The trust I have had in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, ABC/NBC/CBS, Democratic and Republican parties has been irreparably damaged.
I've been a cord cutter for over a decade. This year I graduated to pitying people who repeat the latest front page story as naive fear-junkies. Everything is suspect. Why burn processing cycles reading stories that on their face are actually stupid with conclusions that are unsupported by verifiable facts? (http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/cia-prepping-possible-cy...)
Between the Sponsored Content, Native Ads and all of the investigative journalists who (according to DNC emails) are labeled as "friends," I have no choice but to say "I quit." They are pretty lies that don't nourish!
There is no truth in "The Truth" and there are no news in "The News".
Update: Added links to wikipedia
To borrow a phrase that usually makes me think of a milennial with a punchable face, "This^100."
I always held those news organizations skeptically in the back of my mind as Every Educated Person Ought To, but this is just...unbelievable.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/16/world/rise-of-saudi-prince...
I could be as much skeptic as you and I can draw my own conclusions for why this particular story might have been published now and not before, and for what purpose, but this doesn't stop me from enjoying reading it and absorbing its juicy details and knowledge.
I'm still thankful for NYT for dedicating time and effort to expose this person as a fraud and hypocrite and I'm looking forward to reading more of these in the future for other despicable figures.
Maybe none. But one way the times could re establish credibility with me is to be transparent about how much the writer engaged with pr reps or communications teams in each story. It doesn't have to be exhaustive.
By the way- Part of my journey to this level of skepticism was "Trust me, I'm Lying" by Ryan Holiday https://www.amazon.com/Trust-Me-Lying-Confessions-Manipulato...
That would be the worst PR piece you could ask for, unless you mean that you suspect that his political foes were the ones behind this story which is not unlikely but again not a deal-breaker and what's only important to me is the question, were the details listed in the piece factual or not?
Nothing more.
For a long time now, all forms of traditional media have had a bent. It's just gotten very monied and politicized as of late.
That's what's really depressing about this: it is absurdly easy to get to the bottom of whether a fricking blender is worth buying, but important events happening in the world? Get your researchin' shoes on.
By the way, thank you very much for your input - your experience in that arena is unique and very valuable to the discussion.
Given my position, I think it's useful to state what would undermine the credibility of an institution of journalism. It's actually really simple: if it persistently reports incidents for which there is no proof, or if it reports incidents in such a way that obscures the facts themselves (spin). Any institution that regularly confuses editorializing for journalism losses its credibility. By these rules there are many institutions that are not trustworthy (e.g. Fox) but there are many institutions that are (the NYT).
I just can't understand how this does not scare people. How is this different from the state run media in third-world countries we used to laugh at as kids?
It may be working out for your team _this_time_, but the same behavior will almost certainly be used against you in the future.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWKwEBIkYhI [2] https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/5205
In fact, I think they were going on in the 15 years before that as well, though they were less pronounced, less obvious and less extreme. The media has probably always been a bit of a propaganda organ... it's just that the voices were a lot more diverse.
The really alarming thing we've seen this year is Google, Facebook and Reddit starting to use algorithms to suppress some voices and amplify others. Combine that with "Correct The Record" (the army of paid hillary shills who have taken over at least reddit) and the internet is no longer the alternative where you can have a reasonable discussion.
Why participate when your opponent is most likely a hired troll?
Your <s>'tinfoil hat conspiracy theory'</s> is anything but. Balanced, objective reporting in the US died in 1987, the very day it was no longer required by law:
The NYT frequently publishes articles critical of Hillary Clinton. Here are several hundred: https://www.reddit.com/search?q=subreddit%3Athe_donald+site%...
I'm using this example as an internet community that curates information critical to Hillary Clinton and Democratic Party campaigns. In that list are several that discuss content within the email leaks in a fashion critical to Hillary Clinton.
Publications should be permitted to publish stories critical of both major political parties.
The paper has also declined to collaborate with Assange to release stories about many other leaks. The NYT is America's Pravda.
By the establishment and for the establishment... the definition of conservative.
To think of all those who undertook personal risk over the years to build a great news organization! Too much competition from buzzfeed seems to have left the paper toothless and officious.
Historians will likely view the gutting of the adversarial, investigative press as the factor that accelerated our civilization's return to authoritarianism.
The Post has three stories based on emails in the last 48 hours:
- State pressuring FBI: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/docum...
- Goldman Transcripts: https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/10/17/...
- Foreign Government Donations (story originated on Reuters): https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/hacked-emails-show-e...
It's disingenuous to pretend the mainstream media is not covering the email leaks.
