Fake News

[EnglishPete]

Good article here from the Daily Caller pointing out the left wing ideological bent of Snopes,another of the 'fact checking' websites that Facebook is planning to use

http://dailycaller.com/2016/12/16/snopes-facebooks-new-fact-checker-employs-leftists-almost-exclusively/

The problem is most right wing news sources are outright liars

Simply not the case. There are however plenty of examples of lying in the left wing legacy media. Remember the Michelle Fields/Cory Lewandowski assault hoax. That was originally reported in both Breitbart by Fields and WaPo by Ben Terris. Once it became clear that Fields' story didn't add up Breitbart stopped supporting her story. WaPo on the other hand persisted in supporting it and even helped to cover up the problems in the story.

Then there's the NYT's publication of Jessica Leeds' highly dubious account of being allegedly sexually assaulted by Trump in an Airplane. Even after it was demonstrated that much of her story was highly implausible and that it was completely unsubstantiated they continued to push the story.

There's the famous case of Rolling Stone and the mattress girl hoax. I could go on at length about the liberal media's uncritical and sensational publication of unsubstiated hate crime allegations that has led to the present epidemic of fake hate crimes

http://www.fakehatecrimes.org

But you get the idea. Plenty of lying in the liberal legacy media

[Kingpoleon]

You actually think that the US government should shut down Trump supporting news outlets like Infowars, Breitbart and the rest. I wonder if a trump adminstration shut down anti Trump news outlets like the new York Times or the Huffington Post if you wouldn't be complaining the loudest.

why does literally every reäctionary fckwit get their moral compass from dril's wise man
truly a mystery for the ages

Well I don't think that there are many people who think that HuffPo and the NYT are morally equivalent to Breitbart and Infowars. I think are plenty of people who think the former news outlets to be morally better (mostly liberals) and plenty who think the latter news outlets to be morally better (mostly conservatives). Also I'm sure there are even more who just don't know or don't have an opinion.

The point is that you'd like the government to shut down the right wing news outlets that right wingers (e.g. Breitbart, Infowars) like myself think are better but if any government shut down the left wing news outlets (e.g. HuffPo, NYT) that lefties like yourself think are better you'd probably complain wildly.

no opinion is involved. huffpo and nyt are objectively so far above breitbart and infowars in terms of factuality that they're not reasonably comparable.

The NYT and Huffington Post were not objective because they were up front with their support for Hillary Clinton.

Context, man. Breitbart is comparable to Salon.

not even

Salon articles were informally "banned" from here due to inaccurate, biased lies masked as news.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

No need to argue, there's plenty of fake news for everyone.

[The_Doctor]

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Sure, we can agree on that, but we cannot agree that the NYT isn't more rigorous and more evidence-based than Breitbart. The NYT editorial opinion is vastly different from their print section. Ditto Washington Post, etc.

Breitbart posts incendiary articles. I don't know of their veracity in publishing quality materials, I'd have to read it which I will. But I tend to favor the established media because of the standards, as opposed to the new "journalism," that is more sensationalist.

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One, I'm not a liberal. I'm a pro-life, RyanCare supporting, immigration restricting centrist at this point. I would have voted Trump if his character wasn't abhorrent and his pro-Russian sympathies wasn't evident, along with the white nationalists backing him. I can't speak to other liberals on this point.

But my personal trust in the NYT, NBC, the Post, etc is predicated on the belief that in general, quality journalism usually comes from an established media with standards. In other words, I have some faith left in the media to report capably and to acknowledge when they screw up. 

You don't. This is the key difference between us. Democracies require people to have faith in the media to convey information. The reason Breitbart and others are here is because people have become polarized and lose faith in the media that doesn't agree with them.

The right has a long history of creating alternate media to cater to their media sensibilities (Fox News was the earliest originator of this in the United States). Since then, the Right has created an information bubble that doesn't interact well with the rest of the world. For example, Fox News carried Bush's water on Iraq nonstop. (And I say that as a supporter of the war in Iraq). The right's media isn't critical of their guys, at all. You point to these sites as bastions of legitimate journalistic output and somehow ask the rest of us to accept that and accept your rejection of mainstream news as somehow something we should do as well. 

This, incidentally, is why the NYT, Washington Post, etc all coexist with the rest of the world. The information inflow and outflow and the interaction is done on a nonpartisan basis and they do critique liberal and conservative leaders alike.

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She was more qualified than Trump for more reasons than social acceptability. The Right's belief that social acceptance is a major liberal value and thus, they are exempt from the rules is silly. In fact, it's created an alternate reality where "facts" are taken without questioning (like the DC pizza place being a sex ring headquarters).

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Reagan, Ronald W.; Bush, George W. He seems to have done well in being within the mainstream and status quo. I don't recall him being a liberal President. Conservative Presidents can and do succeed - as do conservatives across the board. This strawman you construct about politically correct liberal lines is well, a straw man. I get the media tends to be a little to the left (not on economics, by the way - mostly on social issues) but conservatives have flourished in this age. It suggests the social status quo is actually more broad than you think.

