manslaughter (of an American) by a captain in Iraq. In short, he was not exactly a Seymour Hersh or a Glenn Greenwald. I just don't see the 3LAs going to this much trouble to bag a guy who wrote a story about Niger.

So I conclude the case is probably real.

Thought I'd put this down and save someone else the trouble.

Thank you, it’s hard to find reasonably good arguments like this in the HN comments these days.

Isn't it a reporters job to report the facts? The fact is the FBI was investigating them for a specific crime.

It's already suspect that they left out that key fact. It's extra suspect when it turns out they had personal connections to the accused.

If you think the government only reports facts, stop reading Rolling Stone. Read the FBI report.

I'd give Rolling Stone a little bit of slack on this one.

The last time they rushed to paint suspects as rapists ahead of any sort of actual trial, they got sued to hell for defamation when the allegations turned out to be fraudulent altogether.

I could excuse them for being a little slower on the draw this time around. "Being investigated by the FBI" does not mean the subject is automatically guilty.

My wife's ex was "being investigated by CPS" at one point. He didn't do anything, but it is/was humiliating for him nonetheless.

Was Rolling Stone sued for defamation for accurately reporting what an FBI affidavit said?

And yet, the editor was willing to run that classified material had been found on his computer from those same sources and lead the reader to the conclusion he was targeted for national security reasons. Leaving out what has been reported to you as part of an effort to twist the narrative doesn't deserve slack.

Fair point.

I would argue that the general public does not give a single shit about the latest individual being accused of vague national security drama on any given day. A reporter possessed classified material on his personal laptop? Someone wake the President!

...oh, wait. The President's kid possessed classified material on his personal laptop too.

There's nothing really defamatory about it; if anything it might help his career. Nobody gives a shit about victimless white-collar crimes.

But child porn? You're radioactive once painted. That accusation causes actual damages.

This is the article in question: https://web.archive.org/web/20221019003915/https://www.rolli...

"Now, Meek appears to be on the wrong side of the national-security apparatus. And no one can say for certain if law-enforcement officers actually removed him from the building. And thus, a riddle was born. Documents pertaining to the case remain sealed."

So, according to Siegel, Rolling Stone had information that the raid was not related to Meek's journalism. That first sentence is a lie.

"Appears," "no one can say for certain," "a riddle," "documents [...] remain sealed."

So they're not technically lying but are using weasel words to try to heavily imply a narrative?

I don’t believe the reason for an FBI raid is a notable fact at all, that’s just politics. A notable fact would be evidence discovered, and even that needs to be verified

It's fucked up that a conspiracy theory gets the top post and actual criticisms of the reporting are at the bottom.

First day on HN?

When you ask for examples of this happening they get really mad and try to hide your question by downvoting it.

> the investigation into James Gordon Meek, 53, of Arlington, was initiated from an investigative lead sent by Dropbox and ultimately received by the FBI Washington Field Office’s Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force.

The problem with stating stuff like this is it can be used as an example of how deep the conspiracy goes rather than a refutation.

To the conspiracy minded, sure. How can any discussion be had with these people who don't require evidence in order to make bold claims?

Honestly, no idea. Seems a fool's errand.

Dropbox working with the fbi is a fact here. Jumping to dropbox working with the fbi regarding other files is fact as well. Dropbox knowing what is in your files is known as well.

It stops being a conspiracy when everyone admits to the facts

The poster insinuated that the FBI planted CSAM on a reporter's devices.

Well at one point they were paying GeekSquaders to _find_ and report it.

> "how does the government intend to prove beyond any reasonable doubt that the Geek Squad employees themselves didn't put the alleged porn pictures on the device?"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13841504

At what point is it more plausible that the FBI did their job? How does the government intend to prove that the CSAM wasn't created by cosmic ray bit flips? Threads like these are insufferable.

I'm not the person you're arguing with, but please refer back to me an hour ago saying "Seems a fool's errand."

Right. Best to walk way.

So then report on that?

The journalist quit after the pedophilla charges were edited out of the article.

