31–40 of 135 posts
You hire Judith Miller to write about WMDs. Then get 'quality' news to publish it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Miller The cost of the NYT's 'disinformation' about Iraq was a war that cost hundreds of billions and thousands of lives.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nah, the backlash we're seeing against mainstream media these days are, I believe, in a large part driven by those reporters that failed to do their due diligence when it came to Iraq. Reporters should expect to be told lies often, when those lies are blindly printed and distributed it does a lot of damage to society's trust. I think with Iraq it went beyond negligence, but likely not at all levels, preferring to hir…
Nah, the backlash we're seeing against mainstream media these days are, I believe, in a large part driven by those reporters that failed to do their due diligence when it came to Iraq. Except that the “MSM is lying” crowd still overwhelmingly supports W. bush and the Iraq war, and didn’t seem to mind what the media had to say for 8 years of his presidency. This whole thing kicked off under Obama when “alt” news was t…
To clarify, though, I didn't meant to say that the right wouldn't be skeptical of the media, it seems like both sides have been more skeptical of news coverage in general which is (mostly) a good thing.
And I do think a lot of people on the left have been disbursed of their enchantment with the media, there was a strong skew in coverage during the 2016 primaries in the democratic party.
You hire Judith Miller to write about WMDs. Then get 'quality' news to publish it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Miller The cost of the NYT's 'disinformation' about Iraq was a war that cost hundreds of billions and thousands of lives.
It's quite unfair to compare misinformation campaigns orchestrated by the whole US government and it's intelligence agencies, as was the case with Iraq's WMDs, to online propaganda organized by private individuals to the benefit of various political candidates or their own online circulation. What happened with Iraq was not just fake news, it was fake governing, it was another order of magnitude. Miller and the NYT w…
This was from March but it is a good question. It prompted me to do some spot checks on Facebook virality and Twitter virality as well. One of the things that stands out in false stories is that because they are false they stay "on message" in their falseness. This contrasts with stories that are more truthful which tend to include questions and unknowns that might later contradict or modify the story. So for an exam…
You hire Judith Miller to write about WMDs. Then get 'quality' news to publish it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Miller The cost of the NYT's 'disinformation' about Iraq was a war that cost hundreds of billions and thousands of lives.
Are you saying that had the NYT reported things differently the Iraq war wouldn't have happened? That seems unreasonably strong because it implies that the New York Times had a greater responsibility for the war than did the president and congress.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The definition of lying generally involves intent. Do you think these journalists generally are intending to mislead with statements they know are untrue in the same way the producers of fake news do?
Nobody in this thread suggested that the journalists were lying, just that they were terrible at their jobs. They repeated the official line, without questioning the source.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can't tell if you're just using sarcasm here, but there's nothing "treasonous" about not trusting intelligence agencies that throughout history have not been very trustworthy. You should also stop using "treason" incorrectly. Here [1] is a great debate between Glenn Greenwald and James Risen where Glenn breaks down how important it is to not use Treason in an incorrect manner, and explains (sourced) exactly what Tr…
The missed penny is what notable persons have long and loudly proclaimed distrust of the US Intelligence Community.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's quite unfair to compare misinformation campaigns orchestrated by the whole US government and it's intelligence agencies, as was the case with Iraq's WMDs, to online propaganda organized by private individuals to the benefit of various political candidates or their own online circulation. What happened with Iraq was not just fake news, it was fake governing, it was another order of magnitude. Miller and the NYT w…
Do we have reason to believe that the government knew there were no WMDs?
Yes; many of the specific bases of support they pointed to had been debunked before they were publicized by, among others, UN weapons inspectors. While it's far from proof, that alone is reason to believe that they were knowingly fabricating their claims.