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The guardian reports on a sobering event in Washington DC.
US police have arrested a man wielding an assault rifle who entered a pizza restaurant that was the target of fake news reports it was operating a child abuse ring led by Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and her top campaign aide.
[...] The suspect entered the restaurant and pointed a gun at a restaurant employee, who fled and notified authorities, police said. The man then discharged the weapon inside the restaurant. There were no injuries.
[...] [Police] said the suspect during an interview with investigators revealed that he came to the establishment to "self-investigate" Pizzagate, the police statement said. Pizzagate is a baseless conspiracy, which falsely claims Clinton and her campaign chief John Podesta were running a child sex ring from the restaurant's backrooms.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 06 2016, @12:35PM
Meanwhile, the "real" news has US Marines about to invade Russia. It has Travon Martins murderer as a white guy who shot a 7 year old because "he looks black." It has Ahmed the clock boy as the victim of racism instead of the balloon boy son of an Islamic activist. It has Hillary winning the election in a landslide because Trump supporters are racist misogynists. Mainstream media is the ultimate echo chamber of fake news.
It's all made up. The whole "fake news" topic is the mainstream medias last denial to come to terms with the fact that they have been making up the news for years and in November 2016, Americans called them out on it.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 06 2016, @12:57PM
If you believe that what you wrote is how those things were reported, then you are part of the problem.
And the idiots who voted you up as insightful, god damn.
The blame is squarely on the "right" who, time and time and again, prove that they couldn't be more wrong.
Here's the quote from Karl Rove disparaging the "reality-based community"
The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." ... "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 06 2016, @01:18PM
"Fake News" article [thebarentsobserver.com]
Original CNN Article [cnn.com]
Editor's note:The headline and first paragraph of this article were updated on December 1, 2016 to reflect that the exercises took place some distance from Norway's border with Russia, outside the town of Bardufoss.
So it looks like it took about 30 seconds of research to figure out that CNN's frightening video (aired on 1 December at lunchtime) and accompanying article were complete bullshit and that this is a joint exercise that happens every single year. But omg Trump.
And it looks like it took "Fake News" to make CNN issue somewhat of a retraction, except instead of saying "the extreme other end of the country as far away from Russia as is possible," they did a "I'm still not wrong" by saying "some distance from the border."
But have fun keeping the for profit media as your sole trustworthy source of everything. It's written for people like you. I'm sure Jill Stein will uncover that Hillary victory the media told you would happen as well, despite the fact all three recounts have yielded a widening gap in votes for Trump making it seem like the voter fraud actually went in Hillary's favor.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 06 2016, @01:30PM
Let me get this straight.
You are complaining that an obscure story was published with a minor error that was not only corrected, but the correction was noted at the top of the story?
Really?
Really?
That's what you consider a persuasive damning of the lügenpresse?
When the standard is 100% perfection, you guarantee 100% failure because if 99% accuracy and 0% accuracy are morally equal, pretty soon all the people who care about doing the best job they can will give up since there work isn't valued. And then, all that's left are those who are fine with 0% accuracy.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 06 2016, @01:49PM
Clearly your post cannot be trusted because you wrote "there" where "their" would be correct. That demonstrates that you are clearly not caring about accuracy, so we have to assume that whatever you wrote is inaccurate, and therefore not to be trusted. So obviously you are just spreading lies. ;-)
(Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday December 06 2016, @03:15PM
Obscure story? WTF? WW3 isn't an obscure possibility, or an obscure story. WTF? CNN apparently wrote the story to imply that Russia was moving on Norway, as a consequence of Trump's election. Did you bother to READ?
"The story was published at 10.11 GMT on November 30. When the Barents Observer checked the portal around noon Norwegian time, the misleading headline was still top story. Lt Col Skogmo says CNN’s reporter was contacted 06.30 in morning to get the headline changed. At 12.12 GMT on December 1st, CNN took action and updated the story with a new headline. 30 hours after first published."
Misleading stories are misleading stories. CNN is to damned big for any damned fool to be calling it an obscure publication. A large segment of the world depends on CNN for their news. Or, at least a large segment of the US population, and a smaller portion of the world population.