In an era of "insta-reputational death by accusation in media being the punishment", I want media to be cautious and skeptical when there are no real facts yet. An affidavit in support of a search warrant is little more than an unevidenced assertion. Compared to the often extreme punitive consequences of the mere accusation being widely spread it can be disproportionate.

If the warrant produces actual evidence of wrongdoing it will later result in an indictment and ultimately a trial. That's the more appropriate time for media to consider those allegations as newsworthy. Sadly, there are documented examples of government (or individuals wielding the power of government) using extreme accusations in affidavits to intentionally inflict punishment. Rolling Stone choosing to not be unwitting 'judge-jury-executioner' at that early no-evidence stage doesn't mean they wouldn't report on an eventual indictment - when and if it happens.

You make excellent points, and in a world were we know that people will remember accusations and not subsequent exonerations, it would be humane to delay reporting on the kind of accusation that will ruin a person’s life.

The problem is that Rolling Stone plays favorites. In a recent incident they ran the false headline “CPAC Speaker Calls for Transgender People to Be Eradicated,” about someone that they didn’t like and who wasn’t a friend of the editor in chief. After being threatened with a lawsuit for this libel, they changed the headline. I don’t think they can be trusted.

Seems like that article is currently titled much more accurately: "CPAC Speaker Calls for Eradication of ‘Transgenderism’ — and Somehow Claims He’s Not Calling for Elimination of Transgender People".

The speaker called for transgenderism to be eradicated.

Consider headlines if AOC called for conservatism to be eradicated.

It's ok for journalists to withhold evidence they don't find trustworthy, but they can't just put in lies as a replacement. The story repeatedly says they have no idea what grounds there could be for a raid, and it's probably retaliation for the guy's reporting. Those insinuations should not be in there at all, and note that they did repeat some of the government's claims:

> Sources familiar with the matter say federal agents allegedly found classified information on Meek’s laptop during their raid.

Those are probably the same sources that told Siegel about the CSAM. The sources are trustworthy or not, you can't just pick which of their claims you like.

> The sources are trustworthy or not

Read that quote carefully — there's two layers to it.

The source is "familiar with the matter" — the journalist trusts what they have to say.

What the source says, though, is that federal agents allegedly found classified information. In other words, the source claims that the federal agents themselves are claiming this; but the source does not put any credence in this claim, and didn't want to communicate the claim in such a way that the journalist would put credence into it.

If the source actually believed the feds, there would be no need for the "allegedly" in the sentence; the "says" would do fine at making a use-mention distinction between the journalist's beliefs and a source's claims.

Yes that's fine, and a great use of the word allegedly, but it's not fine to pick and choose which alleged allegations from the same source you include, and replace their unverified allegations with your own.

Source: Federal agents found classified documents and CSAM on his computer.

Rolling Stone: Federal agents allegedly found classified documents on his computer. The question looms on what grounds the feds would have had room to act on Meek. He appears to be on the wrong side of the national-security apparatus. Maybe they were retaliating for his legitimate reporting activities?

Im posting this as an alt for what I think are obvious reasons.

If you're good at searching google, duckduckgo, various tor search engines and IPFS, child porn is not hard to find. (It is NOT my thing, btw. Ive ran across it in some tor researching. Alas.) However, in most states, possession is a statutory charge. To that end, it means if images end up on a computer <whistles>, and there's an anonymous tip, its going to end badly, cause with the statutory nature, simple possession is highly illegal.

Now to be fair, Stallman got into hot water due to his lacklustre way of expressing this issue. It's documentation of a heinous crime - one that should likely be a death penalty case - but the images themselves shouldn't carry criminal charge, let alone a statutory criminal charge. Frankly, thats due to how easy they are to acquire, and of a "youre guilty due to simple possession" aspect, even if you were unaware.

