Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Reuters' position on covering Trump

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 263 posts

Re: Reuters' position on covering Trump

#41

Post by jerf »

Bartweiss wrote: post #4

I've seen several people suggest that covering Trump is an unprecedented challenge which news orgs have no understanding of how to handle. This is a good reminder that this isn't true; even a presidency which is exceptional by American standards is well within the familiar scope of international news organizations.

I realize that it may be a lot more fun and topical to blame Trump, but the HN gestalt has been discussing the increasingly hollowed-out nature of American news reporting for years now. Public trust of the press has been dropping for decades.

If this manifests as "hey, we've all got to get back to real reporting", then it will be positive. (Not a mere rhetorical sop; that is genuinely my preferred, best-case outcome.) If this is a socially-acceptable way of saying "we've really got to double-down on the things that have been making HN discuss how crap most of the press' output is and has been causing our public trust to notch down another couple of percent every year for the past couple of decades", then it's just so many words on a screen. Given that people have been commenting that Reuters seems pretty good, which I tend to agree with, if this is a declaration that they're going to join the rest of the media, that's not going to be a positive.

Just because you suddenly like the political orientation of the press in the last couple weeks doesn't mean anything has changed. It is still the same shallow, click-bait-driven, hype machine it was last year, it's just that now it's hitting you in a direction that many of you are less prepared to apply skepticism about. That doesn't mean anything's gotten better in the past couple of weeks... in fact as a whole, that is a sign the situation has gotten even worse.

Re: Reuters' position on covering Trump

#42

Post by oculusthrift »

MrZongle2 wrote: post #26
BryantD wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can probably dial that in a little more: Fox News is certainly no better than CNN as far as talking heads goes, but the Trump Administration isn't feuding with them. Trump is feuding with talking heads who don't advance his agenda.

No disagreement about Fox. But is the feud really because those media outlets aren't advancing his agenda? The tone from the press started with mockery during the primaries and advanced to hostility once Trump became the forerunner. Look at the election night coverage from most of the networks: it looked like a funeral , which is rather surprising given the supposed objectivity of these organizations. IMO the feud is…

"Last week, New York magazine reported that Trump’s feud with CNN has roots in his relationship with CNN President Jeff Zucker, a former NBC president who brought Trump's television show “The Apprentice” to the network. Trump, the magazine reported, has told White House staffers that he feels personally betrayed by Zucker and that Zucker should tilt CNN programming more favorably toward him because of their long relationship."

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/trump-cnn-press-234455

Re: Reuters' position on covering Trump

#43

Post by mundo »

contergan wrote: post #25
BryantD wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a slight inaccuracy here; by simply saying "donated to Clinton" you imply that the donation was to Hillary Clinton's campaign. The donation was, however, to the Clinton Foundation. Given that the donations to the Clinton Foundation also came from conservative media outlets such as Newsmax and Fox, I'm confident that donating to the Clinton Foundation does not prove bias towards Hillary Clinton.

The Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Global Initiative are just two fronts the Clintons used over the years to receive bribes. How else do you explain this: http://observer.com/2017/01/the-clinton-foundation-shuts-dow... As soon as Clinton was out of the race, all those donations suddenly stopped coming in. It's pretty obvious that the whole thing was pretty much just legal bribery und the disguise of altruism. Sin…

Giving money to a politician's pet charity for the opportunity to have lunch with (and presumably lobby) that politician is not bribery. It's not even dishonest.

If it seems like it is, remember that giving money directly to the politician's campaign for the opportunity to have lunch with them is both legal and commonplace.

Re: Reuters' position on covering Trump

#44

Post by beat »

MrZongle2 wrote: post #26
BryantD wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can probably dial that in a little more: Fox News is certainly no better than CNN as far as talking heads goes, but the Trump Administration isn't feuding with them. Trump is feuding with talking heads who don't advance his agenda.

No disagreement about Fox. But is the feud really because those media outlets aren't advancing his agenda? The tone from the press started with mockery during the primaries and advanced to hostility once Trump became the forerunner. Look at the election night coverage from most of the networks: it looked like a funeral , which is rather surprising given the supposed objectivity of these organizations. IMO the feud is…

I disagree. It's not about whether CNN and other outlets are "objective". It's about scapegoating an enemy. Beating on the "liberal media" has been a cartoon villain from the GOP ever since the rise of FOX News and right-wing talk radio two decades ago, but this is a new level. They can discourage even believing in facts, and focus supporters on "alt" media that isn't impeded by inconveniences like having to report the actual truth.

CNN may be kinda dumb, but at least they have a bedrock of journalistic integrity. Heck, I've started crediting FOX as a "legitimate" news source, if only to counter arguments that the "liberal media" isn't covering whatever crazy fantasy is floating through the "alt-right" at the time. If even FOX isn't covering it, it's fake news, people! (And honestly, FOX has gotten a lot better over the past year or so.)

This isn't about objectivity. It's about turning any journalistic outfit with a shred of integrity into an Enemy of the People. This sort of nonsense is exactly what makes Trump/Bannon different, and dangerous.

