The price good people pay for indifference to public affairs (ie populism, corruption and Electoral College ineptitude) is to be ruled by evil simians.
Alex Jones loves Donald Trump. He's unlikely to hold him to account for anything, except maybe not being paranoid enough, until his audience drops and new ideas come crawling out of whatever hole Alex keeps them in.
I would say he's a joke, but it's way creepier than that.
"The national press is likely to be among the first institutional victims of Trumpism. There is no law that requires the presidential administration to hold daily briefings, none that guarantees media access to the White House. Many journalists may soon face a dilemma long familiar to those of us who have worked under autocracies: fall in line or forfeit access."
I don't see anything about next moves in either. The only thing I could get from the first one is that Trump will produce a lot of bullshit. That's not exactly next move, he's doing it for years now. The second one mostly devoted to mocking Trump's first press-conference, still no next moves.
Right. Because last I heard Trump just nationalized CNN and had state-controlled oil monopoly buy NYT and replace all previous editorship with his cronies.
Nobody wants hard questions, as such, but I agree it would be good for the President to allow diversity of viewpoints be represented in the press pool. I'm just saying journalists being soft and submissive towards the government with which they are politically aligned is not exactly the new thing that Trump threatens to unleash on us - it has happened many times before.
It's not that some of the press was excluded, it's not that only "trusted" media was invited, it's that they agreed to not even report on what they talked about or who they met with. I think private meetings with no mention of them and reporting based on this as if they arrived to it by themselves and not were instructed by the administration is much cozier relationship than just being invited or not invited in one briefing.
Why that would be all? Of course it's not all. It's just one random article that I've seen couple of days ago, I didn't make a full survey of whole 8 years. It is enough though to establish the fact that the some of the press did field softball questions to Obama - in addition to publicly gushing about how awesome he is - which fact should be obvious to anybody who paid any attention through his tenure.
Please don't insinuate that someone hasn't read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
This is exactly why journalism today is mostly lacking in integrity: journos having to cozy up to and not offend officials to maintain access. Without viable, advarasial news, society is headed towards a precipice of greater corruption and authoritarianism because the press failed to hold leaders accountable for their actions.
>The administration has taken increasing steps in recent weeks and months to isolate the TV network, with some Capitol Hill veterans recalling no such similar steps by any president since Richard Nixon’s retaliation against The New York Times and The Washington Post during Watergate.
>“The point is this, and it really needs to be made: Fox is not just another television network,” said Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (Ill.), a close Obama ally. “Fox has become the official/semi-official voice for the Republican Party, in opposition to the president. And I think calling them out is the only way to delegitimize them as political propaganda.”
Why would you post a link which proves my point for me?
>The effort hasn’t been a total blackout; White House press secretary Robert Gibbs still calls on Fox News reporter Major Garrett at press briefings
Obama decided not to go on some Fox talk shows one time which apparently hurt their feelings. It would be truly shocking if we had a president who wasn't nice to the press like that.
Thank god ours constantly reassures reporters that he would never have them killed, even though he hates them and thinks they are disgusting, and he has to remind us that he thinks people who kill reporters are bad people.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxI04hcgRNg
He did not ban them from press conferences, in fact his press secretary called on their reporters.
Suggesting this is somehow equivalent is way off the mark, at best it is grasping for straws.
Trump not sitting down with MSNBC to discuss immigration would be equivalent. Barring media outlets is completely unprecedented, because we have freedom of the press in the United States.
The difference in this case is how wildly inaccurate their reporting has been. Nearly everyday they're misrepresenting what President Trump has said, and sometimes they outright lie. It borders on hysteria. Which is ridiculous, because if they didn't ratchet everything up to 11, they could make serious points against Trump.
For instance in the latest Sweden nontroversy, Trump misspoke when he tried to make reference to a report he saw on the Tucker Carlson show. Instead of having articles that would point out that a President should speak more clearly and that we expect more from him, instead they stated that he made up a terror attack! Really?! Instead of making a point that we could all agree with, they made themselves look bad to those of us who are non-partisans.
So the Treasury department tried to stop Fox from attending a meeting once, but didn't actually do it because it was wrong.
And he didn't go on a Fox Sunday news show one time.
Not really helping your case here.
They don't lie about him, they don't have to; they represent him as he represents himself. He says something out loud and they describe it, it's not their fault he changes his mind about what he wishes he had said after the fact.
He has taken to blatantly and explicitly lying about simple verifiable facts, and doubling down on those lies when challenged. How should the press deal with that besides calling it what it is? Why should they give him the benefit of the doubt after that?
Then why should Obama have given any airtime to Fox? Why should the next democratic president? And now you see the problem: suppressing journalism that you don't agree with is a fucking dangerous precedent.
