Learning the Truth

For John, BLUF:  Our news sources seem to be a bit of a mess.  While we may trust this or that source, in the end they are all a bit questionable.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Sign of the Times

Here is the sub-headline:

When the media’s credibility collapsed, the New York Times led the way

From The Spectator World, by Writer Batya Ungar-Sargon, 18 October 2021, 7:45 pm.

Here is the lede plus four:

The New York Times entered the digital era under duress.  In 2011, the Times erected a paywall in what it called a ‘subscription-first business model’.  The gamble was that readers would want to pay for quality journalism. It was a risk, and at first it didn’t seem to be paying off: after a challenging 2014, the company shed 100 people from the newsroom in buyouts and layoffs. A.G. Sulzberger, who was getting ready to replace his father as publisher, commissioned an in-house report, its title ‘Innovation’. The report made it very clear who was to blame.  A journalist’s job, the report said, no longer ended with choosing, reporting and publishing the news.  To compensate for the ‘steady decline’ in advertising revenue due to digitization, ‘the wall dividing the newsroom and business side’ had to come down. The ‘hard work of growing our audience falls squarely on the newsroom’, the report said, so the Times should be ‘encouraging reporters and editors to promote their stories’.

Of course, journalists have always been aware who their readers are and have catered to them, consciously and unconsciously.  But it was something else entirely to suggest that journalists should be collaborating with their audience to produce ‘user-generated content’, as the report put it.  ‘Innovation’ presaged a new direction for the paper of record: become digital-first or perish.

The Times invested in new subscription services like NYT Cooking and NYT Games, and introduced live events, conferences and foreign trips.  The paper hired an ad agency to work in-house and began allowing brands to sponsor specific lines of reporting.  Journalists were asked to accompany advertisers to conferences and were pushed to collaborate more closely with the business side, something many of the old-school editors were loath to do.  The executive editor at the time, Jill Abramson, resisted strenuously.  She was given the boot.

And then came Trump.

This is all very sad.  And, it seems, we are breaking down regionally with regard to who we trust to tell us the truth.  I am embedded in the coastal news milieu, although I have lost my deep faith in The Old Gray Lady, The Wash Post and The Boston Globe, those symbols of Coastal Elite Progressivism.  I would say Russiagate was important to this and the Hunter Biden Laptop sealed the deal.  They no longer trust me, and thus I no longer trust them.

One wonders how it will all sort out in the long run.

In the mean time, it is incumbent upon the Citizenry to review a number of news sources and to not get captured by any one of them.  We need to be testing for the truth.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

Check and Recheck

For John, BLUF:  Each of us has to filter the news in the ways that work for us, but filter we must.  It is no longer the 1950s.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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I’LL POINT OUT WE TRIED TO GO TO THE PROTEST IN DENVER (LATE, BECAUSE IT’S US). WE SAW PLENTY OF POLICE BARRICADES BLOCKING THE WAY (AND PEOPLE YOUNGER THAN US PARKING AND WALKING) BUT NOT A SINGLE HEALTH WORKER:

“Fake news”, caught in the act.

From Author Sarah Hoyt, on InstaPundit, early this morning.  She lives in C-Springs.

Regards  —  Cliff

Truth in Reporting

For John, BLUF:  This sounded dubious from the start.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Trump 'Not Considering' Extraditing Erdogan Foe Gulen in Bid to Ease Turkish Pressure on Saudi Arabia

Here is the sub-headline:

NBC News reported the Trump administration had explored whether it could extradite Gulen, as a way to persuade Tayyip Erdogan to ease pressure on Saudi Arabia over the killing of Jamal Khashoggi

From Heeretz, from Reuters, 17 November 2018.

Here is the lede plus one:

U.S. President Donald Trump said Saturday he was not considering extraditing a U.S.-based Muslim cleric to Turkey as part of an effort to ease pressure on Saudi Arabia.

“No, it’s not under consideration,” Trump told reporters when asked about potential extradition of Fethullah Gulen, who is wanted in Turkey over accusations he was involved in a failed 2016 coup.

So, is this item from NBC what we call "Fake News"?  Or, was it a trial balloon?.

I wonder why NBC fell for this?  Did they do their due diligence? 

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

What If Question of the Week

For John, BLUF:  If this was fake news it would be a big dose of fake news.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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From the Althouse Blog, from Professor Ann Althouse, 6 September 2018.