Inter-agency conflict and negotiation happens all the time within the federal government. It's not corruption because both sides are career civil service. For there to be a serious story here, the Post would need to have some evidence that Clinton asked Kennedy to do this, which they don't.
The NYT has not run any stories about the content of the emails on its front page in the last ten days. The stories people have linked are buried deep behind the paywall.
Where's the story about the machinations to deliberately harm the Sanders campaign? Where's the interview with Sanders asking what he'd have done if the emails had been leaked a few weeks earlier? Where is the headline "DNC corruption widespread", etc.
The purpose of an adversarial press (and press freedom in general) is to ask the very tough questions. The NYT has been derelict in its failure to do this when it comes to the leaked emails.
Yes, we all knew the likely content of the Goldman speeches. But the story has to do with how the HRC campaign went to great lengths to please Wall Street while also dealing with the Sanders left which was pretty strongly anti-Wall Street. Is there historical precedent for a politician to speak out of both sides of their mouth to this degree on a fairly important issue (highly likely laws will be passed pertaining to wall street reforms (or lack thereof) during her term in office, in contrast to many other wedge issues where the probability of laws being passed is next to nil)?
There has been a tremendous need for top-tier reporting on the leaked emails. You point out three stories, but there have been stories on less than 30% of the newsworthy items, vs 10-20 stories on the single incident of Trump's lewd remarks. Incidentally, the remarks speak for themselves and there is little a "journalist" can do other than quote them and let people be (appropriately) horrified.
Perhaps with respect to the lewd comments, an interactive timeline of each accuser and a status of any legal action pertaining to the claims would be helpful, but is it seriously deserving of 3-4 front page slots on the NYT every day for the past week?
Also, there has been no serious coverage of the third party candidates' positions on key issues. Frankly in spite of the few awkward aspects of each, both of them are far more impressive (and seem significantly more intelligent) making ad-hoc comments about nearly any issue.
There is nothing wrong with a news organization presenting its political opinions -- on the opinion page! The rest should be old fashioned factual reporting intended to enrich the discussion not color it or focus it on a subset of issues.
I brought up Buzzfeed simply because I fear that too much of the NYT focus has become about the number of online views/clicks a story gets, to the point where this has impacted page layout, headline copy, etc.
You assume they are newsworthy. Most of what I've seen, from a running tally Politico is doing as they go through them, doesn't seem overly newsworthy. The ones that have been reported seem to be mostly explainable, and look much worse when you assume context rather than put it in context, or allow the Podesta to put it in context.
> vs 10-20 stories on the single incident of Trump's lewd remarks.
Many people are very upset about those "lewd remarks". Possibly because they admit to real actions of misconduct. I think there's a false equivalence going on here. One situation is about a staffer for the Clinton campaign with lots of emails that sometimes seem to allege something, but are generally somewhat informal and it's hard to pin down specifics, and the other is about Trump himself admitting to sexual assault on tape, and then saying it was just words and he never would do something like that, and then people coming forward saying he specifically did it to them. For many people, a single true instance of this is enough to immediately discount him as a possible candidate they could vote for. That's a big story, and will get a lot of attention, as much as you might like it not to.
> Many of these are old and do not address the content of the emails. There are perhaps 100 significant stories that could have been written based on the information leaked in the past 10 days. We got zero.
I found this after 1 second of internet searching: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/10/us/politics/hillary-clinto....
> Too much competition from buzzfeed seems to have left the paper toothless and officious.
Buzzfeed has a substantial investigative reporting arm; its depth has been lauded frequently on HN: https://www.buzzfeed.com/news
For someone ragging on the lack of investigation the press are doing, you're doing a poor job of it yourself. Simply googling 'nyt clinton email' comes up with a handful of stories from the past 10 days (there's also a lot of stories older than 10 days in the search).
I'm no fan of Trump and would never vote for him, but the free and adversarial press is a crucial aspect of democracy which is not doing its job.
The fact that the emails were LEAKED OMG is not the newsworthy part. It is what is in them. And largely speaking, there's not much news in them.
IMO a major problem in the U.S. today is that not many people understand how political campaigns or the federal government actually work. So a lot of people can be led to believe that boringly standard practices like revising talking points over email, and getting updates on court hearings, are actually proof of corruption. But they're not.
I've not heard anywhere that they were leaked, which suggests a disgruntled insider. The US government claims that they were hacked, and apparently that information was communicate to both Trump and Clinton in their national security briefings.
Assange has not been forthcoming about the source of the emails.