I also have to wonder, since a journalist doing research into classified govt stuff.. It's really easy to plant those images, and then find them. And you don't even need to hack into a computer. Just leave a thumbdrive hanging around with a label like "hard candy" in the premises, and instant 100+ year felony charge with automatic public assumption of guilt. Having such a "child porn charge" against a journalist doing sensitive research is certainly a great way to get that person permanently out of your hair, and to send a message to anyone else foolish enough to go near their work.

The use of the word “allegedly” is standard practice for reputable new organisations reporting on an individual being charged, but not yet convicted.

A core tenet of the justice system is the idea that your innocence until proven guilty. Hence the use of the word “allegedly”, by default any claims made by the government shouldn’t be treated as proven, until they’ve proved them in a court of law.

To assume that a law enforcement official, or prosecutors charges are true before they’ve proven them in a court of law would be to ignore due process. To publish those charges as facts, would be libel.

Everything you're saying would be true if it was the journalist themselves doing the alledging. But the journalist is quoting a source through paraphrase, and the source is doing the alledging.

It is not libel to say "An anonymous source said [libelous thing.]" Because there is no claim made through that statement that what the anonymous source is saying, is true. The only claim being made through that statement is that that claim is in fact what the source said. If the anonymous source wasn't anonymous, maybe they'd be guilty of libel. But the journalist isn't. They're just reporting on the libel someone else is committing.

In the absence of evidence, what is the line between a "reasonable suspicion" and a "conspiracy theory"?

You said it yourself -- it's the difference between a suspicion, aka hypothesis, and theory, aka explanation based on evidence.

The problem with conspiracy theorists isn't that they think unlikely things might have happened, it's that they are 100% convicted that unlikely things are the only possible explanation, and (typically) that any evidence to the contrary is just part of the conspiracy.

> We should not forget that illicit images are easily 'found' in convenient places to get people put behind bars.

"The CIA will dump kiddie porn on your computer if you cross them" is basically "the ATF will shoot your dog if you cross them" trope but for a different group of people. Based on other comments it seems like the accusations are a bit more substantial than a low effort frame. Nevertheless, there's a reason that the rest of the journalism industry basically dismissed it flat out.

That said if this were anybody that wasn't part of the media "club" the media would not have extended them the benefit of the doubt and would have ran with the accusation in the title. That's the part that really bothers me. Screw them and their double standard.

> "The CIA will dump kiddie porn on your computer if you cross them" is basically "the ATF will shoot your dog if you cross them" trope but for a different group of people.

Except that we know, via Snowden, all manner of things that the TLAs can do and have done.

"Child Porn" charges should ALWAYS be acknowledged with great skepticism given just how much damage even the accusation will do--especially if the investigation is focused on just one person (ie. not part of a broader sting or sweep).

However, in this instance, the evidence looks pretty damning. I still don't like them reporting on it, though. The man deserves the opportunity to prove his innocence in court and reporting the accusations denies him that--even if he is found innocent (which admittedly looks unlikely), the reporting will destroy his life.

> That said if this were anybody that wasn't part of the media "club" the media would not have extended them the benefit of the doubt and would have ran with the accusation in the title. That's the part that really bothers me. Screw them and their double standard.

That is fair and hard to disagree with.

Rolling Stone magazine has been going down hill for a long time. There reporting of late has been pretty disappointing with slanted views/one sided reporting

At least they keep the stones rolling, down the hill that is.

They aren't credible anymore. Not since this: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/13/business/media/rape-uva-r...

That's incredibly damning and everyone involved should be ashamed.

That said, is there any organization in the world, let alone a media outlet, that has never had any catastrophic failures? Are we supposed to be one-strike to forever irredeemable for every org?

Should we also not call the NYT credible anymore after they supported the invasion of Iraq (and associated WMD BS) and admitted their reporting "had not been as rigorous as they should have been, and were insufficiently qualified, frequently overly dependent upon [biased] information"? That one of their reporters had to retire in shame, but only after a generous severance package deal, and all of the editors and people who allowed this were allowed to stay?

The only recent major Rolling Stone scoop that has held up after further scrutiny was Matt Taibbi's coverage of financial institutions. That was ages ago.

