This was going to be my headline, but I decided it was too long:
“You Know, When This Is All Over, Probably In 2024, American Journalism Will Look Like Post-Bomb Hiroshima, Except The Profession Will Have Done It To Themselves”
And I’m getting bored with “Nah, there’s no mainstream news media bias,” since I have occasion to use it so often, but then, that’s the point, isn’t it?
Yesterday, the left hand column above the fold of my daily Times, delivered to my door, screamed out,
Manafort Accused of Sharing Trump Polling Data With Russian Associate
As a top official in President Trump’s campaign, Paul Manafort shared political polling data with a business associate tied to Russian intelligence, according to a court filing unsealed on Tuesday. The document provided the clearest evidence to date that the Trump campaign may have tried to coordinate with Russians during the 2016 presidential race.
I know, and you know, that this sent the “resistance,” and Democrats, and all my hateful, coup-seeking Facebook friends and yours into a frenzy. The news media too, that an old friend and Ethics Alarms self-exile whose name I won’t use (though I sure am tempted) repeatedly insisted wasn’t biased or “enemies of the people” —how could I suggest such a thing?–and that didn’t traffic in fake news because they were careful, honest, trustworthy professionals of integrity. Here’s an example of how they reacted to the Times story:
Exclusive: Mueller Is Holding Top Secret Intelligence That Will Sink the Trump Presidency
That’s from the Observor, which breathlessly continues,
Another day, another bombshell emanating from the Special Counsel investigation into President Donald Trump and his links to the Kremlin. We now have more proof that Robert Mueller really does know everything about 2016—and I can exclusively tell you how he knows it.
This latest reveal comes from a legal screw-up of gargantuan proportions. Yesterday, attorneys for Paul Manafort, the president’s disgraced campaign manager for the decisive phase of the 2016 election, filed papers with the Justice Department trying to prevent their client from spending the rest of his life in a federal penitentiary. They asserted that Manafort did not lie to Team Mueller, as the Special Counsel believes, but in the process, they made an epic redaction fail that blows the case wide open.
Manafort’s lawyers accidentally revealed that Team Mueller believes—and Manafort confirmed—that their client shared campaign polling data with Konstantin Kilimnik, one of Manafort’s closest friends and a longtime business partner. Moreover, Manafort conceded, he had discussed a “Ukraine peace plan” with Kilimnik “on more than one occasion.” Worst of all, Manafort met with Kilimnik in Madrid to discuss these matters, he admitted, without saying when (Manafort’s spokesman later stated the Madrid meeting was in January or February 2017).
Once you know who Konstantin Kilimnik is, the gravity of these revelations comes into clear focus. The elusive Russian fixer was indicted by Team Mueller last June on obstruction of justice charges for assisting Manafort with witness tampering; previously, the Special Counsel described Kilimnik as having “ties to a Russian intelligence service and had such ties in 2016.”
The story is still up online, as are many similar ones from other “reliable sources.” Then, quietly, well into yesterday afternoon, the Times put out a tiny correction:
A previous version of this article misidentified the people to whom Paul Manafort wanted a Russian associate to send polling data. Mr. Manafort wanted the data sent to two Ukrainian oligarchs, Serhiy Lyovochkin and Rinat Akhmetov, not Oleg V. Deripaska, a Russian oligarch close to the Kremlin.
In other words, “Never mind!”
Yes, we all know that Manafort had business contacts with the Ukranians, but Mueller isn’t investigating what the Ukraine did or didn’t do to influence the 2016 election. Well, come on now, Ukraine, Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Whateverstan—who can keep those old Soviet Union countries straight? They’re all basically the same, right?
Yup, “the clearest evidence to date that the Trump campaign may have tried to coordinate with Russians during the 2016 presidential race” is a completely false story, in place of the actual story that didn’t belong on any front page, except maybe the All About Paul Manafort Hooterville Gazette. Except this was the New York Times, the Mother Ship, the ne plus ultra of trustworthy American journalism, and yet they rushed a fake story onto the front page because confirmation bias has eaten the professionalism of their reporters and editors, and they hate Donald Trump more than they respect their profession or their readers.
Am I being too harsh?
No.
Indeed, I should be harsher, but this astoundingly long-running outrage had drained my capacity.