The BEST that can be said of CNN, is that they sensationalised a routine story to alarm their readers. That is the BEST that can be said. We can say much worse.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 06 2016, @03:26PM
> CNN apparently wrote the story to imply that Russia was moving on Norway, as a consequence of Trump's election. Did you bother to READ?
Did you? Because what the article actually says is that Norway is afraid that Trump is going to back out of NATO.
Calm your hysteria dude.
> Misleading stories are misleading stories.
NO That's the same bullshit black and white thinking that enables the worst lies.
Everybody makes mistakes. To err is human. Legitimate news organizations publish corrections. Malicious publishers just double down.
As long as you can't, or won't, distinguish between those who make a good faith effort and those who deliberately mislead, then you are collaborating with the liars.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Tuesday December 06 2016, @04:57PM
Everybody makes mistakes.
But some repeatedly make mistakes that benefit themselves or favor some side.
As long as you can't, or won't, distinguish between those who make a good faith effort and those who deliberately mislead, then you are collaborating with the liars.
Heal thyself, physician.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 06 2016, @05:13PM
> But some repeatedly make mistakes that benefit themselves or favor some side.
That's the story of your entire posting history.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday December 06 2016, @05:42PM
WW3 isn't an obscure possibility, or an obscure story.
I don't see anything about World War 3. I see discussion of a new "Cold War." In case you don't remember, the OLD "Cold War" wasn't World War 3 either. It mostly consisted of a bunch of posturing on both sides, and the only warfare happened mostly through third-parties and confusing alliances in remote countries. I don't mean to underestimate how dire it was, but there's a big difference between implying an ongoing Cold War (which, guess what -- we do basically STILL have in some respects) vs. the onslaught of WW3.
CNN apparently wrote the story to imply that Russia was moving on Norway, as a consequence of Trump's election.
I don't see any evidence of that. I see a headline that implied the U.S. was making a posturing maneuver on a border. There's no mention of "Trump's election" anywhere in the story. And these sorts of stories are NOTHING NEW, since various countries in Eastern Europe ARE concerned about possible Russian invasions and actions, and they were scared BEFORE the election.
From CNN (2/26/2015): Norway: There's no more normality with Russia [cnn.com], which interviewed the Norwegian defense minister on escalating tensions with Russia
From CNN (2/18/2016): U.S. stationing tanks and artillery sent to Norway [cnn.com]
From CNN (10/18/2016, updated 10/24/2016): Norway welcomes US Marines amid Russian tensions [cnn.com]
And it's not just Norway. See, for example, CNN (10/28/2016): Lithuania issues manual on what to do if Russia invades [cnn.com], where Lithuania published a manual on defense in the event of invasion, which -- as the story notes -- is the THIRD TIME Lithuania has published such a manual since Russia's invasion of Crimea. Again, the story contains interviews with the secretary of defense from that country.
There's a LOT of tension in Eastern Europe over Russia, and it has nothing to do with the election of Trump. These are ongoing stories. I see no evidence in your quoted story or elsewhere that the publication of this story (or its error) had ANYTHING to do with Trump.
"The story was published at 10.11 GMT on November 30. When the Barents Observer checked the portal around noon Norwegian time, the misleading headline was still top story. Lt Col Skogmo says CNN’s reporter was contacted 06.30 in morning to get the headline changed. At 12.12 GMT on December 1st, CNN took action and updated the story with a new headline. 30 hours after first published."
A lot is unclear in this paragraph. On what day did the Barents Observe "check the portal around noon Norwegian time"? What time zone is "06.30 in morning to get the headline changed"? The most obvious reading of this paragraph is that the Norwegians contacted CNN at either 06.30 GMT or Norwegian time on December 1st, and CNN changed the headline about 6 hours later. Also, I'm not sure who performed the math that claims "12.12 GMT on 12/1 minus 10.11 GMT on 11/30" = 30 hours, since that looks clearly like 26 hours to me.
I'm not trying to quibble here -- just point out that your own source is ALSO exaggerating for some reason. Are you going to call them out for their error, too?? And why did it take the Norwegians something like 20 hours to get around to contacting CNN, if, as Col. Skogmo is reported in your link, he "had a busy day" apparently fielding questions from media? If they were that concerned about the incorrect info, and they were concerned about how it was spreading to other media sources, why did THEY not act sooner?