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Trump is able to flourish precisely because of the alternate reality the Right has constructed, surely, and to tap into discontent. I'll cop to that the media ignored the plight of the Trump voters in the Midwest and rediscovered the tragedy of globalization - but I see this as a media failing in terms of being unrepentantly of the belief globalization is an unalloyed good, not that there's a malignant liberal media.

Trump is highly dependent on good media ratings, which is why he was so accessible and generated news. To a great degree, he certainly made his own news and succeeded with it as a strategy to convey radical ideas. He also successfully waged war on a sclerotic left that relied on a "demography is destiny" strategy.

But I don't necessarily buy into the belief that we can have a string of Trumps that bray any un-PC thoughts that come to mind. It may be that society becomes a little coarser in the future, more un-PC, and more honest, but I doubt very much we have a string of Trumps exhorting ad hominems through Twitter.

I do think that ironically, Trump has paved the way for a Sandernista leftist Presidency precisely because of how he won. Simply put, the populist wave has only begun and the movement is towards strong ideological populists holding the White House. It's been demonstrated you don't even need a billion dollars to win the Presidency.

If that president wins, I just wonder how you'll respond to that White House. Will you praise that President for being un-PC and forthrightly honest?

I think I covered it all.

[Virginiá]

I enjoyed that post quite a bit TD.

[EnglishPete]

Sure, we can agree on that, but we cannot agree that the NYT isn't more rigorous and more evidence-based than Breitbart. The NYT editorial opinion is vastly different from their print section. Ditto Washington Post, etc.

Breitbart posts incendiary articles. I don't know of their veracity in publishing quality materials, I'd have to read it which I will. But I tend to favor the established media because of the standards, as opposed to the new "journalism," that is more sensationalist.

Really. You're saying that the US legacy media doesn't have the sensationalism of new media. Are you kidding.  Sensationalism was a staple of the legacy media for decades before new media came along. Some of the legacy media was less sensationalist than others but the same is true of new media. I would go further and point out that this distinction you're making between old and new media is a rather artificial one. The New York Times may still have a print edition (for the time being) but it is primarily read on the internet, in other words its a blog that happens to still have a print format.

As for incendiary articles liberal legacy media outlets have published plenty of those. Have you not being following their coverage of Trump and the election. articles about how Trump and his supporters are a danger to democracy. How Trump was fermenting violence and how his supporters were carrying out violence at his rally when it was later revealed that most of the violence in the election was being organised by Democratic Party operatives and carried out by leftists. And the liberal media were entirely complicit in the disinformation. Then there's the uncritical reports of a 'wave of hate crime' associated with the Trump election. we had the same kinds of reports in the UK which latter turned out to be rubbish.

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How has you faith stood up to the promotion by liberal legacy media of things like the Michelle Fields hoax, the Jessica Leeds hoax, the Mattress Girl hoax, a very long list of hate crimes hoaxes?

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Not sure what you mean here. Breitbart is the media, the New York Times is the media, some dude's news blog is the media. the distinction between onlne online and online with a print version news blogs is no longer a meaningful distinction. Some news outlets are more sensational than others. Some are more left leaning and some more right leaning. But you seem to be under the impression that liberal news blog and news video outlets that still use pre-internet formats form some sort of separate category called "the media". They don't, all formats are now 'the media' and the older legacy outlets are no longer in a separate category.

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I'm not sure what you mean by 'legitimate' journalistic output. A story is either backed up by the evidence and logic or it is not. There is good journalism and bad journalism. its good to examine the evidence and the reasoning used in a story to see it its good or bad journalism. Journalism is a trade, not a profession.

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I'm not sure what you mean by liberal news outlets 'coexisting' with the rest of the world in a way that right wing news outlets do not. Liberal news outlets get on better with other liberal news outlets and liberal politicians than right wing news outlets do. But then right wing news outlets tend to get on better with right wing politicians and news outlets than liberal news outlets do. What is the point you are trying to make here

[Virginiá]

I don't want to jump your post other than to comment on this:

The New York Times may still have a print edition (for the time being) but it is primarily read on the internet, in other words its a blog that happens to still have a print format.

NYT/other news sites are blogs now? They are absolutely not blogs. One or more authors from there might run a blog, even on the site, but that doesn't mean the site itself is a bog. You can't just redefine things like that as you wish. Blogs are still blogs, more personal online diaries as compared to a regular website. I mean your version seems to cover just about anything that provides information. So websites = blogs? If so, why is it blogs emerged as a distinct website form long after news websites had already existed?

Nope.

[EnglishPete]

Continued

She was more qualified than Trump for more reasons than social acceptability. The Right's belief that social acceptance is a major liberal value and thus, they are exempt from the rules is silly.

This is an important point to address. you mention 'social acceptance' which begs the question 'social acceptance by whom'. Clearly the messages of right wing media outlets are socially acceptable to most of  the tens of millions of regular readers they have, just as the New York Times and Washington Post are socially acceptable to most of their tens of millions of regular readers. So what 'social acceptance are we talking about here?

