Unpopular opinion: it is much better to have a leader hated by the media and who's every move is scrutinized by the press than to have a leader cowtowed by the press and given a free pass on anything.
How do I know? I'm from Russia. Authoritatism begins with tight control of news sources.
This comment is really weird. There is a good reason why the media publishes more negative articles about some presidents and fewer on others; some presidents are legitimately better or worse than others.
I thought it was a good comment. I don't know why the left fears a legitimately impartial press instead of one that leaks debate questions to the Democratic candidate.
Source for the debate question leak? The one I know of was given to Clinton against Sanders in the Democratic primary... so it was the "further left" being antagonized lol. But if there's a recent instance of this between a Democrat vs Republican debate I'd be interested to hear of it.
Seriously? This president has not started/entered into a war for the first time since Carter, reformed the criminal justice system to reverse laws that unfairly targeted minorities and non-violent drug crimes (laws supported by Biden when they were passed, btw), presided over a record low unemployment rate and record high wage increases for American workers prior to the pandemic and the media treats him like he's the reincarnation of Hitler.
Imagine if Obama reformed the criminal justice system, wasn't a war monger in Syria/Libya and presided over a record economic boom? He'd be made a saint or something.
> the media stands behind the fact he's cognitively sound when he obviously isn't.
I am going to ignore the rest of your post and use this specific aspect to highlight something. Joe Biden has had a stutter his entire life. Stutters take an extensive and persistent amount of work to overcome. They are likely to return during times of increased stress, decreased sleep, or when one ages. There is zero evidence that Biden has experienced any kind of mental decline. All the evidence that people point to of him stumbling over his words, calling someone by the wrong title, or whatever other examples you have are almost certainly just symptoms and coping mechanisms used by someone with a stutter.
Stuttering is an unfortunate condition, but it has to do with pronouncing words and problems speaking fluently. I've never heard a stutterer say the sorts of things Biden says.
Which is why I pointed out not just symptoms, but also coping mechanisms. It isn't uncommon for stutters to try to say a word or have a word come to mind and know they can't get it out. That will lead to them searching for a replacement word. This type of self editing is incredibly difficult to do smoothly, especially when you have a camera on you any time you are out in public. It can easily result in the type of fumbling you see from Biden that doesn't come across as stuttering.
The Hunter Biden story was such an embarrassingly obvious piece of kompromat that it would have irresponsible to run with it just because the Trump campaign tried to push it out there. The reason why several major media outlets ignored the story is that they didn't want to play ball this time. They have written about this. They don't have an obligation to present strategically-crafted stories as if it were real news.
Do you think Trump is throwing pardons around just for shits and giggles? This is the first time ever that a US president has been using pardons as get-out-of-jail-free cards for his friends and allies. And he's throwing them around because he has a habit of associating himself with criminals who commit crimes (on his behalf) and therefore need pardons.
Trump wants to pardon his family, Giuliani, and potentially even himself. Which would not make the slightest bit of sense unless they had committed serious crimes. And if you argue that he wants to use the pardons to prevent those pesky democrats from setting him up, I want you to imagine a scenario where Biden was doing the exact same thing.
Biden and Harris will be scrutinized in much the same way presidents and their VPs have been traditionally. Trump is an anomaly.
> Do you think Trump is throwing pardons around just for shits and giggles? This is the first time ever that a US president has been using pardons as get-out-of-jail-free cards for his friends and allies. And he's throwing them around because he has a habit of associating himself with criminals who commit crimes (on his behalf) and therefore need pardons.
Roger Clinton, Susan McDougal and Mark Rich say hi.
Oh, and Obama pardoned, commuted, or rescinded the conviction of 1,927 people. Trump so far? 45. [0]
Roger Clinton was pardoned for a 1985 conviction after having served his sentence. The pardon removed the conviction from his record, but the punishment had already taken place.
Similarly, McDougal had finished serving her sentences after conviction by the time she was pardoned.