If I didn't maintain rudimentary trust in the basic integrity of The New York Times...

... I would think that there is no real person behind the famous anonymous op-ed.  I'd think it was a concocted composite based on the Woodward book and motivated by the Woodward book.  Look how that little thrown together collection of paragraphs is now drawing more attention than the book Woodward labored over, which dominated headlines on Tuesday.  Wednesday, this column comes out.  What is in the column that couldn't have been extracted from the book and worked up into an op-ed purporting to be from a senior official in the White House?

That's just a conspiracy theory.  I couldn't help thinking it, but I don't believe it's true, because I think the NYT has too much of a stake in at least the appearance of journalistic integrity.  I do think that the real senior official who wrote the op-ed felt stimulated by the Woodward book, maybe thinks it's a good idea to add momentum to the various stop-Trump efforts, and is perhaps close to resigning and hoping to depart into the open arms of the Trump-hating elite.

Based on Walter Duranty, I wouldn't put it past The Old Gray Lady to make this up out of whole cloth.

Regards  —  Cliff

Looking for Accuracy?

For John, BLUF:  I am speechless.  Snopes nails it.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Snopes Rates Babylon Bee World’s Most Accurate News Source

Now this is great news!

From The Babylon Bee, 1 September 2018.

Here is a snippet:

“Their stories are just too good to be made-up.  They’re excellent,” another Snopes writer said.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

All Things Must Be Tested

For John, BLUF:  I would normally think of the Democrats as Mr Greenwald's own, except he loves the truth, as he sees it, even more.  Lesson learned is from 1 Thessalonians 5:21.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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MSNBC Does Not Merely Permit Fabrications Against Democratic Party Critics.  It Encourages and Rewards Them.

From The Intercept, by Reporter Glenn Greenwald, 8 July 2018.

You have to read it to understand how serious this charge is.

The other point I would make is that Mr Glenn Greenwald is not your average Trump-apologizing Conservative.  He talks to the likes of Mr Edward Snowden, and publishes things he says.

So, this set of comments on MSNBC (and NBC) should be taken seriously.  Fake news lives on the Left as well as the Right.

Hat tip to the Drudge Report.

Regards  —  Cliff

My Error

For John, BLUF:  Let us readdress on Monday.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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A Review of Various Actions by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Justice in Advance of the 2016 Election

Here is the deal.  On City Life Show this morning (Local Lowell Channel 8, Repeat at 4:00 PM this afternoon or here on the Internet) I raised the question of a Text Message interchange between DOJ Lawyer Lisa Page and FBI Agent Peter Strzok.

The exchange I mentioned was this one:

Lisa Page text to Peter Strzok: “(Trump’s) not ever going to become president, right? Right?!”

Strzok: “No. No he’s not. We’ll stop it.”

The show's producer immediately jumped on me for this, for which I did not have (foolishly, on my part) "proof".  It was, he suggested, all part of the fake news we hear and see every day.  My co-host, Jim, did not disagree with the Producer and our guest, Erik, was on his side also.  So, my question of how we take that just died right there.

After the show, I went to a meeting of the "Access to Healthy Foods Working Group", and then came home and opened the above referenced DOJ IG Report.

Here are the two quotes, from the source:

We were deeply troubled by text messages exchanged between [Peter] Strzok and [Lisa] Page that potentially indicated or created the appearance that investigative decisions were impacted by bias or improper considerations. Most of the text messages raising such questions pertained to the Russia investigation, which was not a part of this review. Nonetheless, when one senior FBI official, Strzok, who was helping to lead the Russia investigation at the time, conveys in a text message to another senior FBI official, Page, “No. No he won’t. We’ll stop it” in response to her question “[Trump’s] not ever going to become president, right? Right?!”, it is not only indicative of a biased state of mind but, even more seriously, implies a willingness to take official action to impact the presidential candidate’s electoral prospects. This is antithetical to the core values of the FBI and the Department of Justice.

DoD IG Report, Pages xi and xii

So, how do we understand this.  Is this just casual banter between two DOJ "colleagues" or is this, as the IG Report suggests, an indication of Swamp People who had decided that they should move from their Civil Service neutrality into a more partisan position?

My take is that if you are not concerned you don't understand how serious the situation is.

Regards  —  Cliff