That's probably because the FBI has a history of making up excuses to get search warrants for journalist and activist's homes. The reasons the FBI gives for getting a search warrant have about as much connection to real life as the daily horoscope.

The reasons are extremely clear here, secondly, judges issue warrants based on facts, it's not perfect, but most warrants are obtained 100% legally.

In this case the accused had top secret document on his computer but more importantly is being investigated for images of child sexual abuse which was redacted by Rolling Stone.

You have to read the article, otherwise I would think you're defending an accused pedophile just because you have some imaginary beef with the FBI.

>otherwise I would think you're defending an accused pedophile just because you have some imaginary beef with the FBI.

You're on the right track but you have it backwards. We should be mad that the FBI has so consistently degraded their reputation with parallel construction and other flat out lies that even in the case of a potentially heinous guilty person we cannot believe their claims before they are tested in court and the evidence, and evidentiary chain, is shown.

So yeah, I'm defending anyone who has rocked the boat and then suddenly been raided by the FBI for an unrelated reason during which they happen to find something related to the rocking the boat. I find it just as likely that the FBI used their access to plant evidence for parallel construction in the Dropbox account and iPhone 8 conversation log. So they could search for national security stuff.

I see a lot of police making mistakes on youtube. Do I assume every police officer is a bad apple? No, because I'm not an idiot.

You could write an interesting article about that, with intervews and history supporting that possibility. That is not what they did. They ignored the reason and wrote a completely different and misleading article.

I'm incredibly skeptical of the machine, as well as NPR, which mostly exists to support the narrative of the ruling elite. However, I recommend everyone skeptical of this to read the full affidavit -- or at least as much as you can stomach. https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1566416/downl...

They lied. That’s what it’s called. Not left out.

>They lied. There are several 'theys' in the story. Which 'they'?

The editor of Rolling Stone had information saying that first sentence, which he introduced, was false.

Just another example of Rolling Stone literally being the worst of the worst in terms of unethical media. It’s not the first time they’ve been caught like this, nor will it be the last. Their newsroom is honestly so prolific in terms of producing lies that you’d think the political parties would be paying attention to them, they could be a great batch of future politicians.

Disturbing stuff

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Gordon_Meek#Investigatio...

Shame on Rolling Stone for omitting this

It's hard to find any way to defend Rolling Stone's actions. It's actions in 2014 showed it cannot be trusted as a reputable source.

Also Rolling Stone: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_lacrosse_case

News that cares this much about sensationalizing isn't news. While I'm entirely for unfettered protection of free speech, free speech doesn't include the right to lie, at least not in a professional capacity. Perhaps we need to start punishing intentionally deceptive reporting by not allowing these people to call themselves journalists and / or not allowing these sources of information to call themselves news.

I think it's a problem that can take care of itself. People need to be incredulous. Why would anyone reading Rolling Stone, Teen Vogue, Ars Technica, Vice, Buzfeed, or any of the other publications clearly in the realm of entertainment imagine that they actually do "journalism" in the usual sense.

Free speech generally does include the right to lie. There are only very limited legal circumstances where a lie could be a criminal offense or cause for civil liability. Even if you could somehow ban people from calling themselves "journalists" that would be meaningless under US federal law as journalists enjoy no more rights or privileges than any other common citizen.

Indeed, the current Fox vs Dominion case is highlighting that very point.

Ever watched a police interrogation?

How would you distinguish between "intentionally deceptive" and "being wrong"?

In principle I don't disagree; but proving "intentionally deceptive" beyond reasonable doubt in court is extraordinarily hard, so in practice I don't really think we can do much about it.

See the current disclosures about what Fox "journalists" were doing.

I don't know what that's referring to.

If you don't pay attention to American news, you could've missed this, but in a nutshell Fox had to disclose messages in the course of a lawsuit that show they've been intentionally lying to their viewers.

This article is opinionated and editorialized, but some of the facts about the messages are there:

https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/17/business/fox-news-dominion-li...

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