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Rolling Stone left out the reason why FBI raided journalist's home

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Re: Rolling Stone left out the reason why FBI raided journalist's home

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In an era of "insta-reputational death by accusation in media being the punishment", I want media to be cautious and skeptical when there are no real facts yet. An affidavit in support of a search warrant is little more than an unevidenced assertion. Compared to the often extreme punitive consequences of the mere accusation being widely spread it can be disproportionate. If the warrant produces actual evidence of wro…

You make excellent points, and in a world were we know that people will remember accusations and not subsequent exonerations, it would be humane to delay reporting on the kind of accusation that will ruin a person’s life. The problem is that Rolling Stone plays favorites. In a recent incident they ran the false headline “CPAC Speaker Calls for Transgender People to Be Eradicated,” about someone that they didn’t like…

The speaker called for transgenderism to be eradicated.

Consider headlines if AOC called for conservatism to be eradicated.

Re: Rolling Stone left out the reason why FBI raided journalist's home

#153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I can tell, this idea of newspeople as morally pure monk-like defenders of the truth is isolated to a handful of decades in post-war America, mostly confined to a few personalities and outlets, and was far from universally-held even then (lots of people blamed, or still blame, the media for our losing the Vietnam War, for instance—Agnew and others were openly attacking them as corrupt and biased for those a…

> I doubt some Golden Age of news objectivity ever existed Maybe that's because you haven't read any of it? I mean, it's hard to find on the Web these days. And easy to find counter-examples even from that period. Just like it's easy to find some Victorian-era pornography and leap to the conclusion that everything then was just like now.

Or maybe it's because that wasn't real.

Major mass media sifted through a few government- and corporate-ad-constrained bottlenecks during what people call "the golden age." It was the golden age of censorship.

People get upset about censorship much more easily now because they got used to the wild west mentality ushered in by the Internet and relaxation of the fairness doctrine. So returning to government- and corporate-ad-based censorship feels constraining.

Re: Rolling Stone left out the reason why FBI raided journalist's home

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To boil it down as much as possible, I’m not persuaded Trump (or anyone else) conspired with Russia to win the presidency. The prosecution of Gates and Manafort would not have proceeded had the election swung the other way. In totality it seems to me the Special Council investigation was a political hatchet job more than anything resembling a pursuit of justice. For whatever it’s worth, I do not support Trump but fee…

How in the world is it an injustice when criminals are found guilty in the court of law? Wouldn't the real injustice have come if you were right and Manafort and Gates didn't face consequences for their wanton criminality due solely to their friend winning power? There is absolutely no dispute that both embezzled millions of dollars from a Russian billionaire and then committed massive amounts of tax fraud on top of…

> How in the world is it an injustice when criminals are found guilty in the court of law?

If it’s politically motivated, then it is unjust. I take Gates’ and Manafort’s guilty pleas seriously. They both admit to crimes. However, none of these crimes come close to conspiring with Russia to rig an election. That didn’t happen from a legal perspective.

As far as Mueller and his report, it struck me as antithetical to the US system of justice when he inverted the standard of presumed innocence when he said, “if we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so.”

Additionally Mueller did not seem to know about Fusion GPS when he testified before Congress. The special council never interviewed Kilimnick.

One factual note, it seems like one of Manafort’s convictions is from his dealings with Yanukovych, who is Ukrainian, not Russian, although he is currently living in exile in Russia.

No one is saying poor Trump. I’m just saying the special council did not prove a conspiracy to win the White House.

Re: Rolling Stone left out the reason why FBI raided journalist's home

#155
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The sources are trustworthy or not Read that quote carefully — there's two layers to it. The source is "familiar with the matter" — the journalist trusts what they have to say. What the source says, though, is that federal agents allegedly found classified information. In other words, the source claims that the federal agents themselves are claiming this ; but the source does not put any credence in this claim, and…

The use of the word “allegedly” is standard practice for reputable new organisations reporting on an individual being charged, but not yet convicted. A core tenet of the justice system is the idea that your innocence until proven guilty. Hence the use of the word “allegedly”, by default any claims made by the government shouldn’t be treated as proven, until they’ve proved them in a court of law. To assume that a law…

Everything you're saying would be true if it was the journalist themselves doing the alledging. But the journalist is quoting a source through paraphrase, and the source is doing the alledging.

It is not libel to say "An anonymous source said [libelous thing.]" Because there is no claim made through that statement that what the anonymous source is saying, is true. The only claim being made through that statement is that that claim is in fact what the source said. If the anonymous source wasn't anonymous, maybe they'd be guilty of libel. But the journalist isn't. They're just reporting on the libel someone else is committing.

