President 'The Donald' Trump and Surprising Consequences - Mod warning in OP

InTheTrees

Kitsunegari wrote: »

The Washington Post is the source of those leaks.

No, the Washington post print the leaks but they can hardly be the source.

walshb

Trump yet again lacking any diplomacy or decorum. Not happy to just fire a person, but rubbing it in with "someone else will do afar better job."

He really does rub it in no matter what he's boasting about.

hmmm

NinjaKirby wrote: »

I know this story is from the 1960s but it shows you what was going on back then and hints at what could be going on right now.

This is the only record I could find of some fascinating testimony given a month ago. See 2.50 onwards in particular. I don't want to veer into the Conspiracy forum (this is being discussed openly in the US congress sessions), but think about the threads on Boards about how the EU is finished "any day now" and other similar threads about how we cannot place trust in any of our politicians.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIt2VixVgAs

hmmm

I've never seen the New York Times editorial board write an open letter to a government official before.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/11/opinion/deputy-attorney-general-open-letter.html

Dear Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein:

It’s rare that any single person has to bear as much responsibility for safeguarding American democracy as you find yourself carrying now. Even before President Trump’s shocking decision on Tuesday to fire the F.B.I. director, James Comey, a dark cloud of suspicion surrounded this president, and the very integrity of the electoral process that put him in office. At this fraught moment you find yourself, improbably, to be the person with the most authority to dispel that cloud and restore Americans’ confidence in their government. We sympathize; that’s a lot of pressure.

the power to launch a truly credible investigation has fallen to you, and you alone.

Few public servants have found themselves with a choice as weighty as yours, between following their conscience and obeying a leader trying to evade scrutiny — Elliot Richardson and William Ruckelshaus, who behaved nobly in Watergate, come to mind. You can add your name to this short, heroic list. Yes, it might cost you your job. But it would save your honor, and so much more besides.

Kitsunegari

demfad wrote: »

Can you please acknowledge that there are Grand Juries in operation which CAN bring indictments and prosecutions?? You have been told this on at least two occasions yet you continue to spread the above disinformation.

http://edition.cnn.com/2017/05/09/politics/grand-jury-fbi-russia/index.html

Where have I stated the opposite to the above? Can you please ensure you read my post in full before accusing me of something.

Kitsunegari

InTheTrees wrote: »

No, the Washington post print the leaks but they can hardly be the source.

The Washington Post are citing unnamed officials who do not want to be named. AKA they are the source of the leaks themselves.

Christy42

Kitsunegari wrote: »

The Washington Post are citing unnamed officials who do not want to be named. AKA they are the source of the leaks themselves.

I believe the source would be those unnamed officials. Not the Washington Post.

Kitsunegari

Professor Moriarty wrote: »

Do you have examples of these 'false stories'? Are you implying they deliberately reported fake news? Was it only the WP that reported those examples?

The source of this information is from the Washington Post who cite an anonymous US official. It wouldn't be the first time the Washington Post has reported 'fake news', not nearly! . Either way, what they've reported cannot be taken seriously as it doesn't name a source.

robinph

Kitsunegari wrote: »

The Washington Post are citing unnamed officials who do not want to be named. AKA they are the source of the leaks themselves.

Think you may need to do a plumbing course to learn about leaks.

The publisher of the information to the public is not the source, they didn't have the information until someone gave it to them. That is to say someone "leaked" the information to the Washington Post and they decided to then make it public.

Kitsunegari

Christy42 wrote: »

I believe the source would be those unnamed officials. Not the Washington Post.

Yes, if they exist. I'm suggesting that they don't based on the WP history. I'm not sure why you're being pedantic.

If people think that unnamed officials are trusted sources of information then I give up.

Leroy42

Kitsunegari wrote: »

The source of this information is from the Washington Post who cite an anonymous US official. It wouldn't be the first time the Washington Post has reported 'fake news', not nearly! . Either way, what they've reported cannot be taken seriously as it doesn't name a source.

So you, correctly, are sceptical of WP because of a number of stories that they ran with which turned out to be less than accurate.

Why do you not think the same standard should be applied to Trump? He has clear history of lying and simply making up facts, together with acknowledging that he doesn't think negatively with other people lying (Flynn, Sessions).

Professor Moriarty

Kitsunegari wrote: »

The source of this information is from the Washington Post who cite an anonymous US official. It wouldn't be the first time the Washington Post has reported 'fake news', not nearly! . Either way, what they've reported cannot be taken seriously as it doesn't name a source.

Greenwald is a controversial figure himself, to say the least. Note that the article you cited is dated January 4th.

1. Are you saying that the WP's assertion about Russia and fake news is false? If so, all of the intelligence agencies are wrong. Let's assume they are right. So the WP did not report fake news.