Rich did get pardoned before standing trial, but that was because he fled the country in 1983 when he learned there would be charges. So this is a case of a pardon preventing trial and punishment.
> Do you think Trump is throwing pardons around just for shits and giggles?
Well he gave Flynn a pardon because Flynn was railroaded by Sullivan. I doubt you understand this case, because Flynn's original attorney had a conflict of interest with the prosecutor. Powell, via discovery, found text messages of FBI agents trying to find something, anything, to entrap Flynn with. They went after his family, his kids!
When all this came to light, the prosecutors said they would dismiss. Sullivan said they couldn't. In an unprecedented move, Sullivan assigned an americus (friend of the court) to see if they could prosecute Flynn for perjury because he plead guilty when he was really innocent.
Let that sink in. Sullivan wanted Flynn prosecuted for perjury BECAUSE HE PLEAD GUILTY WHEN HE WAS ACTUALLY INNOCENT. It's in the brief, which I don't think you've read. This is the definition of a Kafka trap.
If you go to the Hacker News story about the FL researcher who was just arrested at gunpoint, there was a thread about Aaron Swartz and plea deals.
>Our plea bargain system is so lopsided that 97% of criminal charges end with a guilty plea without a trial. Even if she is 90% sure of winning at trial, unless she has a million dollars lying around and a deathwish, it STILL isn't worth it to fight the system. - https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=btilly
I have heard a large number of people express the same opinion and statistics but have noticed the they are quiet when it comes to Flynn.
I think if people have committed crimes, then they need to be prosecuted but also that it is better for 10 guilty to go free than 1 innocent to be sentenced.
I think what has happened to Carter Page and the sentencing guidelines for Kevin Clinesmith are a joke. As the sibling comment said
>Let's make distrusting the intelligence agencies cool again.
Quick reminder that Flynn participated in a kidnapping plot against the US government's interest on behalf of Turkey who was paying him to be an unregistered foreign agent.
This literally didn't happen. His whole "cleansing" statement was cringy, yes. But he never told them to drink, inject or enema bleach. There was one person who did, for whatever reasons ... and really we should have let that problem solve itself.
You're right. It was about injecting "disinfectant". The lying media keeps saying "bleach" when he was actually talking about bringing stuff like Lysol into the body.
I see their standards to be just about the same with Russian state propaganda channels. If you'd seen them both you'd be amazed with the similarity. Unless,of course, you would choose to overlook it - people often shield themselves from the information that doesn't fit their paradigm.
Why would you only look at "policies" instead of everything they do in an official capacity? "Policies" are basically just the stories that politicians tell about themselves. What they actually do matters, not just what they claim to support.
The point of having a critical media is that the electorate can actually punish their leaders for bad things. Leaving those leaders in place because criticism is actually good defeats the point.
Not all leaders do things the same way, and there might be more cause to criticize one over the others. It should be _possible_ to publish criticism for all; that doesn't mean there should be equal amounts of criticism.
Otherwise, you could have one administration that mishandles a lot of thing complain that they were treated unfairly, just because they're rightfully criticized for their shortcomings. (Which it looks like has been happening recently.)
The question is, though, what happens if one side keeps knowingly publishing baseless allegations to stir up fear and mistrust.
They should absolutely be critical selectively, based on the actual performance of that leader. The point of the criticism is to provide a deterrent to oppression and mismanagement, and a deterrent doesn't work if it's applied without regard to its target's actions.
I get your point, but given the proximity of Obama, Kamala Harris and the Democrat Party as a whole to Google/Alphabet and subsidiaries, it stands to reason that there's not some wall of separation between Google/YouTube management and the US government. This doesn't seem so hard to believe: we all saw that leaked video after the 2016 US elections where Sergey Brin and several other executives clearly aligned themselves with Hillary Clinton and the Democrats.
I'm having trouble parsing your reply. Google/Alphabet employees overwhelmingly support left-of-center politicians and causes. Management is aligned with the establishment New Left Democrats and the workers are split between populist New Leftists (e.g. Warren) and the socialists (e.g. Bernie).