We are talking about social acceptance by those in power within the corporate and government bureaucracy who are the ones who determine in professionals working in those institutions get to keep their career. In religiously sectarian states like those of early modern Europe or parts of Asia and Africa today 'respectability' and social acceptance by those in positions of influence involved adherence to a particular religious creed. In communist states 'respectability' means voicing support for communist ideology and being vocally opposed to dissidents. In the most totalitarian countries this point is a bit moot as dissidence is likely to be a death sentence however in other places this point is important. Lack of 'respectability' in those places might not mean actual death but it would mean career death and being subjected to harassment.

The same applies in western countries today where ideological respectability for the leadership of the government and corporate bureaucracy is crucial for social acceptance by them and hence career advancement. Right wing media dissents from that and although such dissent is allowed greater freedom than in other places the liberal establishment still have ways of making people pay for dissenting in this way.

[EnglishPete]

But my personal trust in the NYT, NBC, the Post, etc is predicated on the belief that in general, quality journalism usually comes from an established media with standards. In other words, I have some faith left in the media to report capably and to acknowledge when they screw up. 

How has you faith stood up to the promotion by liberal legacy media of things like the Michelle Fields hoax, the Jessica Leeds hoax, the Mattress Girl hoax, a very long list of hate crimes hoaxes?

I notice still answer to this point. People blindly assert 'of course WaPo and NYT and other liberal legacy media are more trustworthy than Breitbart or Gotnews.com, the former are not deliberately dishonest and sensationalist and the latter are' Then when I point out clear examples of dishonest sensationalist reporting from these outlets what answer is there? Tumbleweed.

Tell be TD what evidence would it take for you to lose your faith in the liberal legacy media and treat it with the same healthy scepticism you would treat new media?

[Meclazine for Israel]

Fake news? It's all fake.

[SteveRogers]

Good article here from the Daily Caller pointing out the left wing ideological bent of Snopes,another of the 'fact checking' websites that Facebook is planning to use

http://dailycaller.com/2016/12/16/snopes-facebooks-new-fact-checker-employs-leftists-almost-exclusively/

What point do you imagine you are making? That article lists a bunch of Snopes employees that have political views you disagree with. So what? Nowhere in that article does the author actually present an argument, much less provide any evidence, that would indicate that there is some kind of systematic liberal bias in Snopes's fact checking process or results. Snopes debunks hoaxes and urban legends. Can you point to even one specific Snopes posting that you disagree with the results of?

[The_Doctor]

I notice still answer to this point. People blindly assert 'of course WaPo and NYT and other liberal legacy media are more trustworthy than Breitbart or Gotnews.com, the former are not deliberately dishonest and sensationalist and the latter are' Then when I point out clear examples of dishonest sensationalist reporting from these outlets what answer is there? Tumbleweed.

Tell be TD what evidence would it take for you to lose your faith in the liberal legacy media and treat it with the same healthy scepticism you would treat new media?

Sorry about that. Complex arguments need time instead of my usual 30 second posts.

I think I pointed out the New York Times ran a story by Jayson Blair that received a major prize but was found to be fictional. The Times retracted the story and apologized.

It would take me a sustained systemic set of errors in reporting news and facts for me to place a skepticism of liberal legacy media.' I follow many reporters on Twitter and by and large, they're interested in reporting honest news and placing it in context.

The biggest problem with the legacy media is not that they're ideological. It's that they chase stories that generate eyeballs rather than delve into the substance. On the other hand, places like Breitbart more or less have an ideological niche and that's their thing so I have less faith in them.

I'll answer the rest today.

[EnglishPete]

I notice still answer to this point. People blindly assert 'of course WaPo and NYT and other liberal legacy media are more trustworthy than Breitbart or Gotnews.com, the former are not deliberately dishonest and sensationalist and the latter are' Then when I point out clear examples of dishonest sensationalist reporting from these outlets what answer is there? Tumbleweed.

Tell be TD what evidence would it take for you to lose your faith in the liberal legacy media and treat it with the same healthy scepticism you would treat new media?

Sorry about that. Complex arguments need time instead of my usual 30 second posts.

I think I pointed out the New York Times ran a story by Jayson Blair that received a major prize but was found to be fictional. The Times retracted the story and apologized.

It would take me a sustained systemic set of errors in reporting news and facts for me to place a skepticism of liberal legacy media.' I follow many reporters on Twitter and by and large, they're interested in reporting honest news and placing it in context.

The biggest problem with the legacy media is not that they're ideological. It's that they chase stories that generate eyeballs rather than delve into the substance. On the other hand, places like Breitbart more or less have an ideological niche and that's their thing so I have less faith in them.

I'll answer the rest today.

Of course they want to 'generate eyeballs' and sensational stories are the best way to do that. That's true of news outlets of all ideological inclinations. What's notable is that they always pick sensational stories that fit in with, or even better reinforce, their ideological agenda and don't run with stories that don't.

For example when Jessica Leeds said she had been assaulted by Trump on an airplane the liberal media reported it prominently without expressing any scepticism despite some glaring problems with her uncorroborated testimony. When Juanita Brodderick made accusation that Hillary had helped cover up an alleged sexual assault on her by Hillary's husband the media said "this testimony has been discredited". Broderick's testimony is better supported by the evidence than Leeds'. Neither accusation has been proven but that didn't stop liberal outlets running with the Leeds story.