Is a conspiracy by top officials at the DNC to harm a party candidate during the primary a minor deal? To me this is corruption at close to the highest level. Yes, it's a private org, but one that is critical to the functioning of our democracy.
Is a candidate making promises to wall street that directly contradict her campaign promises a minor deal? Well, we can cynically assume all pols are dishonest, or the press can help us simply hold all pols accountable for their promises. I'd like to see fewer promises made and more promises kept. It was frankly a bit shady that HRC refused to release the transcripts, and I think there is a newsworthy story detailing the interest groups she was courting and why they are so influential in American politics.
I've looked through the Goldman transcripts, and maybe I'm stupid, but I didn't see her making any promises. If you've got a direct quote, lay it on me.
I'm not holding my breath, though, since so far you only seem interested in vague concern-trolling.
Yes, followed by the person who was forced to step down being immediately re-hired by the HRC campaign. What is troubling about it is what it suggests about HRC -- that she got cronies into powerful positions in the DNC, that they helped subvert the primary process in her favor, and that she re-hired the disgraced DNC leader, signaling to any other cronies that she'd have their back if they got caught, too.
The issue is institutional corruption, and it should be the main story out of the leaked emails. Politics can get ugly, but the purpose of the primary is to vet the candidates that have pledged allegiance to the party by letting party members vote in the primary election.
In my opinion, HRC should have been put on the spot to answer for why the corruption that benefitted her happened, and why she re-hired DWS the next day.
I'm not aligned with either party so I don't care so much who the candidate is, but I do care about the quality of the institutions that are part of our democratic system. We should all care, because the institutions (and their lack of corruption) is more important than who wins any single election (primary or secondary).
When you think about all the idealistic Sanders supporters who donated money and time only to have their trusted DNC leaders try to sabotage their preferred candidate, the amount of harm done to our democracy by this was substantial. Think of the cynicism and frustration it created, all so that HRC would be a few percent more likely to win the nomination, and win it in an unfair way.
Politics is a long term game. Partisans like to tell us it's urgent and that we must act immediately (regardless of the costs) to impact the most important election in history. This fake urgency is the technique GWB used to sell the Iraq war. It's an effective but embarrassingly dishonest propaganda technique.
Even when I do agree with their positions, it is disconcerting to feel like I am being spoonfed political ideology.
https://medium.com/@Starkweather/new-york-times-edited-berni...
EDIT: for context, if you go read the actual emails, what you see are totally bog-standard comments of a PR team reacting to a story once it posted, and again when the NYT updated it, as the NYT (and other papers) often do.
Edit: for context "We were able to keep him from including more on the JVF, it has a mention in there, but between us and a conversation he had with Marc Elias he finally backed off from focusing too much on that."
This email chain is a total non-story. The NYTimes called the DNC for comment, and the DNC attempted to shape the story. That is basic PR 101.
We know the Sanders campaign did the same thing, because the story includes confidential information from his campaign, and comments from his surrogates. We just don't have Wikileaks access to the emails from his campaign (thank goodness).
That being said, I read the Goldman transcripts and other things that were supposed to be so damaging, and they really weren't that bad, beyond any other typical politician. Is she corrupt, absolutely. Is there a giant media conspiracy (now including SNL) against Trump? Ridiculous. He makes his own wounds.
In addition, even Mike Pence has now admitted Russia is disseminating information to Wikileaks. So we have a clear connection between Russia / Putin and Trump. I don't believe it's as far as many think with them working together, but clearly someone as thin skinned and easily manipulated as Trump would be a total win for Putin. We can talk about Hillary's collusion, Clinton Foundation corruptness and such, but how the Putin pro Trump position is not as relevant is beyond me, if not the deal breaker considering the state of Russia / American current affairs.
Wikileaks' current agenda appears to be to disrupt Western governments through leaking damaging information. I don't see a clear preference for political parties; the Manning leaks were damaging to the Republican Bush administration.
I believe that the most probable source of the DNC leaks is Russian government units, but not for the purposes of election manipulation. Here is an article that most credibly posits this theory: https://themoscowtimes.com/articles/russian-spycraft-how-kre....
I had mixed feeling about Wikileaks before (as I think anyone should, since it's a very complex topic), but any thoughts I had as to him be impartial in any way (as a good journalist should be) are now out the window.
Honestly, Assange shouldn't have been the face behind the leaks. It should've been the agency's "face", and it should've been dumped all at once, like most of their past releases.
Also, think of the political dynamic. There isn't much difference between one huge scandal and ten - there's still only so much airtime. Anything leaked as a unit can be responded to as a unit.
