This is not a political/off-topic submission. This is a story that would make an interesting movie. (Although I’m not sure if it would be a drama or comedy)
It is not even a new technique for the specific group (James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas) organizing this instance, which has repeatedly and notoriously used similar false-flag techniques to attempt to discredit organizations that are (or are perceived by them to be) on the left side of the American political spectrum.
A major news organization choosing to publish off-the-record comments is itself a pretty significant event that I'm glad to find out about. It's a sign of extreme confidence in their story (and a lot of irritation at Project Veritas), because that's the sort of decision that, if mistaken, can lastingly cripple a publication.
Don't paint this as 'Veritas serving its function', their function is not to evaluate but to discredit. They take secret recordings, then create videos using completely out of context clips to push right-wing agendas. Just like the whole 'nothing-burger' video.
I'm sure if the reporters had responded to this fake woman's story with any soundbites about how it would effect Moore's election results, regardless of if they published anything or if they kicked her out the door the next minute they would put up a video about how "WaPo reporters are desperate to destroy the honorable Roy Moore!"; just look here is one saying this fake story would be bad for his campaign!
Donna Brazile and Roland Martin[edit]
In October 2016, WikiLeaks published emails from John Podesta which showed CNN contributor Donna Brazile passing the questions for a CNN-sponsored debate to the Clinton campaign.[13] In the email, Brazile discussed her concern of Clinton's ability to field a question regarding the death penalty. The following day Clinton would receive the question about the death penalty, verbatim from an audience member at the CNN-hosted Town Hall event.[14] According to a CNNMoney investigation, the debate moderator Roland Martin of TV One "did not deny sharing information with Brazile."[15] CNN severed ties with Brazile on October 14, 2016.[16][17]
^ Rigging debates. (Dishonesty + Political Gain)
Conflicts with Trump administration[edit]
On January 10, 2017, CNN reported on the existence of classified documents that said Russia had compromising personal and financial information about then President-elect Donald Trump. CNN did not publish the dossier, or any specific details of the dossier. Later that day, BuzzFeed published the entire 35-page dossier with a disclaimer that it was unverified and "includes some clear errors".[21][22][23] The dossier had been read widely by political and media figures in Washington, and had been sent to multiple other journalists who had declined to publish it as it was unsubstantiated.[21] At a press conference the following day, Trump referred to CNN as fake news and refused to take a question from CNN reporter Jim Acosta.[24]
^ 'Russian hooker' dossier (Dishonesty + Political Gain + Sexual Assault)
Coverage of Margaret Thatcher's death[edit]
CNN was criticized for using a photograph of former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Margaret Thatcher with disgraced BBC presenter Jimmy Savile four times during coverage of her death on April 8, 2013.[34] Allegations of sexual abuse against Savile were made public in 2012, a year after his death, leading UK police to believe that Savile may have been one of Britain's most prolific sex offenders.[35] An image of Thatcher with Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet was also run during the broadcast, leading some commentators to accuse CNN of bias.[36][37]
^ Selective Editing (Dishonesty + Political Gain)
Rigged debates, lying about sexual assault, and selective editing doesn't sound like Project Veritas to you?
Admittedly I can't find a trespass claim against CNN so perhaps more accurately Project Veritas is a right wing CNN that also trespasses.
> Rigged debates, lying about sexual assault, and selective editing doesn't sound like Project Veritas to you?
No, not at all. Are you really unable to tell the difference between these two organizations tactics? If so... like, I don’t even know what to say about that, beyond I’ll have to remember not to trust your opinion on anything.
You are really scraping the barrel with those last two aren't you. Lying and selective editing is literally Veritas's MO. Literally. That's what they do. Especially the selective editing, and if you cannot see that then well, sorry for you I guess.
With that second point, is that similar to the dossier compiled by a respected security veteran which also says Russia has compromising material on Trump and is becoming more and more corroborated as time goes on? Just wondering.
Even conservatives who don't like what they do love to exploit the false beliefs that are engendered by Project Veritas’s efforts; them getting caught in their fraud on one before they manage to turn it into a propaganda story, rather than almost immediately after as is more commonly the case, won't change that.
Personally, WaPo is one, if not the top paper in the country. Their dedication to great journalism is why I subscribe. If you're an Amazon Prime member you get a big discount too.
Yeah, used to be you'd get a free subscription if you registered an account with a *.edu email address, but a couple weeks ago they announced this would discontinue effective December 31 of this year.
Showed $1 for first month and $10/mo after that for me as the cheapest option, but I signed up anyway. That's a good value if I consider it supporting a vital institution.
