Another Trump-Russia conspiracy theory media debacle

[Elfdart]

Glennzilla is right pretty much all the time, but when it comes to American mainstream journalists shitting the bed, this doesn't make the Top 10. Greenwald does have a point that any journalist who gets fed a pack of lies and is thus made to look like a gullible putz at best is under no obligation to keep the source(s) of that bullshit confidential. My view is that silence = approval. If the reporter won't expose the person who fed them the lies, then they must not have a problem with being a puke funnel for lies and propaganda.

If you want to see the MSM get called out for bullshitting about something genuinely important, check out this article from the L.A. Times about how the Serious people who wanted the US to back ISIS/Daesh/ISIL/Al-Qaeda against Assad totally screwed the pooch in ways that prolonged the war.

[TheFeniX]

Much as I love Jon Stewart, he's partly responsible for this mess too, as he was a frequent spokesman of the "both sides' idiocy IIRC.

He was also way too lenient on Obama IMHO. However, you could damn near ALWAYS count on him and his staff to do their due diligence and provide the most honest and accurate reporting they could.

And again, I completely agree that media should be held accountable when it fucks up. But there's a difference between that and assuming its incompetent or dishonest until proven otherwise, which seems to be the attitude a lot of people take. That's not constructive criticism- its collective guilt resulting in knee-jerk hostility.

"Smoking Guns" should always be taken with a grain of salt. And what exactly, given the evolving nature of information availability and speed, means we should continue to scrutinize it at the same level as was done in the past?

Well, a lot of internet journalism is utter shit too. But the internet does ensure that mistakes will be propagated as widely as possible, and that when you fuck up, you can't just pretend it never happened.

It's a double-edged sword here. While access to "print" media is wider than it even has been, though the Internet (like the real world) is turning into a monolith where 90% of the information is spread across a few sites: hiding things is harder. HOWEVER, the speed at which information moves these days means it's also easy to just pile more information on top to cover up your cock-up.

The difference is:

Other media organizations make mistakes out of carelessness, with overt lies being comparatively rare. Fox overtly lies routinely.

I never said otherwise. But it's the difference between a man who gets drunk and routinely beats his dog and a guy who routinely gets drunk and flails his arms about and ends up hitting his dog on occasion.

Oh, please don't tell me you're going to start peddling that "Biased liberal media" narrative. The mainstream media, in America at least, its more Centrist than Left or Right, and more self-interested, I think, or just lazy, than partisan.

Oddly, I've found it much more tied to popularity (much like gaming journalism) these days. Bush was being routinely serviced by every media company... until his popularity dropped and people started seeing through the cracks. Then the MSM was more than willing to take swings at him. Obama coasted through his presidency with solid numbers throughout and never saw (at least from what I saw) the haraunging Bush saw during his later years. Trump came into office with low popularity and is an easy whipping boy for the media.

All the constant (or near) talk about "enhanced interrogation," drone striking, etc: just kind of stopped when Obama took office and never picked up again. Whatever the reason for that: it was a failing of the media. Hehe, even Fox News didn't know what to do here.

They aren't remotely the same. Not even on that one issue, and not even close. This isn't simple partisanship speaking: when the tax bill came to a vote, nearly every Republican Senator voted for it. Not one Democrat did. NOT ONE. That alone speaks volumes.

Yes, a lot of Democrats will throw favours to their corporate friends/donors, sometimes at the expense of the American people. But nearly every Democrat, at any level, at least believes that things like Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, and progressive taxation of some sort should exist.

Most all of those came out of an era of high economic mobility. They want to continue those policies while gutting the middle class that helped shoulder the monetary burden to make them possible. That's dumb. They're dumb.

If you're middle class, Democrats are not your friend. Neither are Republicans. Even worse actually. Ever wonder why the middle class keeps see-sawing about every election?

The Democrats aren't perfect, by any means, but their is a world of difference between a party that doesn't do enough to help the poor and middle class, and a party that seems practically dedicated to their destruction, if its policies are any indication. And yet people just keep repeating "They're both just as bad", because its become a dogmatic truism of our age, repeated regardless of its accuracy or inaccuracy.

And this is a massive++ failing of our shitty two party system. Voters have to accept "fuck the middle class" no matter how they vote and dealing with that for 20-some-odd+ years has dropped faith in either party to end-of-term GW Bush levels.

Even if one is against the Democratic Party, one should be willing to make more precise and specific criticisms, rather than falling back on overly broad denunciations that contribute to a general culture of cynicism and hostility towards the institutions of democratic government.

"Vote Democrat, it'll get better. We promise. Just like in 2008." People are done with that man. They'll vote Democrat in 2020 because they essentially have to. But the current party is trash. The only hope as far as I can see is the fossils getting replaced by more millennials who actually understand what it is to work for a living. So... maybe, we might be looking at some real progress in 2030 or so when the old guard just up and dies.

EDIT: maybe a bit of clarification. Aside from someone who has real empathy like Warren, people in their 60s and 70s are near literally from a different world. It's impossible for them to be in touch at all. Also fixed a bad date.

[The Romulan Republic]

I think that the Democratic Party is less... homogenous than you (and many of its critics) portray it as. Its essentially two parties- a Centrist party with mild neo-con leanings in certain areas, and a progressive/social democrat party. Probably with further subdivisions of both those camps (for example, both wings have blocks that are more concerned with social justice, and others more concerned with economics.

The Centrist wing won the day last time around, but the progressive anti-establishment wing showed its strength. With that in mind, and with Clinton's defeat in the general election, and without the "establishment" being locked in around a single candidate next time, and with the party moving to reduce the role of superdelegates... I think the progressive wing have a real chance of gaining a stronger voice in the party. Unless they quit out of frustration first, which would be a real shame.

This is all off the original topic, however. How did we get on this tangent? I think it was the parallel between overly-broad attacks on politicians/the Democrats, and overly-broad attacks on the media?

In any case, aside from that, I mostly agree with what you just posted.