Anyone could anonymously create a torrent and paste it in some related thread, the important thing, and why people go to Wikileaks, is getting it read faster than "they" can delete it.
One look at Assange's Twitter is all it takes to see the obvious anti-Hillary bias. The shrill "Hillary's got an earpiece!" post is one of the most glaring examples.
Perhaps you can provide more info on exactly what documents you think Putin is not happy about?
There are multiple access points, some within Federal Government.
Also there's no real need to take anti-Trump info to Wikileaks. The NYT was willing to publish one of Trump's tax returns from the 90s and those are legally protected. You can take anti-trump documents to any major newspaper.
The current angle is that Trump is a bad guy, and you just have to look at the photos of him to get the angle - 99% of him making a weird face.
It does not make the story false, but there is an angle.
And then some of the women show up on TV with their lawyer, Gloria Allred, who is in close connection with HRCs campaign(as attested by the Podesta wikileaks) and has vowed her support for HRC to win. And then there is strange behavior from some of the accusers, like begging Trump to visit their restaurant/business, which would be a strange thing to do to someone who sexually assaulted you(not impossible behavior, but all of these things add up)
My counterpoint: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/09/29/technology/yahoo-data-b...
Anonymous quotes. Unsourced claims. Revisionist history designed to tear down one individual (Mayer) to protect another (Stamos)
If you are not one of those 1-2%, how would you know about it?
You missed out the most important thing which would undermine the credibility of an institution of journalism. And it is the the most common one which is the most heavily engaged in. And that is choosing not to report certain stories and facts, even though they are of great significance.
Is anyone else doing this?
it is similar to reading financial news or watching CNBC with the mindset of reading between the lines, wondering who and why is interested in propagating such stories.
Why would you trust them? You think they would go through all that shit to give you information and work for you for a few pennies or for free? When they could be working for the rich and powerful to become one of them... all while getting your pennies?
Was it actually week(s) plural? I thought they only came out about a week late.
> The Trump tape, which had obviously been saved for a rainy day, was trotted out to distract from the pre-announced Wikileaks release.
I think this is a little much. Some cast and crew from The Apprentice made some noise about how generally unpleasant Donald Trump was, and multiple parties started seeking unused footage from that show. NBC also had the Access Hollywood video and were preparing it for release, but got scooped when someone leaked it to the Washington Post reporter who investigated the Tump Foundation.
No event in the chain happened without precedence and, to be perfectly frank, none of the information that has come out has been a genuine shock. The overwhelming majority of the damage done by the Access Hollywood footage has been because Donald Trump a) did a very poor job in delivering his apology, strategically speaking and b) from a), set himself up to have yet more sunlight disinfect his past.
> This level of premeditated collusion with the media is not even up for debate at this point
Ooh, me, me, I debate it. This is a dumb thing to say and you should feel dumb for saying it. It makes no sense and is not based on anything.
> I have to wonder how many years (decades?) this has been occurring.
Probably ever since the industry started to consolidate. Just because it happens doesn't mean that it happening means what you think it means, if that makes any sense [1].
[1] http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/477656-when-you-re-young-you...
Insults do not qualify as debate. His claim is based on, or should include, the portions of the Podesta emails that have showed a dismaying amount of coordination with the press. Approving quotes, approving stories, printing talking points. Compare their behavior against the guidelines set out by the Society of Professional Journalists. It's a disgrace.
Those media organizations and those journalists may have editorial and personal opinions on who they would prefer to win the election, but there's one thing they care more about than any of those preferences: access.
The idea that the press wouldn't or shouldn't care about vacuuming up every talking point that a campaign is willing to spit out, no matter how obviously-canned it is, is to fundamentally misunderstand the operations of the 24 hour news cycle.
This isn't happening because journos care about Hillary Clinton. This is an alignment of the incentives of politicians and journalists that ultimately reduces transparency and harms public discourse. The fact that the same thing likely isn't happening with the Trump campaign says more about the peculiarities of that campaign than it says anything about the same media companies' willingness to play the same game of ball with Generic Q. Republican.
Glenn Thrush, Politco's Chief Political Correspondent, decided to make it crystal clear in the
following email to Podesta back in April 2015 in which he admits that he has "become a hack."
The email below from Thrush was sent to get guidance related to an article he published the
very next day entitled "Hillary's Big-Money Dilemma."
Because I have become a hack I will send u the whole section that pertains to u
Please don't share or tell anyone I did this
Tell me if I fucked up anythingThe whole purpose the press existence is to be an independent check on government and to pose to politicians the questions that the electorate cares about.
edit: Just to be clear, nobody (or nearly so) finds your claim controversial or new. It's flaw isn't that it's incorrect, it's that it isn't useful*.