That seems to be the price if you go to the Washington Post. If you go to Amazon and you are a prime member and subscribe monthly then it’s six months free and $4/mo after that.
Oddly if you’re a prime member the yearly subscription is still $100.
That would certainly be interesting to see. Anecdotally I keep running into pay walls for them and the New York Times. However the times has a very high price and their recent soft profile of a Nazi has put a really sour taste in my mouth about the idea of supporting them even if their price was more reasonable.
This is a great story and it definitely pushed me over the edge. I’m not sure I would have ended up subscribing in the next month or two if it wasn’t for this.
dammit. Oh well, I'm doing $10/mo for digital, seems like a good deal. Same for NYTimes, and a subscription to the Economist. Then I hit someone else's paywall and start seeing red...
The editorial department of the WSJ is almost certainly "compromised" (in the sense that they have political opinions and loyalties), but that is true of even the NY Times. The actual reporting at the WSJ is still legit.
The LA Times showed Disney plenty of integrity and determination, and at least one writer from WaPo supported them in that. I'd expect the larger organization to show a similar level of integrity.
To be fair, WaPo has run a few anti-Amazon and anti-Bezos op-eds. It feels like moreso than before.
I can't help but feel like Bezos loves them. I can see him open up the paper he owns, see an attack piece on him, and feel absolutely giddy that he's not going to do anything about it. Because he so desperately wants to be the most self-actualized entrepreneur that ever lived.
I had a large argument about this on r/conspiracy with someone recently.
They were claiming since the CIA uses AWS to the tune of ~$900 million a year, the CIA has a direct line to WaPo.
Any rational person (including the Post editor who commented on it) would agree this is a non-issue, but it does pose an interesting, all be it slight, conflict.
in 2016 amazon's annual revenue was 136 billion dollars. That means it was .66% of it's total revenue. I would argue that the potential damage to Amazon's brand is quite a bit more than that.
Not to mention that's less than 10% of Amazon yearly revenue from AWS alone.[1] Gambling an entire business on the fact that nobody will find out you're giving away their proprietary information just for an extra bump in revenue of a couple points does not sound sane to me. For another perspective, the profit AWS generates is multiples of that entire $900M.
A paper does not achieve the prestige and respect that WaPo commands by allowing it to be a conflict. Sure, there are a number of papers at which that could be a conflict, but Amazon or its customers reaching into the WaPo newsroom to spike, push, or alter a story would almost certainly trigger a mass exodus starting with the editors involved. Bear in mind that the newsroom employs people with their own, respected, careers to look after, just like when trading firms demand their traders sacrifice their reputations.
At that level, editorial independence is practically a commandment, and Marty Baron wouldn't allow conflicts like that to happen. Think about it, since any of that would have to go through him, the guy who went after the Catholics in Boston. You're telling me he gets to the Washington Post, of all places, and hangs up his integrity? Come on.
It's amazing how often those fake news theories fly in the face of simple logic, and amazing how effective they are at swaying people who do not utilize it or do not understand how a newsroom works. That's probably the failure we're seeing unfold, that journalism has emphasized content over form and failed to educate the public on exactly how it works, and is asking readers to overlook their increasing distrust in institutions. Journalism looking something like "I spoke to blah, she said blah," with recordings next to the text, rather than the way it's currently written in the third person, is probably a necessary evolution now.
> But "conspiracy theorists" will make an excuse to discredit them, regardless.
Conspiracy theorists will always find because they want to. I don’t think anyone needs to worry about what they will or won’t latch on to, because worrying about it implies that if something wasn’t the case, they wouldn’t latch on to something else. But they always will.
Fair enough. I couldn't stop myself from putting it out there, but I also believe that as long as it's intelligible that it really doesn't matter how you put it.
Amazon has many different interests, much of which could be affected by negative press. Amazon has a 600 Million dollar contract with the CIA, and regularly does business with many other agencies of the US government. It would be safe to say that between its fledgeling media content group, its online sales group, and its cloud computing group, there are a huge range of potential conflicts of interest between its news-reporting subsidiary and the others.
Besides the fact that it is not in the interests of the company to report in a way that could negatively affect the stock price, it is also in its interests not to report negatively on topics which could impact its lucrative customer contracts. And on top of it all, if Bezos - the richest man in the world - just gets something in his craw, that could also affect what gets reported, as it has been with every media baron in history.
It doesn't bother you at all that it is controlled by a politically-minded plutocrat who is shameless about cross-promotions between his properties? No, I guess that doesn't bother you since you're advertising it.
... he says in response to an article about how WaPo went out of their way to not report damaging false allegations about Roy Moore.