Look at who the entity Alphabet itself donates political funds to the majority of the time. Look at which party's policies are more favorable to investor returns.
Examine which side of the political spectrum is overwhelmingly running media businesses through YouTube.
I did a small amount of searching and found the first and third skew strongly to the left. "Which party's policies are more favorable to investor returns" is underspecified, so I'm not sure how we can discuss it.
It might be helpful if you cited sources yourself.
Funny thing is Democratic party and Biden themselves are center-right by most reasonable international definitions. The fact that republicans try to paint Biden and Democratic parties as radical left is laughable to most people with an international view. This also gives insight into the Republican style of pushing out falsities just for the sake of being in power.
The U.S. definition of "left" is different than the international estimation of "left". I don't know why international folks feel the need to correct this. It doesn't seem to bother the folks affected (U.S. citizens and residents).
Note that the reasons for this are complicated, but the U.S. doesn't historically have to deal with monarchy, titles of nobility, vestigial aspects of governance left over from feudalism, a relatively recent postwar recovery period, or government implicated into churches. For instance, there's no American conservative impulse to support the monarchy because there's no American monarchy. The lack of that issue means other things are discussed instead.
This is correct. Also, the influence of nationalism - even under Trump - is much smaller on the American Right than in other countries. The US is both a very large country and a federation, and so a strong national identity doesn't really exist. People on the Right tend to be more nationalistic (they tend to want more immigration restrictions, the "melting pot" model and prefer English as the national language), and those on the Left tend to be more internationalist. But the degree is just much different than other countries.
Monarchism, a formal class system and state establishment of religion tend to be rejected by large swathes of both the American Left and Right.
> Funny thing is Democratic party and Biden themselves are center-right by most reasonable international definitions. The fact that republicans try to paint Biden and Democratic parties as radical left is laughable to most people with an international view.
We just had a summer in which armed gangs of self-identified Leftists roamed the streets of our major cities, set fire to buildings, harassed random passers-by and assaulted (and in a few cases, murdered) anyone they unilaterally labeled a "fascist" (i.e. anyone to the right of Mao). These Democrats you speak of were for three months ignoring the violence; when they occasionally admitted that violence had taken place, they claimed it was all perpetrated by right-wing agitators; when that didn't work (because who actually believes that right-wingers are spray-painting anarchy symbols, "BLM," "ACAB," and other slogans?), their propaganda mouthpieces calling it "mostly peaceful protest."
Do I think Biden is some hard leftist? No. But certainly his party feels extremely constrained in criticizing the hard left, and also feel that they must kowtow down to them.
> This also gives insight into the Republican style of pushing out falsities just for the sake of being in power.
This is a complete non-sequitur. The fact that US definitions of left and right (as mentioned in a sibling comment) differ from international ones "gives insight" into one particular political party lying? What?
Isn't the objective of every political party to obtain power, or at least influence? Don't all political parties "push[] out falsities" in order to obtain or retain power?
The one wrinkle here is that the Republicans (nor anyone on the Right - US definition) absolutely lack real political power, since they have no control over the bureaucracy, the media or the academe. Trump himself figured this out much too late, and wasted years appointing people who had no interest in carrying out his agenda. But in some ways, this is the exception that proves the rule.
But the "government" (well, several senators, the legislative branch of the power) did just politely ask YouTube to start censoring content.
I'd be fine with videos marked with something like "YouTube believes this video is untrue and spreads dangerous disinformation" put before or even over a video. But taking videos down is quite another matter.
God would I love to live in a world where Youtube videos, facebook comments, instagram stories weren't the _actual_ source of most people's news (and by news I mean baseless things people with obvious biases and insidious motives say).
News sources are always biased, even when they try to stay neutral. The trick is to learn to extract useful nuggets of information from a number of biased streams. Having these streams biased differently helps.
This is much like raw data in science: all data have noise and imperfections, but statistics help extract a signal if there is one.
