Please entertain the possibility for a moment, whether you agree with it or not, that this story was indeed planted by a foreign nation for the specific purpose of manipulating our election. Do you then believe that it is responsible to willfully help spread it and blast it all over every social media site? Aren't you doing the foreign nation's bidding then?

If you do agree there, then where would you draw the line for blocking such information being spread? Is the fact that the reporter at the singular publication in all the the US willing to report on it didn't want their name on it worry you? The fact that the only evidence comes from some random Trump supporting repairman in some random state not worry you? The fact that unreliable (self-exposing to 15yo) people such as Giuliani are attached to the story not worry you? What about our own intelligence services saying that foreign nations have been trying to use said person to manipulate our election?

There was a time when journalists cared about the truth, and what the truth requires is the disclosure of facts and objectivity. The proper way to publish this is to describe the evidence, and the reasons as to why the evidence may be falsified, and do continual reporting as the story develops to keep the public informed how likely or not the information is false.

The alternative of suppressing it based upon supposition and a "gut check" says very, very clearly: we don't trust the public to make up their minds, or, worse, we think this might be true but it would run counter to our interests if people knew about it. Saying something like this is "misinformation by the Russians" when it is not denied nor has evidence been presented as such is what we used to call "believing in conspiracy theories." Sometimes conspiracy theories are true, and the facts prove them. But journalists shouldn't make publishing decisions based upon conspiracy theories without evidence supporting those theories.

In any case, both of those behaviors run counter to the principles of journalism, which is predicated on the idea that preferring to share imperfect information, accurately described, is ultimately what leads to an informed citizenry, even if some of that information turns out to be misleading or wrong in the end.

> There was a time when journalists cared about the truth

Which is exactly why no other publication has yet backed up this claim, because they cannot verify the truthiness of it. If anything, it's NYP that did not care about the truth and only about the fact that it would be a "win" for their side.

Caring about the truth and not spreading misinformation from foreign nation is one and the same.

OK, so that would mean it was fair to delay reporting on it until it was investigated. Has any investigation happened? Are the media reporting on how they chased down leads to confirm or deny the report? What about the claims of "misinformation from a foreign nation", have journalists gotten to the bottom of that beyond just repeating what the "intelligence services" have said?

So far, the "investigation" by the media sources who suppressed the story literally seems to be to not even ask if the evidence is real from those who it's targeting, and to just run with the idea that there's plausible deniability so it must be false. As if there'd be anything other than plausible deniability in a real corruption scandal.

Your world makes sense, but only if "cannot verify" means "tried and failed" not "didn't try and suppressed based upon the assumption it was invalid", as is the publicly stated methodology taken by the Washington Post.

> Has any investigation happened?

Yes, the FBI has looked into it and have yet to find any credible source. I also assume every reporter from every publication is investigating it too.

> Are the media reporting on how they chased down leads to confirm or deny the report?

The media never reports on the process of chasing leads and inconclusive stories (which is exactly what NYP did). They only post once they have the actual facts.

> by the media sources who suppressed the story

First off, it's the social media site that suppressed the story, not other publications. Secondly, not reporting something until you have it confirmed is not "suppressing" a story, it's actual journalism.

> as is the publicly stated methodology taken by the Washington Post.

Source?

The FBI admitted today Hunter Biden and his associates are under an active criminal investigation. The article you are replying to is literally about the media suppressing the story

As for the wapo: https://mobile.twitter.com/aaronjmate/status/132036642124791...

They don’t seem to apply this rigor to stories that are engineered to make the orange one look bad... the NYT “anonymous” piece, the hit job re: Trumps taxes, dishonest articles about border separations (who built the cages?), etc., etc. it’s become clear that the media is absolutely biased to the core. This coming from a 2x Obama voter.

That is not generally how journalism operates. Remember "Rathergate"? Would it have made the slightest bit of difference if CBS had inserted the disclaimer that "Of course we can't be 100% sure these docs are legit but we'll keep investigating."?

I don't remember the story well but certainly more self-skepticism, disclosure of facts, and rigorous investigation will always reduce the chance of humiliation and harm.

To a degree. My point though is that major journalism outlets, while they certainly screw up from time to time, don't run with major stories and be "We think this is true but maybe it isn't. We'll keep you posted."

> My point though is that major journalism outlets, while they certainly screw up from time to time, don't run with major stories and be "We think this is true but maybe it isn't. We'll keep you posted."

Right; they will run with "Someone else is reporting/claiming this, but we have been unable to confirm it. We'll keep you posted." And while the difference in terms of the impression on the reader/viewer may be subtle, there is an important distinction between running the unconfirmed story directly as news (or the thing Greenwald apparently suggested of an outlet running dueling news stories on the same issue from different journalists as news.)

Not to mention the use of the term "confirmed" has completely changed in modern times. Now, the press puts out a story that an anonymous source said X, and then another press outlet "confirms" it - and in this sense, the use of the word "confirm" means "we also asked the anonymous source and they told us the same thing." This is a trick: "confirming" a story used to mean that actual journalism was practiced, where the liklihood of the claims were vetted and determined to be likely true, given multiple independent sources or other evidence. It used to take time and effort to "confirm" stories, that was the job of a journalist, now the term is just used to artificially bolster anonymous claims by having a second talking head talk to the same person as a way to "confirm" the other media source wasn't lying that they existed, or something.

Fair enough. If another credible outlet is reporting it, they'll probably run it with the disclaimer that the NYT (or whoever) is reporting something but we haven't ourselves been able to verify A, B, and C claims. If it's a claim on a conspiracy site? Or someone has just come to them with an accusation they're unable to verify? Unlikely.

> There was a time when journalists cared about the truth

There have always been journalists who cared about the truth, but there has never been a time when that was generally dominant over the business, political, etc., interests of publishers, who have always been, for the entire history of journalism (which has been entirely embedded within the capitalist age), very deeply intertwined with those of the capitalist ruling class, of whom publishers, especially of major, highly-visible media outlets, are generally a part.

The authenticity of the underlying evidence matters at least as much as the source.

No one has denied the underlying documents' authenticity to my knowledge.

Do you personally believe people should be able to decide for themselves things in their life, make opinions based on different information provided?

There is no easy answer here, and I think the best is to allow things to play out with all the information out there for people to make an informed decision on. We need the entire collective effort of the media industry and journalists to poke, prod, piece together and corroborate the details being presented. Leak the data dump to 4chan even, see what they find. Who knows what holes everyone might find, or what additional pieces of the puzzle they might unravel with such a collective effort. Right now it just kinda seems like they're trying to discredit rather than investigate, which is why it's a huge story and why it's being picked up on by the right so much.

Wow: what a standard hace you just raised dor just ine of the sides of the equation!

Is there any evidence that it was planted by a foreign national? We don't censor based on gut feelings that something was planted by a foreign national.

This argument can be made for nearly every piece of political journalism... you're only supporting this suppression because it helps your preferred candidate.

What matters is whether the story is true or not, not who planted it. If China digs out more on Trump taxes or business dealings, I'd want to see that, as well.

Right, and it's still not clear whether it is true or not.

I don't agree with the premise of the discussion. Consider for a less controversial example the iPhone 12. It seems obvious that:

* Much of the discussion about the iPhone 12 is part of Apple's deliberate strategy to sell phones.

* The media is in some sense being exploited; Apple wouldn't sell so many iPhone 12s if not for media discussion of it.

* An outlet that refused as a blanket policy to discuss the iPhone 12 would present its readers with an inaccurate view of the world.