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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

#81

Post by oh_sigh »

mellow-lake-day wrote: post #74
pmoriarty wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

The media also chose to spread the emails stolen by Russian intelligence instead of covering the Hollywood access tapes.

It's 'acccess hollywood', and they were extensively covered in the last 4 weeks before the 2016 election. Maybe it would have had a bigger impact if it dropped earlier. One wonders if it was intentionally held back to be a last minute kill-shot, or if it was truly just discovered in October 2016:

> An NBC source said that an Access Hollywood producer remembered the conversation on Monday, October 3, and located it in the show's archives.[4][11] The celebrity news website TMZ reports a different chronology: when senior executives at NBC learned about the video, they thought it was too early in the presidential campaign season to release it with maximum effect, and (according to TMZ) those executives publicly said they learned of the video long after they actually learned about it.[12][13]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_Access_Hollywood_...

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

#83

Post by abrahamepton »

lamarpye wrote: post #21
abrahamepton wrote: post #15

This is...utterly delusional, and totally disconnected from the evidence on record. The President's campaign manager, deputy campaign manager, personal lawyer and National Security Advisor have either pled guilty or been convicted of felonies. 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. During th…

None of the people were convicted on charges related to Russian collusion. Many people convicted/plead guilty to process crimes, for example, lying to the FBI. I won't accuse of you of trying to mislead people, but the judge apologized for making the treason claim against Flynn: https://lawandcrime.com/awkward/judge-quickly-backtracks-apo...

Yeah, he walked back the "treason" comment that I didn't mention, and said nothing to retract the "sold your country out" comment, because the two are in fact distinct claims.

"Collusion" isn't an actual crime, so of course nobody was convicted for it. But convicting people for illegal activity proximate to the collusion is exactly what happened. Al Capone was convicted for tax fraud, not being a gangster, because that was what they could prove in court.

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

#84

Post by happytoexplain »

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…

I can never seem to follow any of the assertions that the media's negative coverage of Trump is, on par, biased away from reality, underserved, or contributing unnecessarily to the American rift in comparison to the politically opposite media's treatment of Trump. There are certainly biased outlets that are hurting us, but they don't seem to have changed with the arrival of Trump, relative to his own extremity. In fact, when you look at what's really there to critique about Trump, the media's reaction, taken as a whole, seems almost restrained.

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

#85

Post by jakeogh »

deogeo wrote: post #70
jakeogh wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

...September 11th, 2001? How is that involved? Or did you mean something else?

Like the older examples, the media narrative on 9/11 is fascinating: http://s3.amazonaws.com/nasathermalimages/public/video/prete...

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

#86

Post by salawat »

Theodores wrote: post #62
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…

It is a pity you have to put the big disclosure at the top of your comment. But our media have made things very binary black and white. Not buying into the 'red scare' means that in the eyes of some you must be a Trump supporter. This is a failure of critical thinking and far too many people fall into this trap, thereby perpetuating things like 'RussiaGate' when it no longer makes sense to do so. The suspicions won't…

I appreciate the thought you put into this, but the naivete is his a bit off putting.

Diplomacy is a game of liars probing liars. Everyone at the table will tell you exactly what they know you can prove, and no one tells anyone everything they can prove since that would give away valuable information with regards to their own intelligence and reconnaissance capabilities. It's a game in which every comment spoken by a Diplomat, Ambassador, or Head of State is scrutinized and cross-checked against every participating country's models.

Outright deception is one of many tools that is employed, and even if Russia truly didn't have anything to gain from Trump ending up in the White House, they did get a chance to dry-run a potential doctrine against one of their biggest international rivals.

The press was right to be suspicious, and the ethical shortfalls of the President and his administration only amplified the situation in terms of the optics required.

Make no mistake. Intrigue happens. It's why diplomats love the phrase "Trust, but verify."

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

#87

Post by akhilcacharya »

leereeves wrote: post #60
akhilcacharya wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How many Obama campaign managers did they indict? How many Obama National Security Advisors did they indict and force to resign over Russian ties?

How many times did Obama deny that the Russians attacked American interests during an election only to be rebut by the FBI with a string of foreign indictments?

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

#89

Post by abrahamepton »

75dvtwin wrote: post #43
abrahamepton wrote: post #15

This is...utterly delusional, and totally disconnected from the evidence on record. The President's campaign manager, deputy campaign manager, personal lawyer and National Security Advisor have either pled guilty or been convicted of felonies. 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. During th…

I think you are purposefully ignoring facts, so that high level sentences match your narrative. Flynn (security advisor for a couple of day) -- was setup. There was no collusion with Russia to change 2016 election outcomes, that Flynn was accused of. "... made materially false statements and omissions during an interview with the Federal Bureau of Investigation ("FBI") on January 24, 2017, in Washington, D.C. " [1] h…

> Flynn (security advisor for a couple of day) -- was setup

Uh...ok. Citations, please. That's quite an outlandish and unsupported claim.

> There was no collusion with Russia to change 2016 election outcomes, that Flynn was accused of.

Flynn was talking to the Russian ambassador during the transition, promising to lift sanctions that the then-President was imposing. He was convicted for lying to FBI agents about that.

Perhaps there's an innocent explanation for the incoming National Security Advisor lying to the FBI about secret conversations with the Russian ambassador to undermine the acting President during the transition. I'm curious what that might be.

> Roger Stone did not have his day in court, and the allegation were are not about directing Foreign powers to do anything.

Note how at no point did I mention Roger Stone.

> Roger Stone did not have his day in court, and the allegation were are not about directing Foreign powers to do anything.

Also not a thing I mentioned.

> The other indictments had nothing to do with 2016 election and happened for offenses outside 2016 election activities.

Al Capone was convicted on taxes. Let's read the report.

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

#90

Post by olefoo »

Just the things that are public about Trump should be disqualifying for an American President.

* failure to disclose tax returns

* failure to divest of his business interests

* blatant nepotism ( including issuing his son-in-law a security clearance against the advice of professional sta ff )

* Owning a private club (Mar-a-lago) to which he sells memberships and visits at taxpayer expense where his customers have exclusive access to the President and his cabinet.

Add in his business interests in Russia and what looks an awful lot like a quid pro quo trade of favorable treatment for policy changes desired by the Russian leadership...

And you're gonna declare it's all just fine because there is no smoking gun evidence of campaign pay to play?

I really hope you all are more attentive to your own businesses; this is basically the political equivalent of your CFO suddenly developing a sports car and supermodel habit; maybe everything is fine, but you should probably get an outside audit.

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