Or is Col. Skogmo in on your conspiracy theory, too?!
The BEST that can be said of CNN, is that they sensationalised a routine story to alarm their readers.
Or somebody made a legitimate geographical mistake. Or the reporter got it right but somebody along the chain of editing tried to "punch it up" a bit and misread the distance or location. Even with the 24 hour news cycle, it frequently takes several hours for retractions or corrections to made -- I agree with you that this was a clear error and it should not have taken so long. But given that such delays are COMMONPLACE if you actually pay attention to news cycles and how corrections tend to be made, I think it's reaching quite a bit to summarily assume the delay was strategic, let alone had anything to do with Trump.
Furthermore, the outrage in your article mostly seems to come from the claim that NATO is never allowed to exercises near the Russian border. So that supposedly made the story much more inflammatory. But it's doubtful that such intent could be ascribed to a CNN reporter who made a geographical error -- they didn't know where the border was in relation to the exercises, but they supposedly knew about a policy hatched 50 years ago about Norwegian-Russian relations?
Or -- MAYBE -- CNN did have this complex plot to get everyone worked up, and delayed fixing the story for a few hours after it took nearly a day for the Norwegians to contact them about fixing it. To what end? To start WW3?!? Apparently, according to you, to get people more worked up about Trump, even though he isn't even mentioned in the coverage. Why?
Anyhow -- whatever you may think here -- let's be clear on one thing: CNN *did* publish a correction. Actual "fake news" sites don't do that, because they don't care about facts at all. They make them up. That's what actually makes "fake" news.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday December 06 2016, @08:36PM
That the last "cold war" didn't end human civilization, and possibly humanity, is down to shear luck, and some brave Russian soldiers who defied launch orders. And we were at one point 30 seconds from a US initiated WWIII. That we still exist is one of the reasons I believe in the multiverse, as by any rational calculation we would have killed ourselves off by now. How we will be able to avoid it with nuclear arms spreading (slowly, but spreading) is something ... well, in SOME branch of the multiverse we'll survive, but expect most of your futures to experience destruction. All we can hope to do is to change the probabilities of what the future will hold.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 06 2016, @09:14PM
is down to shear luck,
"Yes, these are my lucky scissors, why do you ask?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 06 2016, @05:53PM
I did bother to read both the links and neither one of them say any such thing. Did you bother to read the links? Closer to the mark, it appears that Norway is now worried about Trump's apparent wavering commitment to honor a decades-old NATO alliance.
No, the sensationalism is coming from you and your Trump-supporting buddies. Next time, you would do well to read for content. You embarrass yourself (again!) when you make it obvious that you don't understand what is being discussed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 06 2016, @05:43PM
I read the links you posted. Did you? Because it appears that you have misunderstood what these articles are telling you. Nick Paton Walsh wrote a story about (yearly?) military exercises in Norway that US soldiers participate in. The story also includes a discussion about patrols on the Russian border by Norwegian soldiers; the intent appears to be to underline why these exercises are so important. Somehow, you--and, presumably some other Trumpsters--erroneously conflated the two vignettes as meaning that Paton Walsh was reporting that US soldiers were holding their exercises on the Russian border. It appears that you are the one spewing bullshit here.
Protip: before you go flying off the handle like that, you should really make sure you understand what is being discussed. Otherwise you end up looking like a know-nothing doofus.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Tuesday December 06 2016, @02:44PM
How is that a "right wing" thing when it is the same behavior in left wing areas like college campus LARPing?
Obviously when the right was in charge you'll get more people paying attention to a right guy saying how everyone in power acts. Or when the left is in momentary charge they get the same attention and the same observation can be made about Hillary and her Benghazi adventure, for example. Or Obama's policy toward ISIS or for that matter Russia?
Its more a design pattern of power and authoritarianism where you only researched one dude from one side but everyone does it.
