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> BBC is one of the most impartial sources available. I really hope that is sarcasm. BBC is highly skewed to the left. No debate on that. Can you show me any story on BBC that is biased to the right?
Is the BBC highly skewed to the left, or is reality?
It is not accurate to claim "that's not a thing". Citing anonymous sources is a long established practice (in particular when it comes to law enforcement activities or potentially sensitive political reporting). The NYT has formal editorial standards around the identity of anonymous sources that require editors to assess the justification for applying it. It doesn't mean the information is reliable, that's where an editorial eye comes into play, but it does fall under the category of normal journalistic practice.
Next the "Washington Game": there’s a grain of truth here, but it is overstated. Yes, leaks can be part of a strategic move by politicians and it can be a source of exploitation by political operators but to equate all anonymous sourcing with propaganda is misleading. Plenty of such reporting has resulted in significant truths being revealed and powerful people being held accountable (Watergate, the Pentagon Papers, Abu Ghraib). Responsible reporting involves weighing a source's motivations as well as corroborating and contextualizing that information as accurately and truthfully as possible.
The author's dismissiveness oversimplifies (or mischaracterizes, if I am being less generous) the reason and function of anonymity here. They overstate the issue with propaganda and anonymous sources. Accurate in the sense that anonymity can enable propaganda (it has happened), it is inaccurate in its absolutism.
I feel like this sort of tone, with the absolutism, the attempt to reduce the complexity and nuance of reporting to the point where it can be dismissed is pretty typical of what passes for commentary in today's blog/tweet/commentary culture but it really plays more into the hands of those that would sow confusion and mistrust than it does into that of the truth and accuracy.
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I believed the original story. Now I don’t. So it helped me.
It will never happen, but I'd love to see the NYT follow up their story and pit some of what Graham says against their cadre of experts and see what parts of the story they agree on and which ones they don't. I would think the people at the Times would want to know if they are just being useful idiots here.
Reminds me of the time when I consulted with a very large newspaper chain in the US which owned a lot of papers - both left leaning and right leaning. we used to get feeds from all of the usual sources. But the news articles themselves were "massaged" in various ways by some of the same editorial teams to suit the left-leaning or the right-leaning newspapers. The idea that completely different spin can be put to the…
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I cannot about the NYT, but the BBC is one of the most impartial sources available. So much so that the left and the right accuse the BBC of biasing the other in equal measures! If you want to talk about bias in the UK press then you’re better off looking towards The Sun, The Mail and anything owned by Murdoch (that guy has done so much damage to the world it’s unreal).
> BBC is one of the most impartial sources available. I really hope that is sarcasm. BBC is highly skewed to the left. No debate on that. Can you show me any story on BBC that is biased to the right?
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There's a very, very long standing specific exception for members of the military (subject to the UCMJ) that is not present for teachers.
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They have the clear First Amendment right to do so on their own time.
I mean, I hold the opinion that people "ought not to" be fans of Charlie Kirk. But you'd correctly object if I enforced that opinion with government power.
> Before your ilk became dominant in public discourse…
Yikes.
There is so much to address in this post but I want to look at just this part: "One of the reasons we know this story is bogus is because of the New York Times story which cites anonymous officials, “speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation”. That’s not a thing, that’s not a valid reason to grant anonymity under normal journalistic principles. It’s the “Washington Game” of “official…
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This reminded me of a YouTube clip I watched years ago. It was basically a retired KGB agent explaining how the media purposely puts out conflicting stories. This breaks the brain of the citizens, and they're unable to know what is true. We indeed see this here in the US. I can't tell you what is true or false (in media) objectively. I can choose what I want to believe is true, though.
I would expect to see conflicting narratives in any country with free press. Why would we expect different outlets with different biases to run consistent narratives?
Edit after down votes: The paragraph above was meant on why would one expect conflicting narratives not from different sources, as the Parent Comment stated, but rather from supposedly official sources or propaganda outlets. My bad, must have read the comment on a hurry.
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It is possible to accept that one can’t know the absolute, complete, detailed truth without giving up on identifying and rejecting lies. That’s the whole authoritarian / fascist shtick: if you can’t be 100% certain that no formulation of any vaccine has ever increased illness, then “vaccines kill people” is just as true as “vaccines save lives”. I don’t need to have personally reviewed all records of every single ver…
If you insert the implicit “all”, then both are false: not all vaccines save lives and not all vaccines kill people.
But your knowledge of medicine is quite deep if you know the relative rates of vaccines with zero deaths ever versus the rate at which defective vaccines are produced. Do you have a good source you can share?