lolgaxe wrote:
gbaji wrote:
Stick to just what he said and did.
He spread a story with zero verifiable information he found on an alt-right webpage that has been regularly shown to be full of crap. The only reason to do that is either he believed the story or believed the lie would cause damage to his opponent. Both are troubling considering his job is literally to separate fact from fiction. It shows that he either can't tell the difference or he just doesn't care. No sane person would find that acceptable.
Wow. Wait a minute. You're telling me that during an election, people might say pass along or suggest things that aren't true in order to help their candidate of choice win? OMG! Alert the presses, the dawn of time has called and has a scoop for you!
I'm certain that Sarah Palin is comforted by your position on this. As is every single Republican candidate for high office for the last 30 years. Where the heck have you been? The only difference is that when the Democrats do this, they get so-called "legitimate" news sources to write the speculative BS pieces that they quote from first. I'm not sure how you can think that's better. So if it's the NY Times writing about a rumor about someone, it's ok?
That's part of my point. The same "fake news" thing has been present in our "real news" sources for decades (at least).
Quote:
gbaji wrote:
But then again, some of us on the Right have seen a marked reluctance for established news sites to run stories that allege anything negative about politicians and other powerful people on the Left.
Then again some of you on the Right are simply more willing to accept fiction as fact than established news sources.
There's that expansion/contraction of groups thing again. I'm sure that "some on the right" are also serial killers. That has zero relevance to my statement though. I'm sure you recall the media going after the whole "Edwards has a mistress and a love child" story, right? Oh wait. They sat on that until he dropped out of the race. Or perhaps you recall how the media painfully ignored the whole bit about Reverend Wright's bigoted and anti-American sermons, first for 6 months when just rumors, and then still for ]]3 more months
after the videos were on Youtube. They more or less had to be shamed into covering the story, and then it was the fastest freaking whitewash I've seen in my life. Or maybe you recall the totally unbiased "fact checking" by Candy Crowley in the 2nd debate in 2012? Cause that wasn't at all the media siding with the political Left? Or perhaps you've heard about the emails showing collusion between the Clinton campaign, the DNC, and members of the media to do everything from coordinating message to slipping debate questions to
Clinton?
You kinda can't blame conservatives for going to "fringe" sites for information because they know that's the only place they'll get any that isn't so totally biased towards the Left that it's laughable. Does that mean that "some on the Right" are going to fall for fake news? Sure. But just as the Enquirer is 90% BS, it does occasionally get a scoop that no one else in the media is picking up on, right? Same deal here.
And again, I can point to tons of "real news" that repeated fake rumors as well. I'm sure you recall the whole "Bush went AWOL" thing right? That totally came from a "fake news" source. Oh wait. That was freaking Dan Rather, on freaking CBS, on freaking 60 Minutes. It kinda doesn't get any more "legitimate journalism" than that, right? And in this case, it wasn't just repeating a fake rumor, it was repeating it, and when called on it, falsifying documents to coverup for the false facts you failed to fact check in the first place. And the lie still goes on with further whitewashing of the story.
At least when people go to these random sites on the internet, they might have some assumption that it's not "legitimate" news, and take what's on there with a grain of salt. Some wont, of course, but most will. I find that to be far less of a problem than our so-called "real news" being just as likely to promote false claims. Don't you? For me, I treat all news sources with a massive grain of salt. I assume that anything not clearly stated as an "fact" is not true. And even facts are questioned unless the source of the fact is revealed. But that's just me. I get that most people just trust what they read. But that trust is as likely to lead one to a false assumption when looking at the "real" versus "fake" news.
Just my opinion, but there it is anyway. This is just another round of alarmist BS IMO.