Oh, how they want President Trump to be guilty of impeachable high crimes and misdemeanors! I’m sure they’ll wag their tails and jump into the laps of Tlaib and Waters and the other totalitarian-minded Democrats when they try to impeach the elected President of the U.S., aka “the motherfucker,” for simply existing and not being them, but they so want the impeachment to be based on something real so the coup has some cover. Thus they close their eyes and leap, knowing their progressive, biassed readers will be happy, without expending the basic professionalism and due diligence required to get me a B in Mr. Stewart’s journalism class at Arlington High School.
Of course American journalism itself is accountable for its self-defilement, though its members and co-conspirators will doubtless say that Trump makes them behave like a two-bit Pravda. The real culprits, however, are the democracy-rending fake Americans who have set out to undermine our system, elections, politics and government, and are begging for ammunition from the weak and lazy reporters who have betrayed the nation by joining their ranks.
Ethics Alarms 
First comment on the Mediate story revealing this botch:
“Not that major a correction. If you think any Russian Oligarch is not under Putin’s thumb, you are kidding yourself.”
You thought I was kidding about people not knowing the difference between Russia and the Ukraine?
I weep for our country.
They know. They just don’t want you and I to know. Sorry, I just don’t buy Hanlon’s Razor as applicable to this particular matter.
As a Ukrainian, I always find US coverage of Ukraine superficial and sometimes condescending. This is a great example. It’s like the case, if there is any reporting on a topic you have knowledge on, you see how bad the reporting is. Though I’m sure that probably all the ex-Soviet oligarchs do know each other and rub shoulders at dinner parties, I think it is a stretch to say they all bow down to Putin. Another example whenever they mention the former Ukr president, and the say Russian puppet, that is just spin. He was definitely Russia friendly, but not a puppet. That’s like saying the Canadian Prime Minister, an American puppet.
It is, I agree. Americans, especially those who lived through the Cold War, tend to lump all former Soviet client states together as if the breakup of the old Soviet Union never really happened.
Spin? Or complete fabrication to further the narrative that Trump conspired with Russia to steal the 2016 election?
I have a hard time not leaning toward the latter.
Complete fabrication. They know Ukraine is a separate country (and Twitter would “school” or “educate” Trump if he were to imply Russia and Ukraine are the same country), but they are desperate to prove “ties” to Russia.
That would be my call as well. In the age of Google, there is simply no justification for it, and if it’s laziness rather than incompetence, well, I don’t give a rip.
If Mueller has anything about attempts to undermine our democratic process, it’s long past time that it was produced without regard to how it affects investigations into porn stars and tax compliance. Is the President of the United States a spy? Withholding the answer to that puts Mueller in the company of the people who directed our security forces to stand down during the campaign, and the Democrats who promoted Trump as a credible candidate in the first place.
Was not the leak of that Access Hollywood tape an attempt to undermine the democratic process?
‘All About Paul Manafort Hooterville Gazette’ made me snort-laugh. That’s about the level of the ‘smoking guns’ have sunk to.
No, you are not being too harsh, not at all. This is shameful conduct, but people are so obsessed with Getting Trump that they can’t see how bad it is…
They see how bad it is, they simply no longer care. Any price will be paid to return power to the Swamp
This is and always has been about a propaganda based soft coup. I try to ignore it as much as possible, lest I be driven to an even deeper sense of despair.
This is by far the most consequential ethics train wreck of them all resulting from the aftermath of the 2016 elections.
In the words of God to Moses in Exodus 32:7, “Go, get thee down; for thy people, which thou broughtest out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves.” In this case, “thy people” are the media, and the golden calf they worship is the hatred of Trump, and the lust to remove and punish him for daring to challenge the media’s anointed one, Hillary Clinton. It is fairly possible for the mind’s eye to see them dancing and cavorting about it as the Hebrews did at the foot of Mount Sinai in The Ten Commandments by Cecil B. DeMille.
As our free press is no longer fulfilling its role as a reporter of fact, the our constitutional republic is now challenged to find an alternative. At this point, there is no obvious substitute, although it does seem clear that most Americans, for a variety of reasons, no longer trust the press and media to fairly report the facts.
As much as I have condemned social media and the evil of corporate censorship it has wrought, the Internet itself could be the savior of our republic, ultimately. Beyond social media, the Internet is still mostly free. Will it be enough? I don’t know.