Likewise when concerns about Hillary's health came up thed liberal media responded by saying 'this is a conspiracy theory, no evidence,debunked'. However when Michelle Fields assault claims actually were thoroughly debunked the liberal media still ran with the story as if it were true.

That ideological niche that they have is liberalism and it is as much an ideological niche as the  conservatism of Breitbart. I suspect you probably don't think of it as a niche because its the ideology of the establishment and dominates the legacy media oligopoly. Because of this you probably think of this ideological niche as simply being 'the norm' rath than a niche, even though the recent election has shown otherwise.

[pbrower2a]

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The main thing is we don't agree on the basis of validity of the news articles we read. I place some faith in the NYT, CNN, CBS, ABC, news media, reporting, the Atlantic, Fox News, and the like. I have very little faith in Breitbart News or InfoWars, or Alex Jones' show. I think you place far more credence in these outlets and thus, we can't really come to terms about debating the issues of the day.

A bare minimum for journalism is fact-checking, an unglamorous activity, but one that prevents news outlets from falling for conspiracy stories, spin, hoaxes, and outright propaganda.  A second minimum is that the journalist must not become the news. Obviously if someone hostile to the reporting of a story assaults a journalist for doing his job, then that is a legitimate news story; thus if a Klan-sympathizer during the Civil Rights struggle beats up a photo-journalist, then the attack is legitimate news. Third, journalists must report without bias -- and their organizations must allow the report to reach the airwaves or newspaper without concern for political consequences. FoX News fails at that much as Pravda did in its day.  FoX reporting is clean enough; it's when FoX decides that it can twist a story to hurt or harm one side of the political spectrum that FoX News becomes shaky in its credibility. Fourth, news media must avoid creating the news, as by sponsoring political causes. Yes, the media can expose dirty tricks with impunity (or had better have the implicit right to do so) because the dirty tricks can hurt democracy.

The most reliable news source remains the AP wires which cannot be spun. Speed in reporting prevents deceit by a reporter. 

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Journalism has been greatly debased in recent years. Computers, mini-cams, and the Internet make it easy for people to have the technological proficiency of NBC News in the early 1960s (I pick NBC because it had color in contrast to ABC and CBS in the early 1960s). But we are not getting the Edgar R. Murrow types.

Multitudes are doing journalism. Most of those multitudes are doing shoddy journalism, and not due to any  technological inadequacy.

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Educated middle-class professionals are above all else rational. It is their rationality that allowed them to get into and graduate from first-rate or even second-rate institutions.  Rationality may not preclude bias, but it can allow one to avoid troubles that less-rational people get into.... and get oneself out of trouble should one make an honest error. Racial and religious bigotry, anti-feminism, ambiguous (and likely deceptive) slogans, and rhetorical violence are obvious warning signals to people who find that their rationality has gotten them into elevated positions. One need not be so rational to do machine-paced work. 

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The various constituencies of the Right have their own version of political correctness. "Taxes are too high". "Wages need to be cut".  "Who needs broad learning when technical proficiency is adequate for making a good living?" "Drill, baby, drill!"

Some old manifestations of liberal political-correctness have been discredited, like the old idea that crime is the result of economic hardships and lack of opportunity instead of character. Crime is often a one-perpetrator wave; catch one burglar or mugger, and the crime wave stops. That view that economic hardship creates crime faults the good people who live in bad neighborhoods. We will have new manifestations of a right-wing PC, and they too can implode to the detriment of the Right.   

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But deeds have results. I predict that the Trump ideology will attempt to curtail human rights and create a Constitutional disaster. His economics are likely to make even more of a mess than the good that they do. His statements of racial and religious bigotry will not be forgotten unless he does theatrical renunciation, which will show that he was either a cynic, a fool, or a liar. I have serious questions of his character. 

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One can choose one/s opinions, but one cannot choose the truth.

[EnglishPete]

A bare minimum for journalism is fact-checking, an unglamorous activity, but one that prevents news outlets from falling for conspiracy stories, spin, hoaxes, and outright propaganda.  A second minimum is that the journalist must not become the news. Obviously if someone hostile to the reporting of a story assaults a journalist for doing his job, then that is a legitimate news story; thus if a Klan-sympathizer during the Civil Rights struggle beats up a photo-journalist, then the attack is legitimate news. Third, journalists must report without bias -- and their organizations must allow the report to reach the airwaves or newspaper without concern for political consequences. FoX News fails at that much as Pravda did in its day.  FoX reporting is clean enough; it's when FoX decides that it can twist a story to hurt or harm one side of the political spectrum that FoX News becomes shaky in its credibility. Fourth, news media must avoid creating the news, as by sponsoring political causes. Yes, the media can expose dirty tricks with impunity (or had better have the implicit right to do so) because the dirty tricks can hurt democracy.

That's a criticism of Fox. Its also, as I've demonstrated a criticism of the New York Times, the Washington Post and many other liberal news media outlets

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To some extent.