They’re not “going after” anyone. They vet their sources and report what can be verified. If you’re still not getting that after reading this article, then I don’t know what to say to you. Maybe try to diversify your media consumption a little bit. I suspect your news sources may mostly skew far to one side of the political spectrum.
Politico is good for center left reporting, and The Hill is good for center right reporting. Reuters and the Associated Press are a little bland in their presentation, but are fiercely centrist. If you want something that may piss you off but will be written by people who generally do solid analysis with a leftward slant, I suggest Talking Points Memo.
Consuming opinions that differ from your own can give a helpful dose of perspective. I read articles from a number of pretty conservative publications on a regular basis. Sometimes they say things that are interesting, and sometimes they just make me angry. Either way, it’s good to know what everyone else is saying about the events of the day.
It does worry me a bit how it seems the group could have gotten through if they had been a bit less sloppy.
On one hand, these groups are clearly out to slander and discredit hard-working, honest people. On the other hand, I don't think the field of journalism should be entirely self-governing. It would give me great peace of mind to see some score that said these news sources were indeed able to turn away fake sources with regularity.
The crazy "all mainstream news is fake" crowd will not be swayed, but if nothing is done to appease moderates, there won't be any left.
".. could have gotten through if they had been a bit less sloppy"
.. and if my aunt had different bits she'd be my uncle. Of course a perfectly executed plot with hard-to-fake corroborating details and no holes whatsoever could have fooled them. WaPo reporters aren't perfect.
But they ARE genuinely interested in the truth, and interested in doing due diligence to ensure they're reporting it. Above personal politics or personal likes/dislikes of public figures. Conservative media don't seem to understand that. Maybe they can't understand it.
.. and if she had two wheels, she'd be a bicycle! Your aunt is awesome! I've heard so many amazing stories about her.
The Washington Post interviewed 30 people for their original Roy Moore story. And they checked court records. It was a rigorously researched and thoroughly fact-checked story.
None of the women in that story sought out the Washington Post, who reached out to them first. That's why Jaime Phillips contacting the Post first herself raised some initial suspicions, and she deserved at least as much rigorous vetting as the other women who weren't actively shopping their story around, and who Roy Moore actually diddled.
In other words, it's not just that Project Veritas was extremely sloppy, but that their whole model and narrative about the "Liberal Mainstream Media" is deeply and totally wrong, but does apply to themselves, and they're not generally interested in the truth.
They believe their own lies, and project them onto their enemies. They were trying to prove something about the Washington Post that wasn't true, by assuming it was true, in a way that depended on it being true, but it wasn't true.
Jaime Phillips herself claimed on her GoFundie page:
"I'm moving to New York! I've accepted a job to work in the conservative media movement to combat the lies and deceipt of the liberal MSM. I'll be using my skills as a researcher and fact-checker to help our movement."
But her job was actually to "combat the liberal MSM with lies and deceipt". (Or "deceit", as it turned out.)
She fancies herself a fact checker, not a spell checker, and presumes the MSM doesn't check facts even though it's their job, because she isn't really a fact checker herself, she just said that to get a job, and presumes other people like the Washington Post reporters who call themselves fact checkers are also misrepresenting themselves and totally incompetent, just like she is.
You should look into what the previous Veritas "stings" accomplished.
They just wanted the journalist to say something that they could edit into a narrative. Then all the right-wing rags would in concert publish stories about "secret tapes" that "reveal" the "hidden plot" by "liberal feminists" to discredit "brave christian soldier" Roy Moore.
Actually getting a story published in the paper probably wasn't their goal, what's that Richleau quote again? Give me 6 minutes of secretly recorded video of the most innocent journalist and I can edit it into something to have them fired. Something like that anyway.
That's why the actor was so keen to get them on tape saying that the scandal would definately take down Moore.
They've already been caught trying to pay people to riot at the inauguration, and arrested for wire tapping, nothing matters anymore and O'Keefe and his tactics are here to stay:
edit: I just remembered that a previous fake video of his inspired someone to go into a Planned Parenthood centre with a gun, killing three people and injuring 9.
This situation passed 'fucked-up' a long time ago.
Newspaper editors could arrange for their journalists to be approached with fake stories once in a while. If the story makes its way close to publishing, they'll know it's fake and can take it off. That way it stays an internal pentest. Sounds good to me.
They aren't amateurs, they are literal professionals at this (in that, this is what the group does, repeatedly, for pay—well, donations from right-wing interests—over a period of many years.)
Several of the other attempts that have “blown up in their face” have been propaganda successes that have driven government policy and lasting belief in the conservative base even after their fraud was revealed.
That is, they've been pretty much complete successes where the actual purpose for which they are done is concerned.