The climax to this drama is yet to come, I reckon. This is but “another brick in the wall,” to paraphrase Pink Floyd, but in this case on the tomb of the once-mighty American media establishment. At some point, enough bricks will be laid, and the end will come, at least to the press and media we know today.
As nature abhors a vacuum, something will replace it. Let’s hope it fares better, for it could hardly fare worse.
Wow! A very vivid and apt allegory, Glen!
Before retirement, I dealt with local / regional news media regularly in an “agency spokesperson” role. I regularly saw “weak and lazy” reporting at that level over twenty years ago, but have gradually witnessed that affliction spread up the journalistic food chain to the bigger markets and national media. This descent has certainly been kicked into overdrive by “Trump hate,” but is not entirely dependent on it, or confined to political reporting generally. Given the obsolescence of traditional print media and the cost barriers to entering broadcast journalism markets, I share your hope for some dependable internet media presence to emerge from this mess, but I am not overly optimistic.
But what would motivate such widespread apathy in a profession like journalism? That’s what makes me wonder if it’s really “weak and lazy” or rather deliberately deceptive and intentionally misleading?
Around here, we are big believers in Hanlon’s razor, but my adherence to it is being strained daily by this never-ending drumbeat of media self-corruption.
I share your lack of optimism, or at least, I am skeptical as of now.
Education, in part. I remember Jane Pauley giving an interview about how many books she was required to read when she was in college. She related how present-day professors lament that they can barely get their students to read one or two. And that interview was about 20 years ago. I can’t imagine it’s gotten any better.
So, students don’t want to learn, professors want to indoctrinate, colleges want high graduation rates. The result is a lazy, ignorant population of college graduates with worthless degrees.
Do you suppose, perhaps, that it really isn’t that the students don’t want to learn, but rather that professors don’t want to teach — they would rather indoctrinate as a substitute for teaching?
After all, wasn’t it Noriyuki “Pat” Morita as Mr. Miyagi who once told Daniel, “Teacher say, student do”? Do you suppose, perhaps, that the reluctance of the students to learn is directly related to the reluctance of the instructors to teach?
Seems logical to me.
Some teachers are bad, true. Some just want to teach from the book or pass on their own beliefs; but there are some – who are leaving the profession – who feel stymied by administrative control and a lack of accountability on the part of students endorsed by parents. Maybe we should be asking why parents allow their children to get away with the bare minimum without expecting more. Those lazy students produce lazy teachers.
Perhaps. Unfortunately, not being a parent, I am unqualified to comment on the state of child rearing as it relates to industriousness on the part of kids these days.
I hear this all the time as a common theme. By what percentage of teachers are bad? When dealing with a group of freshmen once, an administrator tried to give me this excuse (well, there are some bad teachers). I asked them how many bad teachers in a row it would have taken to produce the students we had just seen. We came to the answer of not one good teacher in 6 years. So, to be generous, I would say that 80% of the teachers are bad. You show how out of touch you are when you mention books. They generally don’t use books anymore.
Judging by the book rental still charged in Indiana through high school, they are using books, though probably fewer than in the past. But, by teaching from the book, I’m actually referring to those teachers who either don’t understand their subject and rely solely on the book to communicate with the students (ala poor overwhelmed Stonewall Jackson) or who simply need to get their students high scores on standardized tests. Perhaps, a better example would have been those who teach to the test.
Currently, I have noticed school districts removing books from the classroom. This is mainly so the parents can’t find out what is being taught in the classroom. One example is in ‘Algebra II’, they were only teaching how to solve linear equations (the second half of Algebra I). In ‘Trigonometry’, they were teaching complementary angles at the end of the year (Geometry). If your ‘Trigonometry’ student came home with a Geometry textbook, you would catch on. If your ‘Algebra II’ student came home with an Algebra I book all year, you would catch on. I don’t want to know what else is being taught. It is interesting that, although AOC’s high school has 90+% pass rates on the New York State Regents’ exams in almost every subject, it’s pass rate in history is only ~50%. I guess that is what happens when you teach Soviet-style history.
“ the end will come, at least to the press and media we know today.”
If the media is very lucky (meaning they fail in their goal to push us into a hot civil war, after initiating a cold one) that end will not be in front of a pockmarked wall, with the offer of a blindfold and cigarette (or should they be offered a vape instead?)