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LMAO. Do you actually believe this. Educated middle class professionals are not especially rational, certainly not 'above all else'. What the great bulk of them are is intellectually confortmist. That's what gets them their higher educational qualifications and career positions. A reasonable level of intellectual competence combined crucially with an ability and willingness to use that intellectual capacity in an intellectually conformist manner. If using their intellect rationally contradicts the demands of intellectual conformism then it will be a hinderence not a help in their educational and career progress.

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You've said something I agree with but its not clear how it relates to the rest of what you wrote.

[EnglishPete]

EnglishPete, There's no way Breitbart, the favorite platform of the alt-Nazi movement, can be considered objective about those who point out the fallacies of the alt-Nazi movement.

hey y'know if you actually did your damn job you wouldn't have to argue with this guy

My job is not to turn this place into an echo chamber.

your job is to enforce the terms of use, which this dude and his ilk routinely blatantly violate

You know Evergreen you still haven't said what these 'routine blatant violations of the terms of use' I'm supposed to have committed are.

[The_Doctor]

To clarify upfront, I don't differentiate based on medium format.

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OK, let's look at Breitbart. Right now there's a headline entitled "Drexel University Professor’s Christmas Wish: ‘All I Want for Christmas is White Genocide’." On the other hand, let's take a look at the New York Times. Good article right here, "Wielding Claims of ‘Fake News,’ Conservatives Take Aim at Mainstream Media."  You can see the difference. Breitbart is rather pointed and incendiary and has a pointed view in its news reporting. 

Compare the NYT and the Breitbart websites. The Breitbart website is a mix of opinion columns and news articles. The NYT is largely news articles and is clearly distinguished from its editorial page. When I went to the Breitbart page, I couldn't separate the editorials from the news - which I suspect was the point.

If you compare the two articles, the NYT is basically reporting on a phenomena - the conservative media blasting fake news. When you look at the Breitbart article I pinpointed, it's akin to Bill O'Reilly talking about the Left taking away the power of the white establishment. 

When I compare the old and new media, I'm talking about outlets like Breitbart which is clearly more opinionated, and caters to a niche ideology (the far right) versus the New York Times which appeals to a much broader spectrum. The main difference is that Breitbart is interested in selling among this niche group while the NYT is interested in appealing to a broader spectrum. That has informed their reporting and editorial content (for example, Breitbart's Stephen Bannon talked about setting up a Breitbart portal in France to help LePen in the presidential race in 2017).

There is a vast difference between the NYT and Breitbart, in terms of the quality of their reporting and who they're appealing to. Let's not pretend the NYT is some left wing rag only designed to appeal to the coastal elites in the news section. Their editorial section is long known as liberal but they're fairly straightforward in news reporting and what they choose to cover.

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This is an extremely loaded set of accusations, but they're not inaccurate. Trump is an unusual and unorthodox Presidential candidate (turned President-elect) who has campaigned by upending democratic norms. I'll cite his recent refusal to concede in the third debate and doubling down on it for one example; his attacks on Judge Gonzalo Curiel for his Mexican heritage, and so on.  It's commonly reported that Trump regularly demonizes the press at his rallies, even pointing at them during the rallies and blasting them. His alt right online supporters have long been noted for harassing those critical to Donald Trump that is unusual for any candidate.

And here's how the Washington Post covered the claims by the Trump campaign about Democratic operatives fomenting violence at Trump rallies. 

I don't know about the hate crimes statistics, per se, because that story is still developing.

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Quite well.

I remember when the NYT took responsibility for Jayson Blair's fictional story that won the Pulitzer.  And as I quote Wikipedia, "The New York Times reported on Blair's journalistic misdeeds in an unprecedented 7,239-word front-page story on May 11, 2003, headlined "Times Reporter Who Resigned Leaves Long Trail of Deception." The story called the affair "a low point in the 152-year history of the newspaper." 

The Michelle Fields hoax was a situation where Corey Lewandowski wasn't proven of having met a reasonably high standard in Florida courts of battery. It is clear he touched Michelle Fields, however. I'll point out the Breitbart editors didn't even stand behind their own reporters, and their publisher was informally advising the Trump campaign, bringing their journalistic independence into question. (Given that Stephen Bannon joined the Trump campaign as CEO, it definitely belies Breitbart as any sort of independent organization).

If I have to trust the NYT versus Breitbart, I will certainly place my faith in the NYT because as far as I know, the NYT tries to adhere to a more broad based consensus standard of reporting, while Breitbart has shown itself to be highly ideologically tied to the Right (in particular, Donald Trump).

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I think there is however a universal standard for serious journalism as opposed to opinion advocacy. James O'Keefe's "independent documentaries" do not rise to the same level of objective reporting that say, Carl Bernstein's reporting on Watergate.  I don't care about the medium; I think the distinction between old and new media, so to speak, is that the new media in the form of Breitbart is more advocacy journalism rather than objective news reporting.  I don't differentiate based on medium. I differentiate based on how they focus on delivering news content to viewers. I can read the New York Times, even though I'm not a liberal. A liberal reading Breitbart is not going to view it as an objective medium for news.