They are professionals that seem like amateurs if you don't consider their purpose.
Really interesting from a journalist standpoint to see how the Post investigates a story. The original Moore piece was incredibly meticulous in how it presented the information they had obtained, and was transparent about the process in a way that lets the reader form an opinion on the truthfulness of the story. This piece has a similar meticulousness in how it’s laid out.
It's extremely weird reading his reactions on Twitter - either he's putting a very brave face on it, or he's completely unfazed by (yet another) awful self-own.
I never know if James O'keefe and his ilk are really into this cause (not sure exactly what, something vaguely conservative?) or if they're just grifters trying to make a buck by whatever means necessary
I don't think he cares. The goal is to muddy the waters and make it harder to do real journalism.
The story on right wing websites tomorrow will probably be "one of the accusers was obviously lying - this raises questions about the other ones," never mind the lying one was paid by a right wing site.
It's harder to do fake journalism that is liberal or anti-authoritarian; but it's easier than ever to successfully distribute authoritarian and conservative propaganda.
It's probably both, but leaning much more towards the grifting side of things. There's something about conservative politics in the US which encourages grifters and cons.
When my very Republican stepfather fell into dementia, I helped my mom monitor his mail so he'd stop spending so much money on things he didn't understand. It was a deluge of stuff every day. Often from groups I had never heard of who wanted money to stop Sharia law or stop the "war on Christmas" or whatever the big conservative cause was that day. And even the mainstream GOP got into the act. More than once, a FedEx envelope would show up with a plea that everything was doomed unless a check was overnighted. Once the GOP FedEx solicitation contained a letter accusing my stepfather of no longer being a member of the Republican Party, but he could clear up this misunderstanding by writing a check.
Except the stated policy of this executive is to deport large numbers of people, whereas there is no danger of Christmas being outlawed, or of Sharia becoming the law of the land.
That’s funny given that deportations are down 80% since the previous admin, also far less wall has been built than the previous admin was able to build on a yearly basis...
Wouldn’t you characterize that as scaremongering given the facts?
Certainly not. The only things keeping the official policy from progressing faster are the utter incompetence of the administration and the relative sanity of the court system. Both can change.
Why is it a self-own? If his objective (cast shade on real allegations) is achieved, then he's doing fine, he'll be paid by his funders (and protected).
It's a self-own because this doesn't cast shade on real allegations, it does the opposite by showing that the WaPo is doing diligence on the allegations. It probably doesn't matter though: folks who trust the WaPo already know they do diligence, and folks who don't trust them won't care.
My point being, that the intersection set of group "readers of this WaPo piece" and "voters of Alabama" are already polarized such that the gain from the in-group (i.e., Trump supporters in Alabama) might be greater than publication of the own-goal.
Because it’s yet another poorly executed bumbling failure. People talk like O’Keefe is some American version of Vladislav Surkov playing four dimensional chess and that we are all falling into his little trap. But they’re just too incompetent to warrant the comparison. If they could execute any of their bizarre little pranks then they would maybe deserve some of this and I’d maybe consider them as some kind of threat. But tthey come undone in the most hilarious ways, like leaving a voicemail for one of their marks and forget to hang up and immediately start talking about the scam they are conducting.
> If they could execute any of their bizarre little pranks then they would maybe deserve some of this and I’d maybe consider them as some kind of threat.
But, they can: the refunding and destruction of ACORN succeeded, as in many jurisdictions has the defunding of Planned Parenthood, both on the back of O'Keefe propaganda stunts (that we debunked in the mainstream media rapidly, sure, but that did little to blunt the political impact of the resulting propaganda.)
The propaganda isn't to persuade the broad public, it's to mobilize a sufficient segment of the activist base of the right. And, sure, only one in a dozen or so has any real effect, but it's that one in a dozen or so that keeps him getting funded through the other 11. Because the losses don't have much political cost.
Now, Peter Thiel, "is" a hidden evil overlord pulling the strings?
Because if you're going to suggest that hidden evil overlords can and do exist, then why are we giving Soros the benefit of the doubt? Why are journalists meeting with this guy and speaking at his events if he has nothing to do with politics?
I'm asking honestly, which is it: Are billionaires trying to manipulate us, or not? And if so, why do we give an exception to one specific man? And if not, why do we give exception to one specific man?
[Ooh, downvotes without replies. I must be on to something here. Katastic, the most dangerous thing to Hacker News, is a guy with sources. I can't wait to hear how sources and logic are the new arm of the Patriarchy and Neo-Nazism.]
Soros funds groups that advocate for government transparency and freedom of the press. In this case, Thiel funded an organization that attempts to pollute public discourse through fraud. There's no inconsistency at all in condemning one but not the other.