Oddly enough, should the media get what they think they want (socialist takeover) they stand a good chance at the same end, given historical evidence.
Truly blind, our American media
Heh. Well, I suspect it will be more with a whimper than a bang. 🙂
I hadn’t thought about that, but I think you may well be right.
It’s all Edward G Robinsons fault. He started this.
That bastard. Oh, wait, or is it mother[expletive omitted], the current hotness?
The names aren’t even close! They identified completely different people. How do you write a news article about something this important and publish the wrong names?
It’s laziness and lack of attention to detail, likely motivated by partisan bias. Why check your facts when the facts you publish support your agenda? Why not rush a hit piece on a Presidential candidate based on a questionable source if it could elect Al Gore instead of George Bush? The means justify the ends, right? As long as it goes to print, no problem! Everybody else is lazy. Everybody else brushes off minor errors. Everyone else rushes through their work.
Why bother to fact-check a 900 page biography of LBJ before it’s published so that you don’t tell readers that Hitler died on April 7 (instead of April 30) and that Thomas Marshall was Warren Harding’s vice president (when he was actually Woodrow Wilson’s)?
Sorry…I’m 440 pages into that book and am annoyed as all get out over easily verifiable information like that being wrong.
This morning, the book includes LBJ’s speech to Congress following JFK’s assassination, “Let us turn away from the fanatics of the far left and the far right, from the apostles of bitterness and bigotry, from those defiant of law and those who pour venom into our Nation’s bloodstream.” (Yes, I fact-checked to make sure the quote was correct. If the author can’t get dates right, what else is wrong?)
Oh, if only America would reject the partisan extremists that feed on misinformation. If only there were someone to urge us to appeal to our better angels.
A.M. Golden wrote, “How do you write a news article about something this important and publish the wrong names?”
They proven time after time that they don’t give a damn about truth or accuracy, all they want to do is set fire to the emotions of their base with another daily political hit jobs. It’s dual purpose insidious propaganda, it’s subversion to incite sedition! Once the emotions have been set on fire by the propaganda it becomes completely irrelevant if they have to correct false information, the fired up emotions remain all they have to do is continue to pour gasoline on the fire and eventually their base will erupt.
This is going to sound rather extreme.
All this hive-minded anti-Trump, anti-Republican, anti-Conservative, anti-logic, anti-common sense, anti-reality, anti-truth, anti-rational thinking, anti-history, anti-white, anti-police, anti-civility, intentionally intimidating political correctness, etc, etc, etc is NOT a coincidence and has not come to pass simply because President Trump was elected (well maybe just the anti-Trump part). Some of these things were put into play during the Obama administration. Something’s afoot behind all the attacks and intentionally misleading propaganda emanating from the far left in the United States of America.
I beginning to seriously think that the DOJ should start a special counsel investigation into direct and indirect collusion to commit sedition and subversion against the United States of America by the DNC and top Democratic Party leaders and the far left leaning media, especially CNN and the New York Times, for the purpose of a soft coup. This proposed investigation should include prominent leaders of Black Lives Matters and prominent outspoken “leaders” of the social justice warrior cult that’s infected the social ethic and moral core of our society. From my vantage point in the heart of an irrational Liberal bubble surrounded by a sea of mid-west reality I smell the pungent stench of coordinated collusion between these seemingly autonomous groups to take down everything that makes us the United States of America.
I don’t fully understand all the legalities about doing something like this or how to do it so it’s Constitutional and not just a political hit job like the Democrats are doing to those they oppose but it’s time for the dots to be connected and prominent heads to roll.
I think it would be more accurate for me to have written, “From my vantage point in the heart of an irrational Progressive bubble…”
In my opinion, this is very unlikely and appears to be legally impossible. The law covering seditious conspiracy (18 USC 2384) has the following elements:
– Conspiracy to overthrow, put down or to destroy;
– by force
– the government of the United states…
The “by force” element is present throughout the statute, and wouldn’t cover merely advocating for a government overthrow.
The Smith Act could be applied, but is moribund and emasculated by Yates v. United States, and would probably today be overturned on free speech grounds.
I don’t think we can apply criminal laws to the media like that, so I don’t think probable cause would exist for such an investigation.