2. Like any reputable news source, the WP wrote a full retraction of the Grid story once they became aware that it was false . The story was also reported in a variety of news outlets, many of whom did not publish a retraction. Even your friend Greenwald accepts this. Fake news is never retracted. For example, Trump has never retracted any of his brainfarts.

So, can you give examples where the WP deliberately reported false stories as you implied? Was this 'fake news' reported in other media outlets?

Faugheen

Can we remember that it was Trump's senior advisor that coined the phrase 'alternative facts'?

But no, the WP is the fake news.

Christy42

Kitsunegari wrote: »

Yes, if they exist. I'm suggesting that they don't based on the WP history. I'm not sure why you're being pedantic.

If people think that unnamed officials are trusted sources of information then I give up.

Well that I'd wikileaks sunk then but anonymous sources are important to journalism.

You can suggest all you like but you have not exactly got a massive amount of evidence in your favour that they made it up aside from your own bias. You don't have proof that they made it up or if their sources were wrong or lying. Or even if the request was just not made officially.

Remember even the denial is just a denial from a doj official but how do we know that is not an alternative fact? I mean if the POTUS can stand up there and talk about how his victory was the biggest since Reagan why should we believe any official at their word?

Kitsunegari

Professor Moriarty wrote: »

Greenwald is a controversial figure himself, to say the least. Note that the article you cited is dated January 4th.

1. Are you saying that the WP's assertion about Russia and fake news is false? If so, all of the intelligence agencies are wrong. Let's assume they are right. So the WP did not report fake news.

2. Like any reputable news source, the WP wrote a full retraction of the Grid story once they became aware that it was false . The story was also reported in a variety of news outlets, many of whom did not publish a retraction. Even your friend Greenwald accepts this. Fake news is never retracted. For example, Trump has never retracted any of his brainfarts.

So, can you give examples where the WP deliberately reported false stories as you implied? Was this 'fake news' reported in other media outlets?

I've provided you with evidence and you refute it. There are numerous examples of the Washington Post reporting deliberately misleading articles along with the Guardian, NYT, Breitbart etc. If you want to take everything you read in the Washington Post as gospel then more power to you. I'm not here to provide you with piles of content to change your mind.

Also, you're suggesting, that because The Washington Post retracted the story that no longer makes it fake news. That's not true. Fake news is publishing incorrect or misleading information in the first place. That's exactly what The Washington Post have done as have many others.

All information should be treated with the same suspicion.

What's your problem with Greenwald by the way?

Leroy42

Well, Fake news is really the publishing of known incorrect or misleading stories.

If a number of separate sources all come to you with the same story then it is quite correct to run with the story. That it later turns out to be less than the full story does not make it fake news.

That is quite different from claiming that someone told you directly 3 times about you being in the clear when there is no evidence to support that and usual process would inhibit that from happening.

Kitsunegari

Christy42 wrote: »

Well that I'd wikileaks sunk then but anonymous sources are important to journalism.

You can suggest all you like but you have not exactly got a massive amount of evidence in your favour that they made it up aside from your own bias. You don't have proof that they made it up or if their sources were wrong or lying. Or even if the request was just not made officially.

Remember even the denial is just a denial from a doj official but how do we know that is not an alternative fact? I mean if the POTUS can stand up there and talk about how his victory was the biggest since Reagan why should we believe any official at their word?

What? The DoJ released an official statement according to the FT. Can you really not see the difference in standard between citing an unnamed source and citing a DoJ statement? The whole point of having a source is so that you have credibility. Citing unnamed sources provides no credibility whatsoever.

Kitsunegari

Leroy42 wrote: »

Well, Fake news is really the publishing of known incorrect or misleading stories.

If a number of separate sources all come to you with the same story then it is quite correct to run with the story. That it later turns out to be less than the full story does not make it fake news.

That is quite different from claiming that someone told you directly 3 times about you being in the clear when there is no evidence to support that and usual process would inhibit that from happening.

If a number of sources are reporting false information then it's still fake news. Let's not move the goalposts here. We're either going to have integrity or we're not.

Peregrinus

Here in the real world, Kitsungari, it's common for newspapers to run stories that they have been given by people who do not wish to be named. Sometimes the newpapers will tell you something about their source ("sources close to Mr Trump said that . . ."); sometimes they won't. It depends on how willing the source is to risk exposure.

If you read a story attributed to an unnamed source, you have to make a judgment about the credibility of the story. It's simply not true to say that "the story has no credibility"; credibility is not a simple binary.

One of the factors you'll take into account is the credibility of the newspaper. They know who the source is; and their assessment of the credibility of the source will be factored into their decision about whether to run the story or not.