The rhetoric I was replying to implied that the politicians and the journalists are on the same team because they have the same goals. That's not the case. I think keeping that in mind is plenty useful.
Of course, as The Center for Public Integrity [1] recently pointed out, "journalists" aren't just
making "in-kind" contributions to the Clinton campaign, they're donating real cash as well.
In fact, according the their review of political contributions made by people working in
various media outlets, 96% were found to go to Hillary while only 4% accrued to the benefit
of the Trump campaign.
If they were motivated purely by money, they'd all be promoting Trump. He has driven a shocking amount of traffic / wealth to all journalist outlets. Stories they write on him are massively more popular, and he's demonstrated he'll cut off access for their lying. So if it was just money, pussy grabbing would be a good thing.
They did not mention that the deleted emails were deleted AFTER the subpoena was issued [1]. They did not mention that Clinton aides carried hammers with them to destroy phones in case the phones were demanded by the FBI. They did not comment on the number of "I don't remember" answers that Clinton gave to the FBI. They did not comment on the fact that Clinton claimed to not remember what a "c" meant on documents. They did not comment on the fact that Clinton claimed to have no memory of receiving training on the handling of sensitive documents. I could go on for pages, but I have work to do.
Suffice it to say that the media have been complicit in matters dating back years before Podesta emails, not days or weeks. Your contention that they just aren't reporting the Podesta emails because they're boring (they are not, they are dynamite) is false on it's face.
[1] http://www.empirestatenews.net/2016/10/16/worse-than-waterga...
Yet they were requested to be deleted long before the subpoena was issued[1]. Specifically:
In December 2014, after the work-related emails were preserved, Mills told Platte River Networks – which at the time was managing Clinton’s private server – that Clinton “decided she no longer needed access to any of her e-mails older than 60 days.” Mills instructed the PRN employee — who was not identified — “to modify the e-mail retention policy” on Clinton’s server “to reflect this change,” the FBI said.
But the PRN employee mistakenly did not make the retention-policy change and did not delete the old emails until sometime between March 25 and March 31, even though Mills had sent PRN an email on March 9 that mentioned the committee’s request to preserve emails.
The PRN employee who deleted the emails was a recipient of Mills’ message. However, the employee told the FBI that “he had an ‘oh shit’ moment and sometime between March 25-31, 2015 deleted the Clinton archive mailbox from the PRN server and used BleachBit to delete the exported .PST files he had created on the server containing Clinton’s e-mails.”
Read into that whatever you want, but the fact that it's not really true might have something to do with why it isn't being reported on.
> They did not mention that Clinton aides carried hammers with them to destroy phones in case the phones were demanded by the FBI.
That's not what happened[2]. As secretary of defense, she had old phones after she switched destroyed.
> I could go on for pages, but I have work to do.
You could substantiate your statements with sources. You could have done that from the beginning. Perhaps if you looked for less biased and more fact based sources rather than blogs that feature a giant picture of Clinton snapped in an inopportune moment with giant neon green letters saying "LOL!" photoshopped on.
> Your contention that they just aren't reporting the Podesta emails because they're boring (they are not, they are dynamite) is false on it's face.
Well, I've been following and reading reporting on the emails. It's all pretty ho-hum and what I would expect from any campaign so far. Of course, it's easy to taking boring things out of context and imagine salacious components to them. That doesn't make them any more damning in reality though.
1: http://www.factcheck.org/2016/09/the-fbi-files-on-clintons-e...
2: http://www.businessinsider.com/how-hillary-clinton-aide-dest...
Further, she didn't just delete emails, she went and wiped the hard drive. Perhaps just good data practice, but, when it comes to politics and public servants I'm far too cynical to believe that. Finally, she determined what was considered private and deleted it. Do you really trust that? Do you really think that things that were work related wouldn't get swept up with the personal stuff while they were going about deleting things?
Either way, I've heard rumors they've been recovered, so disagreements there could be resolved in due time. If not, we can argue then :)
If they are personal records, she does, because they are her personal property, and are covered under her fourth amendment rights until they are specifically requested by subpoena. I'm not sure if the subpoena requested all email, or work email. The question really being asked usually is whether they were all actually personal emails or not.
I think it's worth noting that her behavior with regard to deleting personal emails is not out of what would be considered normal for someone completely innocent. If I knew I was innocent but was under subpoena for work email and I had personal email that I would really rather not get out, I might delete them as well before turning everything over. Unless specififed not to, there's nothing illegal with doing so, as long as you can whether any flak if people want to cast doubt.
