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Russiagate is a death-blow for the reputation of the American news media

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Re: Russiagate is a death-blow for the reputation of the American news media

#51

Post by pmoriarty »

sonnyblarney wrote: post #13

Disclosure: I deeply loathe Trump, and I think he is unfit for office; very glad to see Mueller investigation initiated, because there was a lot of smoke and it needed to happen. But the author is very correct. A 'free press' is the 5th estate - an important part of civil society. ... but it only works if they have integrity. Over the last two years it has become clear how narrow and biased they have become in their…

Half the reason Trump got elected was that the media just couldn't shut up about him.

They're his best friends.

If anything, all this media coverage shows is that the US mainstream media is now spectacularly ineffective and irrelevant.

They might have brought down Nixon, but they can't bring down Trump.

Everybody on all sides already has their minds made up, and they only read the news for entertainment, to confirm their biases, and to find talking points.

Re: Russiagate is a death-blow for the reputation of the American news media

#52

Post by sonnyblarney »

NotAnEconomist wrote: post #39
sonnyblarney wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclosure: I loathe Trump. "Despite denying any contacts with Russia, we now know he'd been offered a deal to build the biggest tower in Europe, a payout worth $300 million, during the campaign. " This is a misrepresentation of the facts - it's exactly an example of the very problem mentioned in the article. 1) Donald Trump builds buildings, that's his business. Much like selling coffee Schultz's job. Trump has been…

> Trump did not have any material activity in Russia, and it ended as it became clear Trump would be taking on a political nomination anyhow. Michael Cohen testified that their claims of doing this was a lie, and they continued their business dealings after having claimed to have ceased as a candidate. If they didn't feel they were doing anything improper, why did they lie to the American people and during subsequent…

They lied for political reasons.

Cohen's lie was simply to 'move back the date' of the end of the discussions from August, to mid Spring.

It was a campaign kind of lie, a lie of perceptions.

Cohen et. al. wanted to simply make it clear that the 'end of Russia discussions' was well before the nomination, and not near to it, purely for optics.

That's why it's an utterly stupid thing to do.

It was a stupid, needless like, just to avoid some possible bad news, that Cohen is going to go to jail for.

To me - this summarizes most of the Trump shenanigans: Trump and his crew of clowns do not have the sophistication to orchestrate anything with Russia!

Trump is 'just a guy'. He has a few family members, who are not professionals, help him out with stuff. This is not a 'operationalized, rigorous entity'. It's not like a bank, with policies, procedures, professional managers.

It's just a loud-mouth real-estate guy 'making deals' over the phone.

That's it.

I do not trust Trump one big, and it's good there is added scrutiny, and absolutely 100% the Russians will try to take advantage of Trump - in the same way they would try to take advantage of any president if they could.

But there's no attempt to undermine America, to do secret deals with Russian intelligence, no exchanging of secret information to alter the campaign. None of this.

Trump I think is a bad statesmen, who as a little to close to Russia for comfort, but there's no real smoking gun here, just a little bit of 'Cheech and Chong'.

Re: Russiagate is a death-blow for the reputation of the American news media

#53

Post by s_y_n_t_a_x »

darkpuma wrote: post #49
s_y_n_t_a_x wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there anything specific you disagree about it?

'Propaganda' isn't synonymous with 'wrong'.

I was more directing my question to "unfounded".

So let me clarify, what did OP see that was unfounded?

Re: Russiagate is a death-blow for the reputation of the American news media

#55

Post by jakeogh »

ethbro wrote: post #50

I would argue that the US invasion of Iraq (WMD), the Vietnam War (Gulf of Tonkin), or the Spanish-American War (remember the Maine) have exposed the fallibility and blindness of mainstream press to counter-naratives in pursuit of being first / having an article about the issue of the day. The broader point about clicks is that the economic model behind the US press changed from a subsidized press to a for-profit pre…

And there's the nearly 20 year old elephant in the room...

Re: Russiagate is a death-blow for the reputation of the American news media

#56

Post by lamarpye »

astrodust wrote: post #41
lamarpye wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are right sounds like a good thing to do to a child.

If the kid wants to do it, why not? Too many girls are forced to into "normal" beauty pageants. Maybe you should focus your aggression that way.

No. There are better targets for my aggression

Re: Russiagate is a death-blow for the reputation of the American news media

#57

Post by astrodust »

l24ztj wrote: post #47
astrodust wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the kid wants to do it, why not? Too many girls are forced to into "normal" beauty pageants. Maybe you should focus your aggression that way.

What if I loathe both things?

Lots of street corners in Times Square to stand on and yell things at people.

Re: Russiagate is a death-blow for the reputation of the American news media

#59

Post by dang »

patrickg_zill wrote: post #8

So Viacom purchasing ad space on a video billboard in Times Square to push the 10 year old drag queen kid named Desmond, fits your version(definition) of conservative?

Please don't take HN threads on off-topic flamewar tangents. That's against the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19472718 and marked it off-topic.

Re: Russiagate is a death-blow for the reputation of the American news media

#60

Post by leereeves »

akhilcacharya wrote: post #22
db48x wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's pretty clear that a lot of reporters have compromised their ethics, or never had any. The article quotes several; it is in fact the entire point of the article. Of course you might also say that the _owners_ of the media don't care about this lack of ethics as long as they're making money. That's probably true, but it's not the same thing at all. The blame goes to the people who have no ethical standards, or…

How is covering one of the biggest scandals in modern American politics malpractice? Obama never had anything similar in scope over 8 years.

The gist of the news is: Trump never had anything similar in scope either. It was a fiction, invented by the Democrats and the media.
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