A good analogy would be the time Bush puked on the president of Japan and trying to spread a narrative that puking on people is right wing or maybe even alt-right "literally hitler". But in reality everyone pukes sooner or later even people not in positions of political power. Or think of leftie Hollywood "college movie trope" for example, so clearly it don't mean nothing. Although it is a true observation that everyone pukes or everyone holding propaganda power tends to use it.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 06 2016, @06:45PM
You're trying to conflate a game, where everyone involved knows its fake and not real and has no impact on reality, with people pushing fake news onto others as if its true with the intent of having everyone believe that its factually correct and describes whats occurring in reality?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 06 2016, @09:47PM
Its crazy, right?
What could possibly lead someone to make that kind of equivalency?
All I can come up with is debilitating mental illness.
(Score: 2) by tynin on Tuesday December 06 2016, @10:29PM
VLM, buddy, their are some crazy hardcore right-wingers out LARPing as well. And by some, I mean, the divide looks a lot like how this country ends up voting.
Then again, you are responding to an AC who's modded Troll... and the more I re-read your's, I'm getting a lot of Troll out of it too.
Indeed, after the 3rd re-read, I'm actually enjoying and laughing at the obviousness of it. Touche!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 06 2016, @10:37PM
Read his other posts.
Either he's dedicated to trolling at a near-superhuman level.
Or he's telling you exactly what he believes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 07 2016, @08:25AM
The difference being one side lost the election to a tv reality star (really, that's one for the record books), and the other imploded upon impact.
At the moment, the absolute best critiques of Trump aren't coming from the left, but from old stalwart conservatives like Ben Shapiro. Let that sink in for a bit. One of the previous superstars of the "fake news" galaxy is doing some of the most incisive analysis of the problems with Trump.
You realize then how inconsequential the left, the MSM, and most of this mewling about fake news is. This is the last gasps of a failed ideology demanding attention while the rest of the world has moved on.
But wait, there's more-
What's worse is the left can't even get some reflected glory because that would mean sharing the street with conservatives, independents, libertarians, and moderates; and would bring into sharp focus the lefts' absence when the complaints about Obama were taking place.
The liberals' nightmare has finally come true- the country is right and further right. Liberalism is dead (at least in its current incarnation), and this fake news bit is nothing more than a last bid to maintain some relevance while the rest of us set the body on fire.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday December 06 2016, @01:05PM
That is what it is. It's the thrashing of a dying institution. I surveyed "left" sites the past several days, reading the comments. They believe Trump won because the media gave him too much attention. Nevertheless, they've lost faith in the media, too. So the media have lost everyone across the perceived political divide and now they're desperate to differentiate themselves with this "fake news" meme. It's absurd.
They've phoned it in for 20 years, gutting their newsrooms and simply plucking pieces off the AP Wire and passing them off as their own. They hoped nobody would notice and they could pump up their share prices for a bit. Then they gambled everything on their annointed one and lost.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 06 2016, @01:10PM
> Then they gambled everything on their annointed one and lost.
As if genuine human imperfection is the equivalent of deliberate lie telling.
You've always struck me as a right-winger in sheeps clothes.
I guess it should be no surprise you are so quick to apply a facile explanation that is in itself a kind of conspiracy to gloss over a complex problem.
(Score: 2) by rondon on Tuesday December 06 2016, @01:19PM
Hope you got a big pile of stones in that glass house, cuz it sure is fun watching you throw them from out here...
Enjoy your petty one-liners from AC land.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 06 2016, @01:33PM
>> As if genuine human imperfection is the equivalent of deliberate lie telling.
>
> Enjoy your petty one-liners from AC land.
Yeah? If that's what you consider too petty to respond to, then the problem is you. I don't live in a glass house, I know I harbor no illusions about my perfection.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by kurenai.tsubasa on Tuesday December 06 2016, @02:23PM
It's pretty easy to come off as “right wing” when you can see the lizard people for what they are. Maybe not actual reptilians from between the 3rd and 4th dimensions here from Thuban to… psychically drain emotional energy, or something—Icke's theory. But close enough.
The MSM was a fucking joke this entire year. There are some false flag theories floating around about this guy who was unhinged enough not to get the joke here. I mean, maybe I'm an oldfag from when /b/ was good (*rolls eyes*), but this is clearly a case of loli haet pizza [encyclopediadramatica.se]. As far as fake news goes it's weak sauce. Some mentally unstable bozo takes a gun there, nobody is injured, and as the Joker noted, everybody loses their minds! But if everything goes “according to plan,” no matter how horrifying that plan is, nobody panics.