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The Right, as I said, has a long history of error prone non-factual journalism. I referred to Iraq, in which a lot of the conservative media relentlessly pushed Bush's war as grounded in fact, when it wasn't. Prima facie, you're right. But once again, outlets like the NYT and the Washington Post more often than not deliver objective content on the daily news and outlets like Breitbart delivers opinion masquerading as news.

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The point is that the NYT, the Washington Post, the Guardian, the Los Angeles Times, the Dallas Morning Star, whatever, they all exist within objective media and operate on similar footings in regards to reporting and delivering objective content on a nonpartisan basis.  I wouldn't call any of them except the Guardian as objectively liberal in their news reporting, in fact.

The Right's outlets tend to be insular, less engaging with outside sources, and tend to be far more opinionated. Breitbart, Fox News (at points), and the Washington Examiner all tend to be far more opinionated, and less grounded in factual reporting. David Brock has covered the Right's media tactics in his books (even though he's a Clinton hack now, he wrote some of his books when transitioning from the Right to the Left).

More below.

[The_Doctor]

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First, I reiterate that Hillary was more qualified than Trump for many reasons, beyond the "social acceptability" factor.

But to quantify and qualify what I mean, I simply mean that in the norms of our society, Hillary Clinton was vastly more in tune with these norms. Whether it was respecting election results, not going beyond certain boundaries of political attack, delivering a consistent set of policy beliefs and prescriptions, and so on and so on, Hillary Clinton clearly fell within political norms in this regard while Donald Trump did not. Add up Trump's attacks on political norms and you get a pattern of him attacking groups that he and his supporters feel threaten their cultural and political dominance. Add up Hillary Clinton's negativity and you don't get the failure to adhere to political norms Trump committed (although she committed a lot of ethically shady things that erased ethical norms in her time in power).

You seem to confuse this with a 1984-esq "party line" that must be towed at all times. That's silly. The political norms we're talking about have been developed by both parties, political actors and scientists, and society at large. Some date to the founding of the Republic, some are more recent, some are as recent as post-Watergate. Presidents of both parties, liberals, and conservatives, have adhered to them.

You think there is this vast leftist conspiracy to control what people think and do. There isn't.

[The_Doctor]

I think I've addressed your points basically so I'll stop there. Sorry for the delay again.

[EnglishPete]

To clarify upfront, I don't differentiate based on medium format.

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OK, let's look at Breitbart. Right now there's a headline entitled "Drexel University Professor’s Christmas Wish: ‘All I Want for Christmas is White Genocide’." On the other hand, let's take a look at the New York Times. Good article right here, "Wielding Claims of ‘Fake News,’ Conservatives Take Aim at Mainstream Media."  You can see the difference. Breitbart is rather pointed and incendiary and has a pointed view in its news reporting. 


If you compare the two articles, the NYT is basically reporting on a phenomena - the conservative media blasting fake news. When you look at the Breitbart article I pinpointed, it's akin to Bill O'Reilly talking about the Left taking away the power of the white establishment. 

Thanks for the replies> I will deal with the above point first. If we move first to the Breitbart story its a news piece reported with a political slant. The news is that a professor sent some highly offensive tweets

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So far this is basically just news. then the article makes clear what the author thinks of these tweets

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There's then another bit of reportage designed to illustrate the harm that this man's ideas cause

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and it finishes off with a snarky remark

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Now lets look at a NYT article about a man sending offensive tweets. We have a report of the offensive tweets

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Then another bit of reportage designed to illustrate the harm that this man's ideas cause

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And some statements of what the journalist thinks

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And it finishes off with a snarky remark

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So both articles mix news with opinion the NYT no less so than the Breitbart.

continued below

[EnglishPete]

continued

Now lets move on to the NYT article you linked to and see how heavily biased it is and how far from neutrally "just reporting".

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So here you see a clear distortion of the position of conservative commentators on the issue of 'fake news'. What it means is that publications like the NYT and Wapo are publishing deliberately dishonest and distorted stories in their news sections for propagandistic purposes. To suggest that conservative commentators are applying the term in a blanket way to "any news they see as hostile to their agenda" is a distortion of the conservatives' position. Furthermore use of terms like "appropriated", "seeking to dilute its meaning", "capitalizing" are used to suggest that the conservative position here is deliberately and cynically disingenuous. Notice as well in the above passage how the journalist supplies a quote from someone to make the point he wants to make. This is a common technique in news articles. Use a quote from someone to get across the propaganda point you want to make. This is done so that blatantly ideological arguments can be put forward under the pretense of 'just reporting' what someone has said. For criticising conservatives a quote from another conservative is ideal for this purpose.

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Now we have the author launch a defense of himself and his liberal colleges. these accusations are wrong because they are "Journalists who work to separate fact from fiction" in other words they are honest journalists who do not deliberately deceive. No evidence is provided for this claim, it is simply asserted. He then says that to associate them with deliberately dishonest journalists is 'dangerous' and once again a quote to back up his point.

Notice the rhetorical sleight of hand in the above passage. certain conservative commentators are suggesting that liberal legacy outlets (the so called 'mainstream' media) are routinely dishonest in their reporting. The author says that such journalists are honest and that it would be 'dangerous' to suggest otherwise because then you're conflating dishonest with honest journalism. In other words "we're honest so if you're calling us dishonest then you're saying that honest and dishonest are the same thing". A massive case of begging the question.

