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Comment by hef19898 | Hacker News Reader

hef19898

As someone who read the official reports on the B737 MAX and the 787 battery fires and who is from the industry, I can tell you that your accusations are completely unfounded in reality.

By the way, LWTN was not once found to have wrong reporting on any of their subjects. Last party to pull them to court over it was this cial guy. And it was found that the reporting was factually correct. Not like, say, Fox News with its usual defwnc ein court that boils down to "who in his right mind would take us for a serious news outlet employing journalists".

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>By the way, LWTN was not once found to have wrong reporting on any of their subjects.

There is no law for "wrong reporting". LWTN has not lost a defamation suit, which is very narrow.

"Wrong reporting" is a much broader ethical category of lying by omission to create a narrative or choosing unreliable sources. Think of things like NYTimes and the Iraq War. Or basically any article of the format "x% of some group wants Y evil thing".

What do you think of those "man on the street" interviews where they ask people questions like "point to America on a map," and everyone gets it wrong, except the last person in the segment?

Those are not my kind of humor. To my knowledge, LWT doesn't do those. I could be mistaken, as I honestly do remember all their episodes by heart.

Last Week Tonight certainly used the same "we're entertainment, not news" argument in their own defense:

> HBO also argued that other statements were opinions and jokes, not factual assertions

> HBO said Murray’s accusations were a matter of “hurt feelings about jokes,” and said jokes are protected speech.

https://www.thewrap.com/coal-magnates-lawsuit-john-oliver-di...

Similar, but not the same. Fox News is repeatily caught lying, and paying through the nose for it, while factually LWTN, so far, never did that.

Also, if I remeber correctly, Murray didnnot attack them on the reportes facts, did he?

Of course they were smart enough not to make a factual claim like Murray was intentionally getting people killed. They were able to convey the same message using jokes and a few cherry picked facts, and thus be immune to defamation suits.

With jokes like "looks like a geriatric Dr. Evil", "appears to be on the side of black lung", and "[his political activity is] the equivalent of watching My Girl and rooting for the bees" they suggested that Murray was evil without making any actionable claims.

And in their show after the case was dismissed, they embraced the "who in his right mind would take [this] seriously" defense wholeheartedly: accusing Murray of things like being Epstein's prison guard.

Factual (even if obviously untrue), but not defamation because, much as the court wrote in the case against Tucker Carlson (and before that, a similar case against Rachel Maddow): “the statements are rhetorical hyperbole and opinion commentary intended to frame a political debate, and, as such, are not actionable as defamation”

Those cherry picked facts came from actual law suites in which Murray and his company was found liable, if I remember correctly.

Looking for that, I found wrongful death lawsuits that were settled under nondisclosure agreements, so they probably weren't LWT's source.

I also found that Genwal Resources, a subsidiary of a subsidiary of Murray Energy, agreed they had violated two safety regulations.

They were fined $500,000, but the government said "We were unable to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the company's actions caused the mine collapse"[1].

LWT didn't include that. Instead they simply said "the government's investigation...found it was caused by unauthorized mining practices." Don't you think "we were unable to prove [that]" should have been included by LWT?

1: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2012/03/09/148319836...

Now I could do my own digging, or I could trust Murrays lawyers doing that for their law suite against LWT (no idea why I kept adding a N...). A law suite they lost. If LWT reporting were factually wrong, I assume it would have been brought up in court.

> As someone who read the official reports on the B737 MAX and the 787 battery fires and who is from the industry, I can tell you that your accusations are completely unfounded in reality.

You're defending this particular story when I never claimed it was necessarily false.

> By the way, LWTN was not once found to have wrong reporting on any of their subjects. Last party to pull them to court over it was this cial guy. And it was found that the reporting was factually correct.

That is how "out of context" works. They don't affirmatively lie, they lie through omission. They have lawyers who know how defamation laws work.

Man, you started all of this by pointing to the interviews in the particular show about Boeing, and you wonder why people keep coming back to that particular show?

You did point out those "interviews", which weren't even interviews to begin with but recording of shop floor banter, without realizing they were done by Al-Jazzeera and not LWTN, not realizing they covered the B787 and were done over a decade ago.

And then you accusse others of discussing out of context? Difficult to have context when you din't even get your basic facts right, isn't it?

> I never claimed it was necessarily false.

Doesn't real line up with this, which is essentially claiming its false:

> ... shows like that have a long history of doing selective editing or purposely taking things out of context.

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