I mean, am I supposed to believe that out of all the news organizations out there, none of them felt the need to figure out just why Clinton decided she was “against” TPP? Did they really need to take every last little tweet from the Donald out of context and hyperventilate about it for a whole fucking year?
If we're to believe the Misogynerd Narrative, Trump is the fault of all of us sexually insecure video-game playing assigned males from the internet. But then why did so many womyn-goddamned-born-womyn vote for him? Where was the MSM coverage of Women for Trump?
I'm also still not quite over how blatantly The Advocate decided to illustrate that the homosexual lifestyle is an actual thing! But hey, it makes a lot of shit like The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Angels in America, Rent, and Jonathan Demme's supposed apology for The Silence of the Lambs, Philadelphia, make sense. This is the kind of sexual perversity and diseased human degradation the lizard people want me to believe comes with being born a fag.
And hell, if being “right wing” means that you reject the homosexual lifestyle that the lizard people have prescribed for people who are born homosexual, I guess count me as “right wing” too.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday December 06 2016, @06:10PM
So is it just gay dudes? Because aside from the annoying crowd who are also vegan/vegetarian/what-have-you, I don't see gay women doing things like that beyond the occasional separatist nuts like the TERFs.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Tuesday December 06 2016, @07:24PM
I think so.
This “gay [man] lifestyle” (interesting how the man bit there is completely implied in right-wing fears of the “gay lifestyle”) seems to revolve around the idea that developing GRID/AIDS is a totally normal part of the lifecycle of a gay man to the point we're being asked to accept promiscuous sexual activity leading to disease as a package deal with male homosexuality. If we don't accept the disease, we must be rejecting the idea of homosexuality. Accepting the disease as an inevitability of being born a homosexual man also means accepting that the disease is beyond the realm of personal responsibility.
So if one is a libertarian who prefers to keep disease-free by not being promiscuous (along with safety precautions) despite being homosexual, then what I think The Advocate was saying is that right there is fundamentally incompatible with “gay.”
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday December 06 2016, @07:34PM
Gods, that's a scary thought. I'm too young to remember (and halfway across the country from...) the Castro district, but I know the history. Including, incidentally, all the lesbians who helped the men and never get much credit for it but that's a side story.
So it sounds like the problem here is promiscuity. And, let's be real here, it's two men deciding when to fuck, the answer's gonna be "pretty much whenever we're not sleeping" given how horny men are. Odd thing, though, is this doesn't match the way my gay guy friends act. The one I'm closest to actually has had fewer partners and longer relationships than a few straight men I know.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday December 06 2016, @08:48PM
You're missing a lot of factors. In some countries AIDs was spread more my sharing needles among addicts. In much of Africa it was spread more by widespread prostitution. I AIDs spreads is a social factor, and wealth seems to act as a reasonable prophylactic, though it's certainly not perfect. There *are* documented cases of men getting AIDs and intentionally spreading it as widely as they could, but they weren't all gay. I can't remember whether they did or didn't decide that that counted as assault with a deadly weapon, but the question came up in court.
So quite possibly the cause of the "acceptance of AIDs" by gay men is due to a sense of despair at social rejection, and the resultant feeling that doom is inevitable. But I also doubt that it's really as universal as you're portraying, at least now that AIDs doesn't seem to be an immediate sentence of (delayed) death preceded by months or years of suffering.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 06 2016, @09:53PM
Consider that the AIDS infection rate among adults in South Africa in 2007 was 18.5%.
That's way, way beyond the scope of just gay people.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Tuesday December 06 2016, @06:49PM
Some mentally unstable bozo takes a gun there, nobody is injured, and as the Joker noted, everybody loses their minds!
Yea, I don't know what all the hype is about either. So what a deranged lunatic discharges a gun in a pizzeria because he believed Hillary was raping kids there. Liberal pussies these days, I swear...
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Tuesday December 06 2016, @08:01PM
Deranged lunatics do all kinds of things.
I'm sure it was a terrible situation for the people who were there, and it's probably been hard on the workers.