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So here's a little example of bias in the article. Fox news claims to be 'fair and balanced' but is described 'conservative slanted'. Liberal media outlets making the same claim are not described here are 'liberal slanted', all that's said is that the claim to be balanced rather than liberal slanted is disputed by Republicans.

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again another quote, this from a liberal, used to express the authors point of view.

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Now here's a quote from a conservative. This at first glance appears to balance the last quote from a liberal. However notice it doesn't address at all the claim that liberal media outlets don't produce fake news and that conservatives are being dangerously disingenuous when they suggest otherwise. On the contrary its a quote about why conservatives are annoyed with liberals for liberals own use of the term 'fake news'. In this context the quote is used to provide a motive for why conservatives would launch 'dangerous' disingenuous attacks on liberal media, thereby supporting the thesis that that is what they are doing.

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Here the partisan bias of this article is out in the open. Liberal websites, such as Snopes and factcheck.org doing fact checking are called "Nonpartisan" and " independent" to criticise them is to 'slander' and 'malign' them when they are just doing "the basic journalistic function of fact-checking". consevatives doing fact checking are, by deliberate contrast described as "highly partisan conservatives" and scare quotes are put around ""fact checking"" to clearly imply that these conservatives are not doing real fact checking the way that liberal sites like Snopes and factcheck are doing.

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And again with another quote from a conservative to make the point that the author wishes to make but using someone else's words so that the journalist can pretend he's simply a reporter reporting a quotation rather than a propagandist making a point himself.

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You couldn't separate the news from the editorial on Breitbart because the two can't be clearly separated. Any reporting of news is going to come from a particular perspective and that will show up in the report. You thought you cold distinguish the two in the NYT but here's a very good example of the artificially of the distinction. an article you took to be 'just news' that is, in reality, full of opinion and propagandistic.

I will move on to answering other of your points soon.

[EnglishPete]

The Michelle Fields hoax was a situation where Corey Lewandowski wasn't proven of having met a reasonably high standard in Florida courts of battery. It is clear he touched Michelle Fields, however. I'll point out the Breitbart editors didn't even stand behind their own reporters, and their publisher was informally advising the Trump campaign, bringing their journalistic independence into question. (Given that Stephen Bannon joined the Trump campaign as CEO, it definitely belies Breitbart as any sort of independent organization).

I'm going to address this point next because its a perfect example of the point I'm making

After the Florida Republican primary this year then Breitbart journalist Michelle Fields attended a Trump press conference. She did not attempt to ask any questions during the press conference. After the press conference finished she approached Trump as he was leaving, proceeded to cross between him and the secret service and made physical contact with him whilst asking him a question. Now doing this to someone who is under Secret service protection is against all security protocols and is in fact a felony. This is exactly the kind of situation that makes the Secret Service nervous. She was asked to move away, she failed to do so, Trump's then campaign manager, Cory Lewendowski, then took the appropriate action of moving her out of the way and restoring the appropriate security protocol.

Fields, who has a history of faking stories about herself (see here http://gotnews.com/crazy-watch-michelle-fields-brag-first-media-manipulating-moment-occupy-wall-street/  http://gotnews.com/why-does-drama-always-follow-michelle-fields/ ), then cooked up a fake story about being almost thrown to the ground in an unprovoked attack by Lewendowski. She was joined in this by WaPo reporter Benn Terris and they both published fake news stories about it in their respective publications. Now for evidence on this incident here are a couple of links

http://www.dangerandplay.com/2016/03/29/how-michelle-fields-conned-prosecutors-into-charging-corey-lewandowski-with-battery/

http://gotnews.com/breaking-emails-breitbart-prove-no-michelle-fields-bruises-grabgate-standwithcorey/

Now I wouldn't expect you to take my word for it, nor would I expect you to take the word of the people who wrote the linked articles' word for it. Rather have a look at the evidence presented and it will become clear that Fields and Terris both acted deliberately deceitfully in their claims about what happened.

Now consider what happened next. Breitbart's editors became suspicious of the story and refused to automatically back her claims, she left the publication shortly after. They had made a mistake (in employing this dishonest attention seeker in the first place) but corrected it when it came to light. The Washington Post by contrast continued to back this fake news story even after it had been thoroughly debunked.

In the light of all that its clear that this incident shows Breitbart being much more honest and reliable than the liberal legacy Washington Post, as well as all the other liberal legacy publication that continued with this story even after is was shown to be dishonest.

[EnglishPete]

I think there is however a universal standard for serious journalism as opposed to opinion advocacy. James O'Keefe's "independent documentaries" do not rise to the same level of objective reporting that say, Carl Bernstein's reporting on Watergate. 

I don't know the detail of Bernstein's reporting or Bernstein himself (other than  he was the one played by Dustin Hoffman!) However I will pick up on one point where the watergate reporting illustrates liberal media bias

Watergate building in burgled

Result: nothing is taken

Burglers get caught

Nixon finds out and covers it up, claiming executive privilege to do this

Bernstein uncovers the coverup.