I sympathize, but our laws simply do not cover this situation, according to my reading and previous rulings of the Supreme Court.
I understand your argument but I think you need to pay attention to the use of the word “or” in the Code.
18 U.S. Code § 2384 – Seditious conspiracy
If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.
I did. I think “by force” is intended to modify all predicates, not just “destroy. “The rest of the statute appears to bear that out, using “by force” to modify thnks like oppose, prevent, delay, etc.
Glenn Logan wrote, “I think “by force” is intended to modify all predicates, not just “destroy.”
I honestly think you re reading that part incorrectly.
I’m not a lawyer, so I can’t say with absolute confidence. Maybe you’re right, but the way the rest of the statute reads, I don’t think so.
Glenn Logan wrote, “…the way the rest of the statute reads, I don’t think so.”
You and I have differing opinions on that too, I got the exact opposite impression from the rest of the wording. I offer to support my opinion these phrases. When they are applying the word force to multiple things they intentionally placed it in front of the list like these two instances…
“by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States”
…plus they used to word force in another instance with a singular application…
“or to oppose by force the authority thereof”
I think they are being very specific about how they used the word force and the word or; but like you, that’s just my opinion.
And the last word is yours. Thanks for the engagement.
Glenn Logan wrote, “Thanks for the engagement.”
You’re welcome.
We should have a formal grammar for writing laws (or at least a “best practices” document to give our lawmakers. Otherwise you end up with stuff like this: https://www.npr.org/2017/03/23/521274657/the-10-million-lawsuit-that-hinges-on-an-oxford-comma
Heh. If only.
Glenn Logan wrote, “I don’t think we can apply criminal laws to the media like that, so I don’t think probable cause would exist for such an investigation.
I sympathize, but our laws simply do not cover this situation, according to my reading and previous rulings of the Supreme Court.”
I think you’re probably correct.
Maybe this is a job for a genuinely ethical investigative journalist to uncover. Someone has got to start connecting the dots and show the public what’s happening behind the scenes.
Sharyl Atkisson, your office on line 1. 🙂
Zoltar: “Something’s afoot behind all the attacks and intentionally misleading propaganda emanating from the far left in the United States of America.”
You know, Z, at this very moment, Alizia is preparing a 20 page response to you…. 😉
Willem Reese wrote, “You know, Z, at this very moment, Alizia is preparing a 20 page response to you….”
Twenty pages would sincerely be an impressive accomplishment even by Alizia’s standards of blather. Personally I don’t care one bit what Alizia writes and she is well aware of that fact.
I have always wondered why business contacts in the Ukraine were linked to the Kremlin when Ukraine is closer to the west and is in conflict with Russia
Here’s Max Boot’s eager take on all this:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/01/09/collusion-case-against-trump-just-got-lot-stronger/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.6ec3a8803241
For anyone unaware, Max Boot is among the most deranged of the Trump Deranged from the “right” side of the political spectrum. He’s sought to capitalize on cozying up to Leftists who hate Trump (but I repeat myself) by attacking everything Trump does as he does it. It’s hard to take him seriously as much of his anti-Trump derangement feels like it’s partially motivated to salvage his rapidly waning relevance in the conservative movement that enjoyed a flash in the pan surge in the mid 2000s.
I saw a tweet from that Silver guy saying the polling info alleged to have been passed around covertly was readily available to any and every one.
I’ve decided that henceforth, whenever I’m discussing politics with lefties, rather than referring to the current President by name, I’m simply going to call him “the motherfucker.”
Maybe my political thought is too shallow, but someone mentioning a (presumably amusing ones about ring bologna consumption among Clinton supporters) result of some election poll to an acquaintance in ANY country fails to be alarming. (Hey, Aristotle, that business blow-hard has lapped the governor of New Jersey. Who would have placed a bet on that in Monte Carlo last year? Think that will affect tariffs?)
Of course, the world will be interested in our elections, we’re a multiple personality superpower. They’d be stupid not to. Many polls get trumpeted out and many others have a short shelf life. Two years later it’s irrelevant.
I noticed Jack used “The Ukraine.” That was what the country was called years ago. And it was also called “Ukrainia” at times, as I recall. It’s now simply “Ukraine,” evidently like the way M.C. Hammer wanted to be called “Hammer.” I was scolded not too long ago by my half Ukrainian, half Italian buddy for using “the Ukraine.” Not sure why. But forewarned is forearmed, Jack.