It's worth noting the Podesta emails address this[1]. One of the interesting thing about the Podesta email summaries I've seen is how they don't really corroborate any of the accusations we've seen.
> Further, she claims she wanted them deleted then, but never clarifies if they were deleted at the time of request or when the subpoena arrived.
It seems pretty well covered to me. She specified she wanted them deleted months prior to the subpoena, but the employee did not act on that command until much later (after the subpoena arrived). So, emails were deleted after a subpoena arrived, but the request to do so happened long prior to that.
> Further, she didn't just delete emails, she went and wiped the hard drive. Perhaps just good data practice, but, when it comes to politics and public servants I'm far too cynical to believe that.
It's your right to be cynical. That said, as I mentioned above, unless the subpoena should have covered personal emails, I'm not sure what she did was wrong, even if it does cast doubt on whether we can be sure we got all the work emails.
> Finally, she determined what was considered private and deleted it. Do you really trust that? Do you really think that things that were work related wouldn't get swept up with the personal stuff while they were going about deleting things?
Actually, I believe her lawyers determined that. They didn't actually read all the emails though, they used Subject lines and addresses. That said, while it might have miscategorized some (and some were lost prior to that for reasons explained in that summary), that process is unlikely to have randomly happened to remove all majorly incriminating emails, so you're still left with whether you trust the lawyers tasked with reviewing them or not.
What this all really comes down to is whether you think someone can really get away with criminal activity at this level for decades. My belief is that if there was real evidence in any of the umpteen things she's been investigated for, we'd have seen it. Instead, we have lots of accusations, but nothing ever seems to add up to anything. This lends itself to two conclusions, either the Clintons are masterminds at committing crime and never getting caught, or they have been a favored political target due to their high political profile for an extended period of time. Considering I think even if they originally where complicit in a problem or too long in their past, the return on investment for piddly amounts of money (to them) for what amount to favors seems a stupid trade-off. If you make millions of dollars a year, and are already one of the most powerful people in the world, why would you get caught up in the stupid things she's accused of, like taking a large donation to her charity, which she can't really use, in order to get a meeting? To my sensibilities, it's much more likely that someone donated to one of her charities in hope that it would help (or on bad info that it would help), and maybe it did help, but in the same way that donating to the Red Cross would have, by showing the person was a philanthropist and making a good impression that way.
1: http://www.politico.com/live-blog-updates/2016/10/john-podes...
Agreed.
>Those media organizations and those journalists may have editorial and personal opinions on who they would prefer to win the election, but there's one thing they care more about than any of those preferences: access. The idea that the press wouldn't or shouldn't care about vacuuming up every talking point that a campaign is willing to spit out, no matter how obviously-canned it is, is to fundamentally misunderstand the operations of the 24 hour news cycle.
I was trained as a journalist before I became an engineer. I'd argue I understand this stuff better than most. Perhaps I had the benefit of a journalism program that was better than it had any right to be, but we had ethics drilled into us pretty heavily. I can assure you the things in those emails between the press and the Clinton campaign are shameful on a journalistic ethics front.
Further, if you want to buy into the philosophy behind the press and why it's given so much leeway in American law, then their fundamental role is to serve as the fourth estate. It's supposed to be the role of the press to take an adversarial stance to government and hold them accountable. Clearly this doesn't happen much, but worse still, the Podesta emails reveal that they're actively facilitating the goals of a presidential nominee. That's horrible. If you want an off-topic thing to look into for this, look up Amber Lyons. I had her in the 'maybe she's credible' pile until this came out. Now she's in the 'There's something to her claims' pile.
>the peculiarities of that campaign than it says anything about the same media companies' willingness to play the same game of ball with Generic Q. Republican.
Most news organizations are staffed with people who lean fairly heavily to the left. It sounds like you might be surprised to find out just how much. It used to be the case, and was what I was taught, that you fought your bias as much as possible, did your best to avoid editorializing and didn't let yourself just become a mouth piece. There's a reason why someone picks up the New York Times rather than combing through the press releases from the Clinton & Trump campaigns. Obviously Fox News is the notable dissenter in providing this kind of service to Republican candidates. Still, if you run the numbers it's something like 80% / 20%.
Overall, the thing that has been pretty evident to me during this campaign, even before the Podesta leaks, is that the bulk of the press has decided to burn their credibility in promoting Clinton. This even goes back to when she was campaigning against Sanders for the nomination, though to a lesser extent. I think the moment something smelled off to me was when she won the six coin tosses in Iowa (?) to begin the primaries and I didn't see many eyebrows raised in the reporting I looked at. Maybe I missed it, but since then They've held to a pretty consistent pattern of burning bridges to protect her.