The part where everybody loses their minds is this scare about “fake news” and online radicalization. The level of bullshit and hysteria is straight out of a Chick Tract [chick.com]. If you play AD&D, Satan will take over your mind! If you read Fake News, the alt-right will take over your mind!
The MSM is writing in the style of Jack Chick with the same level of hysteria lately. It works for similar reasons people believe Dark Dungeons is an accurate depiction of an AD&D session. I'm sure there's some truth to AD&D being a tool of the devil in that there's a correlation between being a young person, being introduced to AD&D, questioning your parents' values, and drugs, sex, rock and roll, etc. I'm not got at classifying fallacies, but in both cases there is a severe confusion about causes and effects. [nizkor.org]
It's just… the whole thing is massive fail.
If “fake news” is such of a huge problem, I feel that the institutional failures that have lead to a populace with so many easily misled people are the real problem to be concerned about.
I mean, what is this? Dueling propaganda machines? Who can crank out the best sounding bullshit on the left and send it into the squared circle against the best sounding bullshit on the right?
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Tuesday December 06 2016, @08:27PM
This is a human condition. People are lazy. This has nothing to do with failure of anything, people just want the fuckin news. And whatever they are fed, they eat so long as it appeals to their palate. Doesn't matter if you took a sample of people from today, 30 or even 100 years ago. They're all lazy. They want to live in an ideal world where they can trust the news and that's that. Besides, they have enough to worry about besides playing Jr detective and Clark Kent, mild mannered reporter.
Yes. That's exactly what this is.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday December 06 2016, @07:35PM
As if genuine human imperfection is the equivalent of deliberate lie telling.
Why do you think this is just about lying? A lot of US media has been blatantly imperfect in more ways than just the telling of lies (such as parroting spoon-fed information from government and other sources). And as to your comment about "deliberate lie telling" all lies are deliberate by definition.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by HiThere on Tuesday December 06 2016, @08:58PM
I attribute the decline in the care for truth to the monopolization of the mainstream media, and the retreat of control over the news to organizational levels where they don't actually deal with it, they only deal with money. I noticed this happening strongly when a local newspaper chain (already it was only weakly controlled by those who cared about news) was bought by a group that had the name of a liquor company, though I didn't bother to find out if that was really their main business. The quality of the news declined rapidly.
OK, so the traditional sources of news have become extremely poor, after being poor. Don't think that people don't notice this, but many people need to believe that they know what's really going on. So when they become disillusioned with the current news ("They can't even get ... right.", where "..." is something that they can check, or already know.) then they go looking for other sources to trust. Some will pick this source, and some that, but the crucial thing about the new source is it doesn't report anything that they can check, so they don't become disillusioned.
Well, that's my theory, and it's why I became disillusioned with the local news. Unfortunately for me I believe in epistemology, and so if a new source reports news that it has no way of knowing, I rapidly become disillusioned with it. So I then to believe mainly technical publications, and those that are careful in their wording when they are reporting that "my theory is that...".
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday December 06 2016, @09:39PM
Hahaha thank you, thank you. I haven't had a laugh like that in a long while.
Whaddya want? I was Lincoln-Douglas, not Policy. You sound like Serious Interpretation, which is two doors down past Mr. Foley's office, on the left.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday December 06 2016, @03:27PM
" I surveyed "left" sites the past several days, reading the comments. They believe Trump won because the media gave him too much attention."
I also believe that. I've mentioned that I listen to a radio talk show out of Houston - Walton and Johnson. All through the election, they observed that the more attention from the media that Trump got, the higher his numbers went. Postive mentions increased his popularity, and negative mentions increased his popularity. No matter what they said, no matter how good or how bad, mentioning Trump seemed to be guaranteed to move him up in the polls.
We can never know whether Trump could have won if the media just ignored him - but I don't really think so.
I could be wrong though.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday December 06 2016, @09:54PM
That's why I thought a year ago that Trump would win, because he understood the media and the zeitgeist much better than the Clintons did. In fact I think I did say that his time in RealityTV taught him all he needed to know about spectacle in today's America.
(I doubted toward the end after the comments to Howard Stern on his show came out, but Comey saved it for him.)