Liberal media proclaim Bernstein to be a hero and Nixon to be a liar and a crook and the embodiment of evil

Thirty years earlier

Communist agents infiltrate the US State Department and other government bodies

Result: Serious secrets are stolen by some agents and given to America's enemies. Other agents successfully work to influence policy in a way that helps the Soviet Union and does severe harm to the free world and the human race as a whole

FBI uncovers and identifies these communist agents

Truman finds out and covers it up, claiming executive privilege to do this

Joe McCarthy uncovers the coverup

Liberal media proclaim Truman to be a hero and Mccarthy to be a liar and a crook and the embodiment of evil.

You see the bias there?

[EnglishPete]

Continued

His alt right online supporters have long been noted for harassing those critical to Donald Trump that is unusual for any candidate.

And here's how the Washington Post covered the claims by the Trump campaign about Democratic operatives fomenting violence at Trump rallies.  

There was plenty of online harassment from the left directed at Trump and his supporters. And not just online harassment but disruption and even crimes of violence. far more than went the other way. There was a sustained campaign of protests, disruption and demonstrations happening around Trump rallies. Now it can sometimes happen that an individual or small group will simply spontaneously decide to carry out a protest by themselves without any prompting, without needing to be directed by professional protest organisers. However this is uncommon and only ever takes place on a small scale. Large scale protests and/or sustained series of protests are invariably organised and directed by professional protest groups. this was clearly the case with the Trump protests. The only question was why and by whom were these protests being funded and organised. The Projest Veritas tapes pretty conclusively show that it was Dem operatives who were doing it. the Washington Post article looks like a series of quotes from senior Dems saying "Nope, nothing to do with us" as if you'd expect them to just admit it.

So to sum up

There was a sustained series of protests and disruptions, some quite large scale, across the Trump campaign rallies.

When protests and demonstrations happen on this scale, or even on a fraction of this scale it is always being directed by paid organisers, it is never simply grassroots and spontaneous.

Dem operatives admit on hidden camera "yes it was us, we did it"

I'm not sure what more evidence you'd need.

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Except that they are exactly liberal in their news reporting. They just disguise it, in the way I mentioned. The liberal media coverage of the Trump protests is a case in point. The liberal media pretended that these were just spontaneous grassroots responses of citizens outraged by Trump. they pretended not to know that genuine spontaneous grassroots demonstrations only ever happen sporadically and on a very very small scale. Then when Project Veritas revealed what must have been utterly obvious to them they just proceeded to shoot the messenger. that is partisan liberal coverage pretending to be objective neutral news

[EnglishPete]

You seem to confuse this with a 1984-esq "party line" that must be towed at all times. That's silly. The political norms we're talking about have been developed by both parties, political actors and scientists, and society at large. Some date to the founding of the Republic, some are more recent, some are as recent as post-Watergate. Presidents of both parties, liberals, and conservatives, have adhered to them.  

Lets give an example of some of the political norms. During the election there was a long and sustained series of protests and disruptions around Trump rallies that were organised by the Democratic Party and its allies. These disrupted and harassed Trump and his supporters and in some cases, like Chicago and San Jose, erupted into large scale violence. And yet even when the latter happened the liberal media, the Democratic Party and even, to their shame, some Republicans blamed Trump and his supporters for the violence, disruption and harassment they were being subjected to. Can you imagine what the reaction would have been had the pattern of behaviour been the other way around.

Another example in Deyton back in March during a Trump campaign speech Thomas DiMassimo, a left wing extremist in his early twenties, jumped over the barrier and attempted to rush the stage to knock over Trump before being carried off by secret service. Now DiMassimo is quite well built and if he had knocked over a man in his late sixties by running at him full speed that could have proved fatal, or at the very least caused serious damage. Now afterwards DiMassimo was given interviews by liberal media outlets where he had full opportunity to justify his actions. Now imagine if it had been the other way around and a young, well built, right wing extremist had attempted to charge and knock down Hillary Clinton. Can you imagine him being given the opportunity to justify his actions in TV interviews? On the contrary no such things would happen and instead we would never hear the end of outrage from the liberal media.

Now clearly there are some norms at work here but what are they. The norms are that if you say things that the liberal establishment are unhappy with or threaten their interests you are considered by liberal media and politicians to be 'fair game' for all kinds of attacks, up to and including serious violence. On the other hand if the person saying those things the liberal establishment doesn't like then if you even say something that is less than polite then it is considered an outrage if you so much as speak in a less than polite way

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There is no conspiracy here. that is a straw man. Instead there is a consensus built up by members of both parties, political actors and scientists, who are part of the liberal establishment. Society at large is not involved in forming these norms, rather the tools of law and propaganda are used to impose these norms on society at large.

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This is rather the reverse of the truth. It is the liberal establishment that has held cultural and political dominance for a great many years now, not Trump and his supporters. The attacks on Trump and his 'basket of deplorables' supporters throughout this election (and indeed transition period) have been made by members of the  liberal establishment (and some of their employees) against a group that they feel  Add up Trump's attacks on political norms and you get a pattern of him attacking groups that he and his supporters feel threatens their cultural and political dominance.