> I can assure you the things in those emails between the press and the Clinton campaign are shameful on a journalistic ethics front.
And programmers get taught to write documentation and not make things work with hacks or produce spaghetti code. The way the sausage gets made not comporting with professional standards is neither unheard of nor is it isolated to journalism.
They're being shameful, yes. But they're doing it because it's a living, not because they have an agenda.
> if you want to buy into the philosophy behind the press and why it's given so much leeway in American law, then their fundamental role is to serve as the fourth estate
Off-topic, but I don't. I view all media -- explicitly biased and ostensibly not alike -- as fully protected under the umbrella of free speech, for which I am an irrationally ardent proponent.
We can make objective claims about our present media not doing a very good job at informing society without getting into that, though. Our principal disagreement seems to be about why that's happening. You seem to want to ascribe agency to it. I think that's a mistake, in the aggregate. Maybe I'm just being a cynic, but I don't think so.
> the bulk of the press has decided to burn their credibility in promoting Clinton
I'm not a fan of Clinton by any stretch of the imagination. I see how Clinton scandals get significantly less airtime than Trump scandals, but I have a hard time believing that isn't being driven by ratings. Trump has been graded on a heck of a curve at times, in ways that can't be considered "objective."
And it was seven coin tosses ;-)
I'm honestly unsure at this point how to take any specific cry about a Clinton scandal, and it's a problem of the Republicans' (and Trump's) making. You can only cry wolf so many times, so loudly, again and again for the exact same incident even, until people assume you can't be trusted to watch for wolves at all.
>And programmers get taught to write documentation
That isn't an ethics issue, it's disingenuous to compare the two (not trying to ascribe malice to you). I do recognize the point you're trying to make in terms of quality being sacrificed to business concerns, and I'll touch on that (a bit indirectly) in a moment.
>Off-topic, but I don't. I view all media -- explicitly biased and ostensibly not alike -- as fully protected under the umbrella of free speech
Two things here. 1.) You (presumably) aren't and have never been a journalist or tried to be one. I assure you that this is a thing that sits at the heart of American Journalist philosophy, at least as I experienced it. I probably shouldn't have phrased it in a way that let you have an opinion. Also, sorry for the appeal to authority :) 2.) The first amendment specifically calls out religion, press and assembly. There was a vision for the role of press in government; they aren't within a country mile of living up to that but still enjoy the freedom. 2a.) We can agree on rabid amounts of free speech at least, and despite press failings I don't want to take away their freedom to print whatever.
>We can make objective claims about our present media not doing a very good job at informing society without getting into that, though. Our principal disagreement seems to be about why that's happening.
Yeah, that would just be a diversion. Let's leave it, as I imagine we agree anyway.
>You seem to want to ascribe agency to it
Well, to cheat and be a jerk: All people have agency. To be more honest, I think there's a mix of business concerns and ideology. As I was trying to point out, Trump has made them a shitload of money. He's probably the best thing that's ever happened to print and cable news, at least in the last decade. Even were they to report on him honestly, he would make them a shitload of money. He's controversial without them needing to help.
This might just be something that I will fail to convey to you, but my experience from a (kind of) insider's view, is that most journalists are partisan. Nobody has to love that, it's an acknowledged reality, and uncontroversial (for any journalist with credibility). The trouble is that the effort or even pretense of trying to mitigate bias has gone away, which I don't think you disagree with. Something that might be less known to you is that most credible news outlets try to make it a point to separate the business concerns from editorial concerns for just this reason. At least publicly that is certainly the case. Theoretically there's a publicist and an executive editor, and the two manage their respective departments without consultation. We're probably both cynical enough to realize they're full of shit, but that rule didn't come out of a vacuum and was adhered to in the one paper I wrote for (though I was freelancing / interning so obviously my insight was limited). Additionally, you might be familiar with the idea of an ombudsman. Theoretically, this is a person who is paid by the paper to shit all over it when it fucks up. It's painful but necessary. Clearly these people aren't doing their jobs.
My point is that, at least historically, and recently at that, papers have acknowledged bias and at least made a reasonable effort to counter it. In another comment, maybe from you, business concerns have taken a toll. Consolidation mixed with adopting modern, short-sighted executive level business decisions have had a deleterious effect on quality. C-levels aren't trained in, and don't care about, the ethics training journalists get, and anyone given free reign to indulge their bias is going to struggle to resist that. I guess I'm not saying that you're necessarily wrong, but rather that there's been a decay in journalism (caused by your opinion) that's resulted in the present conditions (caused by my opinion).
