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Reuters' position on covering Trump

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Re: Reuters' position on covering Trump

#121

Post by astrodust »

maxxxxx wrote: post #73
beat wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at it this way... they just called Steve Bannon a rank, timid amateur when it comes to intimidating the press. They said, very loudly, we are not afraid of you . Good for them.

I would not underestimate Bannon. He is a very smart guy.

It's not the smart that people should be concerned about. It's if he's going to go as far as some governments do in suppressing journalists: Harassment, imprisonment, or execution.

Covering the current administration is so far not a life-threatening exercise. That's what people mean by "amateur". There are other countries where reporting carries real, immediate risks to one's safety.

Consider the luxury of being a US-based reporter when there's people like Raif Badawi facing execution just for blogging: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raif_Badawi

Re: Reuters' position on covering Trump

#122

Post by williamle8300 »

cirath wrote: post #110
williamle8300 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is Trump an immediate threat? I'm really curious. All of his policies are about protecting American interests, and rebuilding America's manufacturing complex. If you're referring to the Immigration EO... please read it first. It's a really well-written bill. For those curious about whether it was a religious discrimination see this pie chart of the Muslims that are excluded[1]. The goal of the EO is to mitigate t…

Trump is a more long term threat due to the long term fallout and international perception of the United States as a result of his actions. Yes, his Immigration related EO does not affect nearly as many people as the rhetoric would indicate -- but what it does do is prevent travel to the United States for some 22,000 persons (and counting) at the very least while, by consensus, not really being likely to prevent entr…

There's always going to be some unwanted effects of any kind of legislation. I agree that those are bad side effects... but you have to look at the general thrust of the legislation: curbing unwanted immigrants to America. There's no deterministic way to discover whether someone has terrorist sentiments... so a blanket statement is used. It's sloppy but accomplishes the goal, no?

Reactionary? Yes, I agree. Trump's most shining quality is that he acts quickly. Obama didn't accomplishing this much in his 8 years, as Trump has in 2 weeks... I would anticipate he has a very lean and agile approach to legislation and everything is subject to iteration.

Re: Reuters' position on covering Trump

#123

Post by simplify »

williamle8300 wrote: post #82
deepnotderp wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bernie supporter here, so obvious bias, but the way they (CNN, Fox, etc.) talked down to Sanders in the primaries was disgusting, so I have to agree there. However, the trump administration wasn't attacking Fox news which I think we can all agree from an objective standpoint is several times worse than CNN in their distortion of the truth.

Can you give examples of Fox distorting things? I gave many examples of issues that the MSMs didn't seriously cover. I don't believe that there isn't "true" objective coverage but Fox News with Hannity and Carlson are really providing coverage that is sharp, and enlightening. They're actually informing the public instead of participating in the media churn.

I don't know why you're getting downvoted, it's a good question. I am not a fan of trump, but I also want to see and verify examples of Fox distorting things.

Re: Reuters' position on covering Trump

#124

Post by protomyth »

jeremywho wrote: post #105
protomyth wrote: post #75

I'm not sure what they are going for with this statement. I really wonder who is the audience. I just don't know what good they were hoping to achieve. I'm not being cynical, I just don't understand. Reaction wise this is basically signaling to most conservatives that Reuters hasn't been doing their job. Its a positive reinforcement that they didn't properly investigate or cover the scandals. I imagine #3 (Give up on…

U.S. president calls journalists "among the most dishonest human beings on earth” or that his chief strategist dubs the media “the opposition party." I think their reason to respond is self-explanatory.

Prior administrations have had some amazingly unkind things to say about the press. I don't think those comments are any reason to respond.

Re: Reuters' position on covering Trump

#125

Post by williamle8300 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #118
cirath wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trump is a more long term threat due to the long term fallout and international perception of the United States as a result of his actions. Yes, his Immigration related EO does not affect nearly as many people as the rhetoric would indicate -- but what it does do is prevent travel to the United States for some 22,000 persons (and counting) at the very least while, by consensus, not really being likely to prevent entr…

> Yes, his Immigration related EO does not affect nearly as many people as the rhetoric would indicate It potentially affects, well, everyone, really: while much focus has been on the effect of the refugee ban and the 90-day shutdown from named countries, the order directs certain executive officers to determine information that foreign countries (all countries, not just the specific ones addressed by the 90 say ban)…

No, you're wrong. You can preempt intentions of a bill. A bill is a bill. If Trump wants to overreach he'll have to introduce another bill. This bill is specifically to curb nations that have been havens for radical Islamic people.

