Would the following statement be allowed?

“Joe Biden pressured Ukraine to fire its prosecutor. The prosecutor said he was forced out for leading a corruption probe into Hunter Biden's company.”

Yeah Why not? It’s pure narrative without conclusion.

another source, in this case the ny times, would be equally free to publish the statement:

“Vice President Biden was overseeing American policy toward Ukraine at the time, and he did push for the removal of the country’s top prosecutor, who was seen as corrupt or ineffectual by the United States and Western European governments. But there is no evidence he did so to benefit Hunter Biden or the oligarch who owns Burisma, Mykola Zlochevsky.”

That’s a quote from the ad that people wanted Facebook to disallow for being a “known lie.”[1] Just pointing out that the policy that people are pushing for on Facebook is quite a bit more aggressive than whatever law you’re referring to.

[1] https://mobile.twitter.com/ewarren/status/118301988086768025...

You guys are disagreeing on facts, or at least entering muddy territory.

> The prosecutor said he was forced out for leading a corruption probe into Hunter Biden's company

> there is no evidence he did so to benefit Hunter Biden

In addition to the point made by the sibling comment, these facts are consistent with an attack on Joe Biden for having an apparent conflict of interest, even if there was no evidence that he intentionally, corruptly used his power to benefit his son. (If he did, would you expect there to be any evidence?) Ethical public officials are expected to avoid apparent conflicts of interest.

“The prosecutor said” something.

It’s entirely fair to report what the prosecutor said provided it’s clearly attributed as it was here.

You’re free to draw your own conclusion that the prosecutor is possibly lying.

This is a perfect example of something I have been thinking about. Facts are funny things: Consider that if the media was pro-Trump for example, they would have omitted the "But there is no evidence" part. The opposite is also true. Since the media is nominally anti-trump, they must sway the story by including the no evidence part

It's indeed true that the prosecutor said that. Whether what he said is true, is another thing.

The problem is that it doesn't only matter that stated facts are correct; it matters also that people reading them interpret them correctly. Natural language is messy; people jump to conclusions also because often we do communicate intentionally by hiding meaning between the lines.

That's kind of besides the point though. He was showing that even when printing things that would be considered legally truthful, you can still maintain a narrative.

But that was part of my origin point, with:

> It’s also allowed for different sides of things, because you can interpret things like socioeconomic statistics and facts differently and write about them as such, but you can’t make up things.

But maybe my English wasn’t good enough to carry it through.

I don’t think narratives are a problem as such. People are allowed different opinions in a free society. Our laws are there to prevent people from printing things that are outright false, but these laws are being circumvented on the modern media platforms because they apply to editiorial staff but not private citizens.

Which is a problem in a world where influencers have more viewers than news papers.

Just because it doesn't completely solve the problem doesn't mean it's not an improvement.

But "narratives" about actual facts it's just bringing on your view of the world, and that's perfectly normal (even if I may not agree with it). The big problem here is spreading information based on invented, not actual facts.

Obviously you can still manipulate real facts and tell a lie (like the classic photo cropping example): that should be prohibited as well.