Back in post #7421, you suggest that where a Washington Post story is attributed to "unnamed sources", the unnamed sources may not exist at all "based on WP history". What you're saying there is that the Washington Post has a history of attributing to unnamed sources stories which they didn't get from any source; stories which they have simply made up.

That's an extraordinary allegation. Do you have a source for it?

Professor Moriarty

Kitsunegari wrote: »

I've provided you with evidence and you refute it. There are numerous examples of the Washington Post reporting deliberately misleading articles along with the Guardian, NYT, Breitbart etc. If you want to take everything you read in the Washington Post as gospel then more power to you. I'm not here to provide you with piles of content to change your mind.

Also, you're suggesting, that because The Washington Post retracted the story that no longer makes it fake news. That's not true. Fake news is publishing incorrect or misleading information in the first place. That's exactly what The Washington Post have done as have many others.

All information should be treated with the same suspicion.

What's your problem with Greenwald by the way?

Greenwald is a self-publicist these days as his shrill egotistical and inaccurate attack on the WP demonstrates.

I refuted your 'evidence' because it doesn't back up your assertion that "the WP have printed some false and poorly sourced stories over the past 18 months."

Note that you failed to address both points I made about the article you cited - which was your only 'proof' of your claim.

Your lumping of the NYT and WP in with Breitbart is in itself telling.

InTheTrees

Kitsunegari wrote: »

Yes, if they exist. I'm suggesting that they don't based on the WP history.

Remember Woodward and Bernstein had an unnamed source too.

mcmoustache

hmmm wrote: »

This is the only record I could find of some fascinating testimony given a month ago. See 2.50 onwards in particular. I don't want to veer into the Conspiracy forum (this is being discussed openly in the US congress sessions), but think about the threads on Boards about how the EU is finished "any day now" and other similar threads about how we cannot place trust in any of our politicians.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIt2VixVgAs

This was one of the more fascinating exchanges of these public hearings. I had noticed before that some posters seemed to always pop up in Ukraine/Russia/EU/Trump related threads and they were always parroting the Kremlin line. It was obvious from their forgetting that english-speakers use articles before nouns that these were eastern European at the least and likely Russian themselves.

To be fair to them, they were probably not trolls in St Petersburg but more likely just Russians living in Ireland who watched too much Russian State media and believed it. On the other hand, their willingness to repeat debunked nonsense multiple times in the same thread did make me quite suspicious and that video didn't help.

Really Interested

Kitsunegari wrote: »

Yes, if they exist. I'm suggesting that they don't based on the WP history. I'm not sure why you're being pedantic.

If people think that unnamed officials are trusted sources of information then I give up.

If there was no person to give the paper information (then it must be assumed by that logic the claim is made up) then there is no leak as you can not be the source of a false claim and at the same time be the source of a leak. Then the person is either a source of a leak or a liar can not be both.

Christy42

Kitsunegari wrote: »

What? The DoJ released an official statement according to the FT. Can you really not see the difference in standard between citing an unnamed source and citing a DoJ statement? The whole point of having a source is so that you have credibility. Citing unnamed sources provides no credibility whatsoever.

If they are afraid of backlashes then there is a reason for it. They should be used sparingly though for the reasons you suggested.

However a anonymous source is not always less correct than an official named source. I can cite an official named source (Trump) to state that the last election was the biggest margin of victory since Reagan.

In fact since Trump took office official sources have been pretty unreliable. In this case the doj seems separate enough from Trump to be fairly reliable and indeed named sources tend to be more trustworthy. That is not to say they always are or that unnamed sources are always bad. Unnamed sources being wrong also does not mean they were made up either. Though it can be (I would put good money on Trump being guilty of this on a few issues such as Russian no interference in the election and the birther conspiracy).

Official sources have also said that the reason behind Comey's firing was due to the email investigation but as you say, when a source of news has a history of lying they tend not to be believed.

Leroy42

Kitsunegari wrote: »

If a number of sources are reporting false information then it's still fake news. Let's not move the goalposts here. We're either going to have integrity or we're not.

Not at all, they must know that it is false information, or at the very least have done nothing to try to corroborate it.

Fake news is saying that I am 25 years old. Fake news is not that someone told me that you are 25 years old. Can you spot the difference? If, however, I ask your family and they dispute the 25 yo then for me to continue to publish it is fake news.

But again, you claimed I was going with crazy theories yesterday yet you only seem to have the word of a known and proved liar on which to base that assertion. I find that incredibly strange that you would place any weight on what such a known liar says.

demfad

mcmoustache wrote: »

This was one of the more fascinating exchanges of these public hearings. I had noticed before that some posters seemed to always pop up in Ukraine/Russia/EU/Trump related threads and they were always parroting the Kremlin line. It was obvious from their forgetting that english-speakers use articles before nouns that these were eastern European at the least and likely Russian themselves.