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Tuesday December 06 2016, @03:36PM
There is actually evidence of that: Trump received more media airtime than any other candidate, including Hillary Clinton. For example, one analysis showed he was getting about 4 times as much coverage during the primary as Hillary Clinton, and about 25 times as much coverage as Bernie Sanders. The classic example of this was on Super Tuesday, when all major news networks decided to ignore Bernie Sanders' speech in order to show the room waiting for Trump to speak.
What those left sites don't mention is the full reason why that happened:
1. Trump had people working for him working in some of the media outlets. He certainly wasn't alone in this (see: Donna Brazile).
2. The Clinton campaign pushed Trump as their opponent [wikileaks.org]. This is the part that the left-wing websites try to pretend didn't happen.
In any event, this election is hardly the first time faked news reports have found their way into mainstream media. Some examples of reporters who have been caught "reporting" completely false information: Jeff Gannon, Judith Miller, Brian Williams, Jayson Blair, Juan Thompson, Bill O'Reilly, Lara Logan, Stephen Glass, Steve Doocy.
That's why completely trusting a single un-corroborated source, for anything, is foolish. That's why science isn't considered true unless the idea in question is tested by multiple people, ideally using multiple equipment setups and multiple experimental methods.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday December 06 2016, @04:59PM
Reporters aren't the worst. Leslie Moonves, CEO of CBS, on Donald Trump: "It May Not Be Good for America, but It's Damn Good for CBS." Doesn't sound like a guy dedicated to uncovering the truth and reporting the facts. Does he even care about facts, or is he only interested in drama, only interested in what's easiest to produce and sell?
Les, let us know how it's working out for CBS when The Donald clamps down on your business. How's it feel to be censored, muzzled, and harassed by an organized army of angry, powerful fascists? Think he can't do that? Maybe. Would he do it if he could? What do you think? You'll wish for the good old days when your harassers were a scattering of powerless loonies.
With an attitude like that, he ought to switch to running a tabloid.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 06 2016, @10:31PM
what kind of bs reality do you live in where the msm wasn't already completely owned by the NWO and it's minion the US federal gov?
(Score: 2) by tisI on Wednesday December 07 2016, @02:37AM
These days it's all about the money. Nothing more.
I doubt CBS or any other network will have any worries about entertaining the Donald. Press (ANY) is what feeds his ego.
As long as the airways are full of his mug and mop and the praise is flowing life will be good for them all.
One things for sure with this group, Democracy will be sucking hind tit but Capitalism will be in milk and honey land.
Someone's going to have lots of fun with somebody else's money me'sa thinks.
"Suppose you were an idiot...and suppose you were a member of Congress...but I repeat myself."
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday December 06 2016, @09:02PM
While it's clear that Trump got more coverage than Hillary did, it's not clear that that's why he won. My take is that there were lots of people who liked Trump (though even more hated him), but nobody really liked Hillary. So Hillary lost because a lot of people couldn't stomach voting for her. Many more people hated Trump than hated Hillary, but (nearly) nobody liked her. Both I and my wife felt it was a pity they couldn't both lose, but when we looked at the third party candidates they weren't any better (than Hillary).
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday December 06 2016, @09:53PM
You were far from alone in this [gallup.com]. Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were both in the same league of being hated as Barry Goldwater and George McGovern. Doing some more digging, since Gallup started tracking this in 1956, this was the very first time that both party nominees had a net negative favorability rating - they were both hated more than they were loved, by substantial margins. And that was at the beginning of the general election. It got worse as the race wore on: By early November, both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton had approval ratings were around 40% favorable, 56% unfavorable.
They really both deserved to lose. And anyone who wasn't rooting for Team Democrat or Team Republican realized that.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday December 07 2016, @03:57AM
Well, whose fault was that? I forget what the exact ultimate multiple was, but Hillary outspent Trump by scads. Google's results are all over the map, but it's at least double. So the result she got is after at least doubling his expenditures on advertising. Trump knew how to play the media and Hillary had to pay people great big piles of money to loathe her a little less.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday December 07 2016, @02:51PM
The media's, of course. They shouldn't have been played: Fool me once - shame on you. Fool me twice - shame on me.
