121–130 of 135 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It makes sense, I just am trying to figure out if there is a reasonable way to numerically denote this characteristic.
Deep learning! It does everything really well, especially reducing complex problems to a single number. It's well known that anything which doesn't fit in the reals isn't really real, if you know what I mean.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps if the entire mainstream media had reported things differently (instead of seemingly all of them being blindly in favor of it), then yes, maybe it wouldn't have happened. That is assuming of course that the US government actually cares what the public thinks when powerful government officials want war.
Perhaps you're right, but at the time, most mainstream media was simply reporting on what the executive branch had already claimed was proven: Saddam had WMDs. At the time, there were no government/intelligence officials saying otherwise. The media had no strong reason to doubt the government's claims before the war started, as well as no way to validate or disprove the claims. And it's not like it would've been the…
Even if Saddam did have WMDs, so what? So does North Korea and other hostile regimes, and so does the US. Couldn't the media have questioned whether or not that was a valid excuse for war?
That's the type of thing Phil Donahue of MSNBC did, and his questioning of the war got him fired.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Donahue#MSNBC_program
History is important, too, but apparently not to them. Was it ever mentioned in the mainstream media that the US itself had provided billions of dollars in military equipment and support to Saddam, including dual use technologies used for chemical and biological weapons?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Ir...
"You know we armed Iraq...during the Gulf War those intelligence reports would come out"--
'Iraq, incredible weapons! Incredible weapons!'
"...How do you know that?"
'Well...we looked at the receipts. But as soon as that check clears we're going in!'
-Bill Hicks
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps you're right, but at the time, most mainstream media was simply reporting on what the executive branch had already claimed was proven: Saddam had WMDs. At the time, there were no government/intelligence officials saying otherwise. The media had no strong reason to doubt the government's claims before the war started, as well as no way to validate or disprove the claims. And it's not like it would've been the…
The media is not supposed to simply parrot government talking points, at least not in a free society. Even if Saddam did have WMDs, so what? So does North Korea and other hostile regimes, and so does the US. Couldn't the media have questioned whether or not that was a valid excuse for war? That's the type of thing Phil Donahue of MSNBC did, and his questioning of the war got him fired. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem I see is that unless these organisations are beyond criticism they can always be accused of bias and all their work dismissed, and then consider the context: 'It is impossible to overstate the degree of daily vituperation visited upon the president in the media. Comics and actors use their non-political programs to attack him, often to the implicit applause of the press. Virtually all coverage outside the…
You're conflating fact checkers with "the media", and sort of changing the subject. Can you explain again why exactly you don't trust answers you get from Snopes or Politifact? Don't tell me what "many Trump supporters" think. Tell me why you don't trust them.
Apart from that in my observation these organisations are not impartial, and I think in the context of the universal anti-Trump media they are easily dismissed as just another group suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome.
I should make clear I don't live in the US and so have no direct stake in this and follow it more out of curiosity/amusement than anything else. I'm not going to try to argue Trump doesn't lie, but I think CNN etc are becoming hysterical.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Come on. Sheryl Attkisson is now a reporter for Sinclair - the local news equivalent of Fox. Her integrity was compromised at CBS News and it's now non-existent.
[flagged]
Edit: it looks like you've been doing this a ton, as well as posting uncivil and unsubstantive comments repeatedly. We ban accounts that do this. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and follow the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well duh. But the point is that that assumption was both erroneous and unwarranted.
But the thrust of my message was about the misunderstanding of statistics, so the actual numbers (correct or otherwise) are irrelevant to the point I was making. Replace the numbers in my comment with the correct ones and the meaning remains the same.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're conflating fact checkers with "the media", and sort of changing the subject. Can you explain again why exactly you don't trust answers you get from Snopes or Politifact? Don't tell me what "many Trump supporters" think. Tell me why you don't trust them.
Can you tell me why I should trust them? Shouldn't we approach these organisations that purport to be the single source of truth with extreme scepticism? Apart from that in my observation these organisations are not impartial, and I think in the context of the universal anti-Trump media they are easily dismissed as just another group suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome. I should make clear I don't live in the U…
> Can you tell me why I should trust them?
Because they have a years-long(11 for Politifact, 19 for Snopes) history of being right. They're consistently, reliably right. So yeah, I trust them. I trusted them under the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations. I trust them now.
Maybe you are the one who needs to re-evaluate priors: maybe, just maybe, the "universal anti-Trump media" environment is driven by some kind of objective (heh) truth about the Trump administration's relationship with (heh, heh) the truth, and not by mere opinion. Maybe.
Bush wrecked a ton of stuff. His administration spun like crazy. They didn't like like Trump lies. No one ever has lied like Trump lies. That's not "opinion", it just is.