To be fair to them, they were probably not trolls in St Petersburg but more likely just Russians living in Ireland who watched too much Russian State media and believed it. On the other hand, their willingness to repeat debunked nonsense multiple times in the same thread did make me quite suspicious and that video didn't help.

What's also noticable is that any time 'big news' occurs in the Trump Russia storry one or two of these posters take the thread off on a nit-picking tangent and dominate the dialogue until the bad news has subsided.

hmmm

mcmoustache wrote: »

To be fair to them, they were probably not trolls in St Petersburg but more likely just Russians living in Ireland who watched too much Russian State media and believed it. On the other hand, their willingness to repeat debunked nonsense multiple times in the same thread did make me quite suspicious and that video didn't help.

The Professor in that video talks about how a disinformation campaign would take years to organise, and to do it properly requires people on the ground. The New York Times story about the Macron hacks shows how the French forced the Russians to waste time & ultimately fail to produce believable fake news because much of the operation was run out of Russia and lacked French speakers.

The other participant in the video talks about the fake news being published on RT & Sputnik (Russian govt controlled), spread rapidly by Twitter bots (again likely Russian controlled) and was then picked up by "ordinary" people who retweeted it as fact.

In the midst of these attacks on US democracy, and following an obvious Russian attempt to support Le Pen, it's crazy that Trump is meeting the Russians in the Oval Office and treating them like pals.

mcmoustache

Leroy42 wrote: »

Fake news is saying that I am 25 years old. Fake news is not that someone told me that you are 25 years old. Can you spot the difference? If, however, I ask your family and they dispute the 25 yo then for me to continue to publish it is fake news.

Some people wish to distort the definition of fake news. It's pretty clear what it is. It's made-up stuff, published with the intent to deceive. It's not spin, it's not tabloid hyperbole, it's not false information published in good faith, it's not mainstream news that people don't like. The bbc (which Trump accused of being fake news) have a decent write-up on it.

It's clear what fake news is and what it isn't but that doesn't suit some people's agenda. So they need to distort the definition. It's a Russian trick designed to increase distrust in the media as a whole. People shouldn't blindly trust the media but there's a world of difference between Bowling Green and what the Washington Post are publishing about Trump. By stretching the definition of Fake News, there's an intent to get people to ignore or downplay what gets reported on the Dear Leader - Putin does it as does Trump and his supporters although his supporters usually don't know why they do it. Some are just parroting it and others have simply been fooled already.

Kitsunegari

Peregrinus wrote: »

Here in the real world, Kitsungari, it's common for newspapers to run stories that they have been given by people who do not wish to be named. Sometimes the newpapers will tell you something about their source ("sources close to Mr Trump said that . . ."); sometimes they won't. It depends on how willing the source is to risk exposure.

If you read a story attributed to an unnamed source, you have to make a judgment about the credibility of the story. It's simply not true to say that "the story has no credibility"; credibility is not a simple binary.

One of the factors you'll take into account is the credibility of the newspaper. They know who the source is; and their assessment of the credibility of the source will be factored into their decision about whether to run the story or not.

Back in post #7421, you suggest that where a Washington Post story is attributed to "unnamed sources", the unnamed sources may not exist at all "based on WP history". What you're saying there is that the Washington Post has a history of attributing to unnamed sources stories which they didn't get from any source; stories which they have simply made up.

That's an extraordinary allegation. Do you have a source for it?

What's extraordinary is using unnamed sources as a basis for an argument. You can believe everything you read in the press. I'll stick to traditional journalism where your sources can be checked. Anything else is just unproven speculation.

I never stated that either. Assumptions are the mother of all **** ups.

Igotadose

The Greenwald article missed the point in the first paragraph - fake news isn't retracted. WP, NYT retract stories all the time.

News sources with some integrity (not Fox or Breitbart or the Enquirer) have retracted incorrect stories for decades.

Veering back to President Trump, who as was pointed out NEVER retracts anything - he never quite even retracted his birtherism lies, but it sounded like he did so he's stopped being badgered to do so, is now 'weaponizing' voter suppression: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-voter-fraud-investigation_us_591465f6e4b030d4f1f03d26?gng&ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009

After all, millions of fake voters didn't vote for him in Vermont or something.

Insane. Just keeps running the campaign over and over and over again to distract his backers while he parties with Lavrov in the Oval Office.

With Spymaster Kislak no doubt dropping bugs and taking photos. And still they'd vote for Trump again if the election were tomorrow.