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President-elect Donald Trump is clearly antagonistic toward the mainstream media. That attitude is unlikely to change after Inauguration Day. His disdain for journalists and reluctance to release details about his finances and business ventures may force journalists to rely increasingly on anonymous sources, a strategy that reputable news organizations have long frowned upon.
So in the age of Trump, how should a reader approach coverage that relies primarily on anonymous sources?
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You will have domestic happiness and faithful friends.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 09 2017, @04:51PM
And they worked hand-in-hand with the Hillary Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee to try to discredit Sanders, Jill Stein, and other forces far more progressive than Hillary Clinton ever has been.
And then afterwards they worked hand in hand with wikileaks and trump to discredit Clinton by going all in on stupid email tricks
Anyone who claims the media was in the bag for Clinton missed the entire election cycle. For every actual story of Trump corruption they had to exaggerate something about Clinton beyond recognition. Trump uses his foundation to illegally pay off the florida attorney general [washingtonpost.com] to forget about prosecuting trump university, well clinton had some meetings with a nobel laureate who donated to her foundation [washingtonmonthly.com] so they are both corrupt!
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday January 09 2017, @07:13PM
They are both corrupt.
Trump is definitely corrupt: In addition to buying off Pam Bondi, as you mention, he has engaged in all sorts of other shady dealings, and almost definitely has mob ties.
Clinton's corruption extends far past a single meeting in exchange for Clinton Foundation donations, though: From the speeches to Goldman Sachs to the Correct the Record superPAC to her time on the Walmart board to protecting people who broke the rules but are loyal to her like Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, she definitely had a lot of dirt on her, and it was only those stuck in the pro-Clinton news bubble that didn't notice. About the only defense her supporters offered to her many of her activities was "Everybody else does that! If Clinton had been a man, nobody would have even commented on it!", which is of course conveniently ignoring the idea of "everybody else does that too" is part of the problem rather than an excuse.
Hillary Clinton lost for a lot of reasons, but media bias was not one of them.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 09 2017, @07:57PM
> Correct the Record superPAC
Please cite one example of CTR acting nefariously.
Seriously. This is the kind of exaggeration I'm talking about.
A superpac dedicated to literally correcting false information is now proof of horrible corruption.
WTF?
The worst I can find on CTR is that they used the colbert/stewart loophole of coordinating through the media and lawyers with dual jobs. [huffingtonpost.com] Clinton also funneled donors to CTR and arranged for CTR to coordinate with other pro-clinton superpacs. All legal. Stupidly legal, but legal.
> Everybody else does that!
Politics is a knife fight. If everybody else is doing it, then holding her to a higher standard than legality is also requiring that she fight with one hand tied behind her back.
Clinton was a flawed candidate. But they are all flawed. When you choose a candidate you choose the flaws you are willing to live with. But exaggerating the flaws to make false equivalencies is dishonest.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday January 10 2017, @12:15AM
SuperPACs are not legally allowed to coordinate with the campaign of a candidate, but Correct the Record openly did. See this FEC complaint [campaignlegalcenter.org] for details. Its very existence, therefor, qualifies as "acting nefariously".
Their primary activities were paying for people to post pro-Clinton comments on websites, and suppress anti-Clinton comments on websites, regardless of how true or false said comments were. In one case, several thousand of them falsely reported a pro-Sanders group on Facebook for child porn, for example. Over on Reddit, they would consistently downvote comments that cited DNC emails. In one particular notable instance, they tried to claim that Sanders was part of some sort of grand international socialist conspiracy which included Sanders, UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, Hugo Chavez, and Fidel Castro. The idea that they were in any way correcting anything is simply silly.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 10 2017, @01:05AM
> but Correct the Record openly did. See this FEC complaint for details.
That's pretty empty. Did you read the complaint?
Because I just did. And the complaint is that they used public blogs to coordinate and that despite current FEC rules permitting exactly that, its somehow not permitted because they don't primarily use internet publications for all of their work. And to support the claim that they would have to primarily use the internet for all their activity the complainant provides ... nothing. They couldn't even be bothered to cite whatever ruling they think the FEC made that support's their interpretation? You know why, right? Because there isn't one.
Not only that, they don't even bother to provide one single example of the blog-based coordination. All they do cite are a bunch of examples of CTR doing pro-hillary work. Duh!
Ya got one more shot, lets see something with real heft, ok? Not an amauter FEC nuisance complaint.