It's two fold: 1) I agree the President shouldn't suppress journalism so long as it's respectful as that could set a "dangerous" precedent. 2) CNN has been one of the major proponents of the Trump is Hitler/bigot/racist/xenophobe/x_____ist/phobe AND the bullshit, racist, anti-white people narrative started under Obama's watch and they have set a dangerous precedent of abusing their size and power to lead half the country into civil unrest and make them believe that Trump is to blame for all of their problems.
Obama didn't exclude news organizations because he didn't like them when he was president as far as I'm aware and if he did I'm going to be just as mad at him as I am at Trump.
December 2012: Several journalists reported that MSNBC hosts were meeting privately with President Obama to discuss the impending “fiscal cliff” fight.
May 2013: NPR’s Ari Shapiro reported that President Obama was meeting privately with “lefty columnists,” but hastened to add that there was “nothing nefarious” about it.
November 2013: President Obama met again with liberal journalists, as Obamacare struggled with the failure of healthcare.gov and other problems.
March 2015: Politico’s media reporter, Hadas Gold, reported that “a group of journalists and columnists,” all on the left, met privately with President Obama, but the White House refused to say “who else was at the meeting or what was discussed.”
To be fair, your initial response was not particularly conducive to continuing the conversation. Why would they choose to respond to someone who is apparently antagonistic?
My first comment in this thread was responding to a baseless comment about someone's own memory, so I didn't feel the need to put a lot of effort providing sources.
My first reply to billfor was a question asking for clarification on his comment.
I don't see in what way I'm being antagonistic. As to why would they choose to respond, I don't know, but they did choose to, so I don't see why asking for clarification is such a bad thing.
Apologies for not looking far enough up the thread. I am referring to this comment:
Where have you copy-pasted this list from and what is it's relevance?
Perhaps it wasn't your intent, but this can easily be read as "you're just copy/pasting stuff that doesn't have anything to do with the conversation". With contentious topics, extra care needs to be taken to ensure constructive conversation.
It's very clear that it is copy-pasted from somewhere, just from the formatting of the text, so I was honestly wondering where it was from. As it is it's just an unsourced block of text without any commentary about what they meant to show by it or even if it is accurate.
>this can easily be read as "you're just copy/pasting stuff that doesn't have anything to do with the conversation".
Good, because that is what I meant. Until they can show the source of that information and can explain why they posted it I have no way of knowing if it has anything to do with the conversation.
>With contentious topics, extra care needs to be taken to ensure constructive conversation.
I do not consider just copying blocks of text at someone without any attempt at elaboration a constructive conversation. I asked a valid clarifying question and I feel no need to beat around the bush. Nothing in my comment was unnecessary or aggressive. Read it literally, as that is the way it was written.
If you no longer think the person you're engaging with is interested in constructive discussion, it does absolutely no good to make it worse by raising the level of antagonism. If you're interested in rehabilitating it, you need to make it abundantly clear that that's what you're doing. Otherwise, just leave it be.
Given the nature of internet forums with text being the only medium, you do need to take extra care to ensure the best possible reading of your comments. I wasn't the only one to read your comment in a negative way (as another commenter posted as well), and your comment didn't elicit the response from 'billfor that you were looking for. The bar needs to be higher. Although it happens much too often, HN isn't intended for battle or point-scoring debate: it's intended for substantive, constructive discussion.
Similarly, at this point I don't think I've done an adequate job in presenting what I've intended, so I'll leave it at that.
Awesome! Thank you, I appreciate it. Looks like that's just a rehost of a Brietbart article.
Seems like some of the events disagree with the collation article:
>On Thursday, Fox News’ Ed Henry tweeted that MSNBC hosts Ed Schultz and Lawrence O’Donnell, as well as Ezra Klein of the Washington Post and Fox News’ Juan Williams, had been invited for a private off-the-record chat with President Obama.
So not exactly the "lefty" conspiracy painted in the root article.
He may have inferred from your tone a common algorithm:
1. Ask to clarify meaning when the meaning requires only superficial analysis.
2. Ask for sources.
3. Dispute illegitimate sources, while clarifying which sources are acceptable, without ability to see bias in "legitimate" sources.
4. Await response, assuming it will be hostile.
5. Respond with other hostile algorithm.
>Ask to clarify meaning when the meaning requires only superficial analysis.
A block of text of potentially real, potentially fabricated dates and events without any clarifying text doesn't really fit this description.
I mean, if we want to throw arguments into algorithms I can just as easily point to:
1. Throw out dubious claims and/or unrelated/incorrect facts 2. Claim dishonesty when claims are not accepted on face value 3. Resist any attempts at clarification of argument 4. Claim opponent is disingenuous and declare victory.
What? No, I don't understand what he said. It was a list of dates and events that I don't know are true or accurate, without any context of why he commented them. I was referring to you when I said
>Claim dishonesty when claims are not accepted on face value
I made no claim that I wish you accepted at face value. So as far as i understand, you must be referring to bills claim. Otherwise, to which claim are you referring?
Assuming it is bills claim to ehich you refer, if you don't understand the context, how can it be a claim?