Re: Rolling Stone left out the reason why FBI raided journalist's home

#156

That's probably because the FBI has a history of making up excuses to get search warrants for journalist and activist's homes. The reasons the FBI gives for getting a search warrant have about as much connection to real life as the daily horoscope.

The reasons are extremely clear here, secondly, judges issue warrants based on facts, it's not perfect, but most warrants are obtained 100% legally. In this case the accused had top secret document on his computer but more importantly is being investigated for images of child sexual abuse which was redacted by Rolling Stone. You have to read the article, otherwise I would think you're defending an accused pedophile j…

>otherwise I would think you're defending an accused pedophile just because you have some imaginary beef with the FBI.

You're on the right track but you have it backwards. We should be mad that the FBI has so consistently degraded their reputation with parallel construction and other flat out lies that even in the case of a potentially heinous guilty person we cannot believe their claims before they are tested in court and the evidence, and evidentiary chain, is shown.

So yeah, I'm defending anyone who has rocked the boat and then suddenly been raided by the FBI for an unrelated reason during which they happen to find something related to the rocking the boat. I find it just as likely that the FBI used their access to plant evidence for parallel construction in the Dropbox account and iPhone 8 conversation log. So they could search for national security stuff.

Re: Rolling Stone left out the reason why FBI raided journalist's home

#157
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the article in question: https://web.archive.org/web/20221019003915/https://www.rolli... "Now, Meek appears to be on the wrong side of the national-security apparatus. And no one can say for certain if law-enforcement officers actually removed him from the building. And thus, a riddle was born. Documents pertaining to the case remain sealed." So, according to Siegel, Rolling Stone had information that the rai…

"Appears," "no one can say for certain," "a riddle," "documents [...] remain sealed."

So they're not technically lying but are using weasel words to try to heavily imply a narrative?

Re: Rolling Stone left out the reason why FBI raided journalist's home

#158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How in the world is it an injustice when criminals are found guilty in the court of law? Wouldn't the real injustice have come if you were right and Manafort and Gates didn't face consequences for their wanton criminality due solely to their friend winning power? There is absolutely no dispute that both embezzled millions of dollars from a Russian billionaire and then committed massive amounts of tax fraud on top of…

> How in the world is it an injustice when criminals are found guilty in the court of law? If it’s politically motivated, then it is unjust. I take Gates’ and Manafort’s guilty pleas seriously. They both admit to crimes. However, none of these crimes come close to conspiring with Russia to rig an election. That didn’t happen from a legal perspective. As far as Mueller and his report, it struck me as antithetical to t…

> One factual note, it seems like one of Manafort’s convictions is from his dealings with Yanukovych, who is Ukrainian, not Russian, although he is currently living in exile in Russia.

He also stole millions of dollars from the Ukrainian people via a scheme working with Yanukovych that only came to light via the black ledger -- but Manafort had $20 million in personal loans from Deripaska and something like $65M in total debt with him (it's a common way to evade taxes on crimes -- you take a loan and then never repay it so it never shows as income); https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/manafort-had-60m-relation...

Manafort was astonishingly corrupt.

Re: Rolling Stone left out the reason why FBI raided journalist's home

#159
post #3

News that cares this much about sensationalizing isn't news. While I'm entirely for unfettered protection of free speech, free speech doesn't include the right to lie, at least not in a professional capacity. Perhaps we need to start punishing intentionally deceptive reporting by not allowing these people to call themselves journalists and / or not allowing these sources of information to call themselves news.

How would you distinguish between "intentionally deceptive" and "being wrong"?

In principle I don't disagree; but proving "intentionally deceptive" beyond reasonable doubt in court is extraordinarily hard, so in practice I don't really think we can do much about it.

Re: Rolling Stone left out the reason why FBI raided journalist's home

#160
post #159
post #3

News that cares this much about sensationalizing isn't news. While I'm entirely for unfettered protection of free speech, free speech doesn't include the right to lie, at least not in a professional capacity. Perhaps we need to start punishing intentionally deceptive reporting by not allowing these people to call themselves journalists and / or not allowing these sources of information to call themselves news.

How would you distinguish between "intentionally deceptive" and "being wrong"? In principle I don't disagree; but proving "intentionally deceptive" beyond reasonable doubt in court is extraordinarily hard, so in practice I don't really think we can do much about it.

See the current disclosures about what Fox "journalists" were doing.
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