I think anywhere that libel and slander are enforced. Any random person with any random agenda can write on facebook or make youtube videos advancing that agenda.
> News sources are always biased, even when they try to stay neutral. The trick is to learn to extract useful nuggets of information from a number of biased streams. Having these streams biased differently helps.
I'm not talking about bias, I'm talking about obvious made-up QAnon garbage.
> This is much like raw data in science: all data have noise and imperfections, but statistics help extract a signal if there is one.
I would argue that baseless data is not data at all.
My understanding of GP point is that majority of social media companies is negative to Trump and positive to Biden. The difference with Russia is that media is controlled by government, but the original point is that it is healthier when media scrutinises government
As I recall, after his election, Twitter explicitly updated its TOS to basically say that they don't apply to certain public figures, in effect admitting that he does violate the TOS but they are unwilling to do anything about it.
> My understanding of GP point is that majority of social media companies is negative to Trump and positive to Biden
I don't think this is accurate, unless you mean that most employees of big tech vote/contribute Democrat. However, it doesn't necessarily follow that bias exists on the platform.
I live in the US and I've said this for decades. I wish the media were just as hard on the politicians they agree with.
The one thing different about trump is that he purposely provoked the media and responded to petty nonsense that previous presidents would have just ignored. Trump and the media have a symbiotic relationship because they both need the attention.
It seems funny to me that when people say things about the "media" they by implication omit such members as Fox News, the many, many right leaning web-only news sites and "conservative" talk radio (terrestrial and sat). In addition, much of "local" tv news stations are owned by conservative leaning Sinclair Broadcasting, an ownership which has pressed its own views on the reporting of news by its properties.
No, there were other differences. Let’s just go with his most recent example: He’s still refuting election results with no evidence to backup his claim.
There is no equivalence between Gore in 2000 and Trump in 2020. Gore demanded a recount of the exceedingly close outcome in Florda, one which hinged in large part on the accurate counting of the dreadful butterfly ballot. Gore at no time said, nor pressured anyone else to say, 'Its all fraud! Throw out all the votes and have the legislature put my elector slate in'
This is definitely true when the boss-man doesn't change. But these people aren't against power, or even against power used abusively against the people - they're only against "the other team" and clearly happy to cover up just about any bad actions of their preferred team.
So we should vote for leaders that “the media” hates and scrutinizes? That is a sad, cynical view of the world. Also, you realize that the media in the US includes outlets on both sides, right? As in, every leader pretty much fits both characterizations?
We don't need cosmic deity levels of certainty. Most first-world judicial systems are predicated on the standard of evidence being "reasonable". As in "reasonable cause to believe" or "beyond a reasonable doubt". We have functioned pretty well with based on "reasonable" and we can apply that same standard here. It is fair to label a statement as at least misinformation if it seems to be untrue beyond a reasonable doubt. Disinformation requires intent which is much harder to determine but not really relevant.
I think this comment is underrated. Even using the term "censorship" is somewhat dubious when/if the "censor" is acting against the interests/wishes of government.
That said, I think google are making a bad mistake here. They've crossed a line that they've been toeing.
Social media isn't just a mass media. Media is always edited. Editing isn't censorship. But social media is also a communication channel. Haphazard interference in a communication channel sits wrong. We have no frame of reference for it.
Meanwhile, there are credible claims that social media fallacies have caused horrible things (including possibly genocide in Myanmar) in other countries/languages. FB (in that case) has no knowledge of the language or interest in getting involved in that. How can you justify one without the other?
How is that an unpopular opinion though? Even the right-wingers keep hammering about fake news, which implies they care about fair, neutral and 'true' news.
I mean it's one of those doublespeak terms that they themselves don't fully understand (apparently), but still.
I have yet to meet a reddit democrat that knows more about Obama than they do about Trump. That's why I thought Trump should've been in office again. Now we've got a dying old man and a pro cop VP.
How do I know? I'm from Russia. Authoritatism begins with tight control of news sources.