And then there’s my Russian friend who assured me all Ukrainians really consider themselves Russians rather than Ukrainians. “Moose and squirrel must die!”
And by the way, the comment by the Russian friend made the Uke/Italian friend seethe.
I have Argentinian, Uruguayan, and Chilean friends. I’ve learned not to talk about borders when all of them are at the same table (which actually means I never skip the opportunity to bring it up when they’re together).
Hah!
I don’t believe that little nation (by whatever name) will long survive. They seem to be as corrupt as mother russia, without the enormous military to make it irrelevant.
Can you imagine the USA losing a chunk of the our territory (say, a state) to a foreign power and not totally losing our shit?
There is also a controversy in the Russian language as to witch preposition one uses with Ukraine. The classic is to say in Russian “на Украине” (na ooh-krah-ee-neh), which is literally “on the Ukraine’, kind of like you put something on the table, or “в Украине” (v ooh-krah-ee-neh) which is “in Ukraine”. Some Ukrainians would get very upset if you call them basically Russians, while others might ambivalently agree. It’s a very touchy thing, especially with the ultra-nationalism that is being promoted right now in Ukraine on a govt level.
Thanks, Aleksei. I guess it’s a translation thing. As a kid, I assumed “The Ukraine” was akin to saying “The Plains” or “The Savannah.” Of course, the other interesting one is Belarus. Wasn’t that translated as “Yellow Russia” not so very long ago? Was that a mangling of “BE-YELL-O-ROOS[YA]?” And wasn’t Russia Russia called “White Russia?” Very confusing for us kids growing up on this side of the Iron Curtain.
Yeah, Belarus does mean White Rus/Russia/Ruthenia. There is also a Black Rus and Red Rus, which are parts of modern Belarus and Ukraine.
But how long has the media been this corrupt? There is a lot of evidence that this has been going on for decades, at least 80 years.
We have the New York Times intentionally covering up Stalin’s atrocities to promote him to their hip readership.
We have Walter Cronkite intentionally reporting outright lies about the Tet Offensive to force the US out of a war. What is the difference between that and treason?
https://nationalinterest.org/commentary/cronkites-vietnam-blunder-7185
How is this different from what we see today? It isn’t. The difference is that now we have alternate news sources. It is easier to become a journalist and ‘news’ isn’t controlled by a small monopoly of leftists. This also explains why YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Patreon, and PayPal are on a singleminded mission to eliminate the alternate press.
There is no evidence that the MSM is different today than it was 50 years ago. The only difference is that they are no longer the gatekeepers of information.
Another COTD, Michael. You really know how to pack a punch.
As I have gotten older, I have become more suspicious of what ‘everyone knows is true’. When I find that someone has been lying to me, I immediately start to wonder how long they have been lying to me. “The press has really become biased” or have they been biased for a long time and we just didn’t know it? “The Democratic Party and Republican Party switched sides instantaneously in the 1970’s because…reasons” or have they had the same basic policies the whole time, just changed tactics? “We have to have multiculturalism because of its many advantages” or are there no real advantages to society from multiculturalism and the only reason it is being promoted is to destroy American society in preparation for a Communist or Fascist takeover? These questions can go on and on. Basically, I was fed a bunch of dogma by my leftist schoolteachers, I started questioning things when I encountered full-on Political Correctness in college, realizing that the ‘tolerant’ are actually intolerant and the ‘evil Nazis’ actually believed in freedom and liberty, and now try to scrutinize everything I am told to believe. It has taken me a long time to admit that almost everything I was taught about society was a lie and I am continually surprised by how much of the lies I am still guilty of believing. I mean, should I really be surprised that the New York Times has consistently promoted a pro-Communist, anti-America agenda for close to 100 years? I shouldn’t have been, but I was.
During what years did you attend college?
In an older post, you wrote about this.
https://ethicsalarms.com/2019/01/09/morning-ethics-warm-up-1-9-18-the-speech-the-slur-the-secret-laws-the-shameful-dance/
And who were the “conservatives” who attempted this alleged idiotic shaming campaign? All anyone can find is a single tweet from someone called “Anonymous.” That’s it, along wth some retweets. That was enough for the mainstream media to hang an entire false narrative.