This is already so long 90% of people aren't going to read it, so I'll leave it here: Because of my previous passion for journalism, the current failures deeply pain me, and have been more of my focus than the candidates. The failure is not caused just by business concerns, but people gleefully letting their bias loose and enjoying their ethical lapse. We can probably both agree it's a disservice to the country and will hasten the demise of print and cable news. But in the meantime they will reap the seductive gains of short term thinking. I'll save predictions for the future for another time.
I hope you're stuck on a bus or something where this screed is a welcome diversion :)
"She’s saying Russia, Russia, Russia… It could also be China… It could also be somebody sitting on their bed who weighs 400 pounds."
"If I were running ‘The View’, I’d fire Rosie O’Donnell. I mean, I’d look at her right in that fat, ugly face of hers, I’d say ‘Rosie, you’re fired’"
"I have never seen a thin person drinking Diet Coke."
"She doesn’t have the look [...] She doesn’t have the stamina."
"How is Bernie Sanders going to defend our country if he can't even defend his own microphone?"
"Everybody is laughing at Jeb Bush [...] A pathetic figure!"
Indeed, they do not.
>> This level of premeditated collusion with the media is not even up for debate at this point.
>Ooh, me, me, I debate it. This is a dumb thing to say and you should feel dumb for saying it. It makes no sense and is not based on anything.
To which you respond with a bunch of Trump quotes. How did they address at all the point of media collusion with the Clinton campaign? How is this not just an attempt at ideological bickering used to redirect the conversation to something you presume I'm interested in arguing about rather than focus on something pretty damning?
The bus tape was archival footage. If you're suggesting that every hour of archival audio and video of Mr. Trump should have been sought after as soon as he became the nominee, then, again, you're underestimating just how volatile and fickle the news cycle is.
The plausibility of "the official story" (to reiterate: that the footage became an object of interest for NBC after former cast and crew from The Apprentice came forward to disclose his ill manner on the set of that show) seems pretty plain to me. Occam's razor defeats your conspiratorial thinking without breaking a sweat.
Regarding Stern, CNN had as "BREAKING NEWS!@!" that Trump told Stern it was OK to call Ivanka a piece of ass. Possibly CNN was lying about presenting this as something they just discovered; is that what you are claiming?
Yes, I am suggesting that every show would have stuck someone (more likely, a team) on reviewing their material (prioritizing the outtake material, if anything) on Trump as soon as it turned out he was a big deal. I am not clear as to why you think this would not have occurred; why Occam's razor supports that viewpoint. The bus tape would have been a huge story at any time and would not have required building off interest in other stories to investigate (e.g. "Gee whiz, we should look at the archival footage and see what we have! Why didn't we think of this before!")
Because those "teams" live from headline to headline and those sorts of fishing expeditions are expensive.
WashPo released it on the same day that they got it, after several hours verifying it's authenticity.
That's not evidence to fit your claim of premeditated collusion.
And it's not like the nomination process is sacrosanct. For many years primaries were ignored altogether in favor of smoke filled rooms. That only started changing in 1968. It was made more democratic in 1972, which resulted in the nomination of George McGovern, who got his clock cleaned in the general. Sometimes party elites do know better.
At least they pretend to be so now. Traditionally, newspapers were not terribly concerned with that, and didn't even bother much to hide this fact.
It's actually better than it's ever been. Not that it's good now; it was just much worse before.
another way in which Trump is a political tsunami... to paraphrase Warren Buffett: when the tide goes out, you can see who's been swimming naked
I have no doubt that they will rig the election if the media doesn't get the job done. How else could they let Hillary run? They must be pretty confident that it doesn't matter that most people hate her.
Regarding the media, all are culprits in biased news coverage whether those on the right like Breitbart or Fox News or on the left like NYT or Washington Post but this held belief that you should expect nothing less than 100% impartial coverage of the elections when they endorse their favorite candidate publicly is also a bit misplaced.
Wikileaks announced for weeks when they were releasing the emails. It was a pre-planned event that the entire world was waiting for.
The Trump tape, which had obviously been saved for a rainy day, was trotted out to distract from the pre-announced Wikileaks release.
This level of premeditated collusion with the media is not even up for debate at this point, since the very emails they are trying to distract us from, detail instance after instance after instance of such collusion.
I share your concern that we'll ever get honest reporting from the media again, and I have to wonder how many years (decades?) this has been occurring.