Re: Reuters' position on covering Trump

#45

Post by gravypod »

BryantD wrote: post #12
SixSigma wrote: post #8

No mention that Thomson Reuters, owner of the Reuters news service, donated between $1m-$5m to Clinton. http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2015/05/clinton-foundati...

There's a slight inaccuracy here; by simply saying "donated to Clinton" you imply that the donation was to Hillary Clinton's campaign. The donation was, however, to the Clinton Foundation. Given that the donations to the Clinton Foundation also came from conservative media outlets such as Newsmax and Fox, I'm confident that donating to the Clinton Foundation does not prove bias towards Hillary Clinton.

It think it's pretty obvious that Hillary's foundation is basically her back pocket. Can you point to any charity work that was done by it? Any charity work of the magnitude of the millions it's received? With far less money many more organization have done much more charitable work. One such example is the NAACP. They've received ~16mill which is a stark contrast between the Clinton Foundation who has received in the ballpark of 500mill from 09 to 12.

Not only is the NAACP a charity that received funding that had a huge impact but also many many more. To name one I'd pick the National Parks fund.

There is also the Red Cross who has received writing 600mill but again has done so much more right it to the point where its name is ubiquitous in the field of aid.

Re: Reuters' position on covering Trump

#46

Post by beat »

sglane wrote: post #17
geofft wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is a political blog post from Jupyter a political story? Is a discussion of whether RustConf should be held in the US a political story? Are the Snowden leaks political stories? Is YC funding ACLU a political story?

To quote the HN Guidelines: Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon.

This one is all about "interesting new phenomenon". Reuters didn't feel a need to talk up their journalism-under-duress skills and compare the Obama/Bush/Clinton/Bush/Reagan administration's hostility to Iran and Zimbabwe.

Re: Reuters' position on covering Trump

#47

Post by mturmon »

twoquestions wrote: post #6

One item on the Do list tickled me pink: > Give up on hand-outs and worry less about official access. They were never all that valuable anyway. Our coverage of Iran has been outstanding, and we have virtually no official access. What we have are sources. I'm excited to read what they print using this policy.

Here's a longer take on the concept of rejecting access journalism and getting the real story using other sources, including leaks: http://pressthink.org/2017/01/send-the-interns/

Re: Reuters' position on covering Trump

#48

Post by VLM »

MrZongle2 wrote: post #11

I think these are excellent guidelines. If Reuters adheres to them, they'll continue to rise above the other mainstream media outlets. I suspect they'll be unlikely to come under fire from the current Administration, whose feud with the media seems to be concentrated on "info-tainment" organizations like CNN that for years now have eschewed factual reporting for titillation and talking heads.

As indicated in the DNC email hack, CNN and the washington post and some other former journalist organizations are no longer operating as journalist organizations and are simply self funded partisan propaganda "fake news" sites focused solely on obeying the DNC to elect the most Democrats as possible. Naturally relations are abrasive between the leader of a party in power and the propaganda arm of a political party out of power, how could it be otherwise? Those orgs are no longer journalists by their own choice; I'm not seeing a problem.

I don't recall seeing many (any?) Reuters names in the DNC email hack. I don't recall an unusual amount of fake news coming from Reuters. I don't recall an unusual amount of friction between Trump and Reuters in general. AFAIK they are journalists operating as journalists doing the job of journalists and unless there are secret emails so far unreleased implying otherwise they should expect to continue acting as journalists.

I don't see the point in the news release. AFAIK at this time Reuters is in the real news business whereas the friction is entirely happening with fake news businesses some of which formerly were journalists but are now purely focused on propaganda. It would be as pointless as Ford issuing a press release commenting on the latest FireFox build, they're not even in the same industry....

Re: Reuters' position on covering Trump

#49

Post by general_ai »

Press will never be the same again. Over the past year and a half, most mainstream press outlets have shown themselves to be nothing more than a propaganda wing of the party their owners affiliate themselves with. This was particularly obvious on the democratic side, where they worked really hard to shove a pre-selected, cheating psychopath into the White House, and failed, much to the chagrin of their owners.

If there was any doubt about the lack of impartiality and fairness, we're way beyond it now. No matter what they "report" now, their reputation is gone and only completely gullible idiots trust any of it.

This reminds me very much of Soviet Pravda newspaper, where you'd first read the article, and then try to read between the lines and guess what really happened.

Re: Reuters' position on covering Trump

#50

Post by unreal37 »

ErikVandeWater wrote: post #27
a_humean wrote: post #14

So Reuter's position is that the media environment in the US is rapidly becoming like illiberal democracies in Egypt, Russia and Iran, and so its time to use skills applicable when operating within typically third world authoritarian regimes. What heart warming times we live in.

That's a very sensationalist way of putting it, especially when they say "Don’t take too dark a view of the reporting environment..."

But it's true. Reuters is going to treat media reporting in the US like they treat reporting in countries heavy on censorship and hostile to the media. Let's see if that improves the reporting of facts.
Post reply on HN