All the Russians are accused of doing is sharing truthful information. How is that worse?
But that’s not ALL they are accused of. Don’t forget the fake Facebook stories…
So who has credibility complaining about the Russians sharing fake Facebook stories?
Not the media.
I think the quantity of anti-Trump and anti-Republican intentionally slanderous and libelous propaganda “statements” from the political left is absolutely astounding. This isn’t simply ideological differences of opinions, the vast majority of words and print from the political left is false spoken or written defamation or intentionally misleading lies for the purpose of intentionally damaging reputations and make it impossible for Republicans to do their job. When are these people going to be sued?
The political left is trying to destroy their opposition. What’s going to happen when the political left figures out that propaganda, rhetoric, and lies won’t effectively complete the job of neutering Conservatives?
I think it’s only a matter of time before it becomes completely acceptable in our transforming society for these Marxist minded people to publicly threaten their opposition and confront anyone that opposes their ideological social shift with direct physical force and it will be rationalized with a massive propaganda campaign as the equivalent to stopping evil.
Here is how the political left see’s the political right…
You mean like what’s going on in Portland, where Antifa is doing this very thing with the tacit approval of the government?
So, in a word, yeah. I think you’re right.
How can they not expect retaliation?
I’m glad you brought up Hootervill:, Jack, Crella. I thought everyone had forgotten about it. Once, Hooterville lay at the corner of Petticoat Junction and Green Acres, a respectable town of gentle kindly folk and garrulous, hard-working farmers, located in the American midwest (sometimes mistook for “the South”), and deep in the hearts of its countrymen. And womenfolk, too, some of whom spoke with a charming Hungarian accent. It’s abandoned now, a ghost town with virtual trolley tracks rusting down its dusty middle, and the remains of a station the once-mighty Cannonball would stop at, occasionally, for no particular reason, and it’s tilted gravestones hinting the untold stories of all its black, chicano, arab, italitan, inuit, asian, indian and Indian citizens who never appeared in public … and the iPhones they never lived to use and update regularly. A wounded and wonderful story of yore, oft told around the fireside “from Fri til Monday”.
Lots of sloppy reporting and wishful thinking but methinks Jack you protest too much. At some stage we should find out why the Trump team were sharing polling data with foreign powers. Should you not hold your anger until you see Mueller’s report, or however much of it we are ‘allowed’ to see?
Huh? It was not “the Trump team,” but one short-term campaign manager, who shared, maybe, polling data with people he was working with on unrelated activities. “Polling data” could be found on the web. Ukraine was not and is not suspected of any activities regarding the election. Showing polling data to foreign nationals or governments is not a crme, nor unethical, not even suspicious. You might as well raise an eyebrow because Manafort showed polling data to the Boy Scouts, or his aunt.
I’m not protesting enough. Your comment resembles the desperate ones on other sites, by people who are so desperate to see some evidnece of wrong doing that they project their dreams on nothing/ I know why they are doing it—they are unhinged. Why would you?
More to the point, why would it be bad to share polling data with the Ukraine?
Even more to the point, what’s wrong with sharing polling data with anyone on Earth? It’s semi-worthless anyway.
Semi-worthless?? That’s clearly not how Paul Manafort and his ‘clients’ see it. We are seeing a whole new world of political manipulation emerging, and the key tools are highly targeted messaging, sophisticated polling and social media. Where this goes, and what has already been achieved, are unclear as yet. Hopefully Mueller will help us work this out. Even more hopefully, maybe then we should be able to calmly address what if anything should be done.
Jack you frequently lecture us that it is the ‘intent’ that matters for ethics, rather than the result. So whether the relevant data was ‘semi-worthless’ or not, why was it being shared with foreign and historically hostile powers? I stress we don’t know as yet, but you must surely smell some of the stench? And even if you don’t, it is at least uncharitable for you to attack those who do.
Jack you frequently lecture us that it is the ‘intent’ that matters for ethics, rather than the result.
Never. What matters is the validity of the decision and whether it was made using valid ethical analysis. That’s not “intent.” “Intent” is never pure, and hard to quantify anyway. What matters isn’t the intent, nor the result. What matters is the conduct.
Why is collusion with a foreign country worse than the media influencing public opinion via slanted coverage?