My point is that they were being played by both Trump and Clinton to cover more of Trump's antics. So, no surprise, they covered more of Trump's antics, because they lacked the integrity to choose to do anything different.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Tuesday December 06 2016, @03:37PM
That's a large part of the problem. Trump was given billions of dollars in free air time and he probably wouldn't have been the nominee without that free airtime.
But, he won the GE because the Democrats rigged their primaries in favor of the less popular candidate who offered the people absolutely nothing, ran a campaign on sexism and was on stage routinely with hated neo-cons. Not to mention that it was an attempt at a personality cult to somebody who has no personality.
She might well have lost to any of the other candidates the GOP was pushing.
But, the MSM was largely responsible for the second term that W got, they didn't start asking anything other than softball question until after he was re-elected.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 06 2016, @04:24PM
You know what hasn't been really discussed? The ground troop leftist themselves.
One of the things consistently cited in why the polling numbers were so off is people constantly being badgered by leftist for even entertaining different points of views (imagine my shock at this revelation) that they simply shut down, nodded their heads, and proceeded to vote, even tepidly, for Trump in private.
And even now leftist are alienating independents (remember, these are mostly people who voted overwhelmingly for Obama) further with their antics.
I wouldn't say that the media is necessarily conspiratorial in their coverage as much as they are a reflection.
And that reflection is of a bunch of petulant children on the left.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 06 2016, @06:56PM
You know what also explains the polling numbers being so off? Election fraud.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 06 2016, @08:33PM
You know, that's funny.
Right about the time the left were screaming racism (correction- when has the left not been screaming about racism) about voter ID laws, that would have been the PERFECT time to turn the tables and demand more secure elections.
Except you guise (not you personally, but more of general "you") went on and on about how secure elections were from fraud, and now you are demanding a recount.
How fucking dumb do you look now?
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday December 06 2016, @09:10PM
While I'm sure election fraud happened, by both sides, I don't think it was the decisive factor. You can't judge national sentiment by the sentiment in the area in which you live.
But if we don't consider that they election was decided by personalities, then there's also the matter of sound-byte news. No issue was ever covered in any depth by either candidate, so it was basically impossible to vote on their explicit plans. And neither candidate controlled the party platform on which they purportedly stood. (Well, that may not be true for Hillary, she may have controlled it, but that wasn't much of a platform. And if she did, then why didn't the platform agree with here public statements on the TPP? I can think of bad reasons, but no good ones.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday December 06 2016, @10:03PM
I wish Americans really voted based on a candidate's explicit plans, but they don't. Americans are not such a people. They vote based on an amalgam of emotion and half-heard missquotes while they're waiting in line at the feed store.
In this election it was pretty clear that we didn't need to pay attention to what Hillary or Trump were saying their positions were, because we all knew they were lying. Trump might surprise the hell out of us and actually do something he said he would. Recruiting Goldman Sachs schmucks for his cabinet does not make me sanguine, though.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mechanicjay on Tuesday December 06 2016, @11:33PM
This really nails it for me. I cared during the primaries, but by the end? This was the first set of presidential debates I skipped out on since I was 11 years old, because it completely didn't matter what either one said, it was all bullshit. It was completely obvious to anyone who took half a step back, that one candidate was playing the media landscape like a fiddle, while the other seemed powerless to change the tune.
The worst part is that is clearly that the media/political establishment still hasn't learned. Trump CONTINUES to play them, every single fucking day and they're still either unware, unable, or unwilling to stop.
My VMS box beat up your Windows box.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Tuesday December 06 2016, @09:55PM
I generally agree with that. The MSM has been ignoring the fact that the progressives and liberals either didn't vote for anybody or crossed over to vote for Trump. She did horribly with independents and conservatives, but the loss of the progressive and liberal votes pretty much doomed her candidacy.
As others have stated, election fraud explains a lot of this. Had she not had the party rigging the primary in her favor, the Democratic candidate probably would have won. Sanders would have had no issues winning PA, MI and WI, his message was resonating with the non-elites.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 06 2016, @01:42PM
[citation needed]
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 06 2016, @02:57PM
[no citation for obvious needed]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 07 2016, @03:52AM
[no citation for obvious needed]
Spoken like a true believer. Welcome to the regressive faith!
(Score: 2) by linkdude64 on Tuesday December 06 2016, @03:21PM
Five star post.