Re: Reuters' position on covering Trump

#126

Post by grayrest »

fareesh wrote: post #61

I remember being on Twitter on most of election day and seeing evidence of all sorts of manufactured rhetoric from Reuters, and was really disturbed (proof below). There are a lot of other explanations for why this happened, but I'm not inclined to believe them given the reality of what happened on election day. It looked like Reuters' polling towards the 8th showed Trump taking the lead, but they deleted the data an…

> I don't know if they ever responded to this issue, but it forever changed my opinion of Reuters.

I didn't write the code so I don't have first hand knowledge but I work for the guy who did. It was a data glitch.

Re: Reuters' position on covering Trump

#127

Post by legostormtroopr »

a_humean wrote: post #92
malnourish wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can really only read those emails due to leaks. Public officials' communications should be in the domain of the public by default unless there is a real urgent need to keep something secret.

I would actually strongly disagree with that. Officials need to be able to exchange ideas freely amongst themselves and within confidence in a non-media environment. They need to be able to say things to each other in person, on phones, and in email communications in less discrete terms that otherwise would need to be crafted to appease their political coalitions and oppositions. They need to be able to ask and say s…

However, the public should have the ability to request through Freedom of Information channels access to emails or documents about particular topics. Not necessarily in real time or in short time frames, but being about to oversee the political sphere is important too.

Re: Reuters' position on covering Trump

#128

Post by beat »

VLM wrote: post #103
beat wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's the case, then they're not doing a very good job of it, huh?

They seem to work really hard. Every obsolete / dead political movement in history (religion, too) was staffed primarily by honest and genuine true believers. I don't think they're lazy or stupid or unmotivated. They just hitched their carriage to a dead horse, that's all. People involved in current day ascendant political movements and modern religions like to think they're somehow different than the dead past, but…

See, when you start saying CNN (and every other major outlet, by extension) is basically Pravda, devoted to carrying the water for the Democratic Party at the expense of the GOP, I kind of assume you're totally blinded by partisanship and incapable of rational discussion of the subject.

Re: Reuters' position on covering Trump

#129

Post by dragonwriter »

williamle8300 wrote: post #125
dragonwriter wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, his Immigration related EO does not affect nearly as many people as the rhetoric would indicate It potentially affects, well, everyone, really: while much focus has been on the effect of the refugee ban and the 90-day shutdown from named countries, the order directs certain executive officers to determine information that foreign countries (all countries, not just the specific ones addressed by the 90 say ban)…

No, you're wrong. You can preempt intentions of a bill. A bill is a bill. If Trump wants to overreach he'll have to introduce another bill. This bill is specifically to curb nations that have been havens for radical Islamic people.

The E.O. is not a bill, and no new bill would be required to implement the parts of it that I related. (Well, it might be legally required just as new legislation might be legally required to do what is called for in the 90-day ban, which is being challenged as a violation of existing law; but that's an after-the-fact constraint that doesn't prevent overreach, it just potentially provides a basis for responding to it, provided the courts are doing their job more faithfully than the President is doing his.)

Re: Reuters' position on covering Trump

#130

Post by soundwave106 »

williamle8300 wrote: post #88
MaxfordAndSons wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you point me to some concrete examples of times CNN or WaPo has been dishonest? Not counting editorials. > The fact that almost every liberal in America is yelling at Trump more than they're yelling at the DNC (and Debbie Wasserman Schultz) shows the state of mainstream media. Plenty of liberals in my liberal social media bubble were yelling at the DNC and DWS when they were doing news worthy things. But why shou…

I listed several examples in my comment. CNN for sure did not cover these issues proportionately to their gravity. These were serious issues that were skirted by them. Had they been responsibly covered, public sentiment would be more favorable towards Trump... since he's really been rapping on this MSM corruption for a while. If anything, Trump is at least an iconoclast and whether you like his policies it would at l…

This is a perspective issue IMHO.

See: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/02/0...

Because of strong media polarization in the cable television news sector, coverage -- while it will show up on both sides of the fence -- will be prioritized to one topic or another entirely depending on politics. So MSNBC spent a huge amount more time exploring the Access Hollywood tapes / Russian hacking angle regarding Trump, while Fox News will cover Clinton's email scandal more.

This is not exactly surprising. I wouldn't call this "corruption". Having an opinion / bias is not corruption.

I will say that from a personal perspective, I find all of American cable news fairly awful, and one of the reasons is this "gotcha" fatigue when it comes to their outrage cycles. At some point, it's hard to figure out what is really a genuine fault and what is just some tabloid fluff designed to get the viewer demographic angry. This especially applies to the "gotchas" that devolve into outright wild conspiracy, such as the Podesta emails you reference (devolved into Pizzagate and who knows what else).

Although not my primary news source, my impression is that Reuters is much more sober than the current state of cable news.

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