Also, your and my tax dollars subsidise Project Veritas' [1] and Project Veritas Action Fund's [2] 501(c)(3) [3] tax-free status. Curiously, 501(c)(3) organizations are restricted from biased political activity [4].
I'll pen a letter out to my state representatives and state attorney general this week. This is the sort of low-visibility, easy-to-act on thing that tends to be worth reaching out about.
I'm interested to see how this plays out - in some respects it's hard to come back at Project Veritas, they'll just say - hey nice work Washington Post you did your job.
Dan Rather, one of the last anchors doing his own reporting, got fired after reporting a bogus GWB story. A staffer was somewhat responsible for airing it, but that was the price of letting the staffer vet the story. I could probably think of some others that did make the news, but overall you're right. Typically The misinformation is front page and the retraction is weeks later, if at al, and as far from prominent as they can make it.
AFAIK it does happen a lot. Normally it just wouldn't be publicized. This time they figured out it was not only false but an organized disinformation campaign and invested the time in documenting that instead.
MM is commonly used in banking/finance for Million, and M is sometimes used for thousands (but sometimes millions, depending on the person). It's a mess in other words.
In my experience it is pretty common to see it used both ways.
I'm not from the UK though, and why they would eschew the simple-and-obvious m and b suffixes in favor of alternatives, especially when Europeans love to lecture us about how metric is so neat and intuitive.
Probably has something to do with the root words -- mil means 'thousand' in a lot of latin languages, and a thousand is M in roman numerals, and I heard somewhere that "MM" stands for "mil mil" or "million million" which, in the context of M equaling 1,000, woudl make sense.
Yes but in all English hundred means 100, thousand means 1000, million means 1000000. 'MM' means... what exactly? Without prior training, can you tell just by looking at it?
More troubling is 'm' being used to refer to thousands, when the rest of the English-speaking financial world uses 'k' (which also makes little sense to me)
> English-speaking financial world uses 'k' (which also makes little sense to me)
It likely comes from SI prefixes. While there's not a standard base unit for currency, the fact they work for so many other units lends them towards easily inferred usage when applied to others.
> in some respects it's hard to come back at Project Veritas
outright lying and fabricating stories to try and discredit news organizations seems like it can come back on your no matter what happens.
In this case, Veritas has egg on its face, one of its employees is now outed, and everyone that they "may" have been able to expose that wasn't already on high alert for these frauds is. They've managed to not only prove WP follows proper journalist practices, but they've also given warning to those that don't to be extra careful of them.
WP on the other hand, appears to have done what it usually does, vets information and publishes what it finds. They come out a huge winner over doing nothing, which is exactly the opposite of what Veritas was trying to accomplish.
> outright lying and fabricating stories to try and discredit news organizations seems like it can come back on your no matter what happens.
Not when your clear history of willingness to do that is what drives donations. It's literally the entire reason Project Veritas exists and gets funded.
> outright lying and fabricating stories to try and discredit news organizations seems like it can come back on your no matter what happens.
Why? News organizations should never accept fabricated stories. If they do, then something is wrong with their vetting process, and it means that non "pen-testing" fake stories can get through as well, where the intent is to have some effect in the world(say, getting a person out of an election) as opposed to just making the newspaper blush.
> News organizations should never accept fabricated stories
This is like running around committing fraud and then claiming "people should have never participated in my fraud!" No, they shouldn't. But no, you shouldn't.
It's only hard to come back at them if you're determined to stick to the idea that they're good. Anywhere else, doing things like this is considered shady as fuck.
100% serious question: how long before Project Veritas or others on the far right start accusing the WaPo of fabricating the bungled sting story in order to embarrass them?
Providing her real name was quite the blunder. Gave WP what they needed to make sense of the unraveling story, and permanently attached her identity to clumsy deceit.
They believe she attempted to deceive her in bad faith, in order to affect the campaign of a public official. As they state, (and as US courts will stand behind) she entered into the agreement in bad faith and was caught, and they voided said agreement.
Sure, but the Washington Post may have refused her story if they couldn't verify her identity. The real problem is that for Veritas is that they apparently can't hire someone with a clean identity and no public record of conservative beliefs.
>“I’m moving to New York!” the May 29 appeal said. “I’ve accepted a job to work in the conservative media movement to combat the lies and deceipt of the liberal MSM. I’ll be using my skills as a researcher and fact-checker to help our movement. I was laid off from my mortgage job a few months ago and came across the opportunity to change my career path.”
The hypocrisy is... Well, there's a lot of nasty words for it.
This is a telling look at the intense self-righteousness felt by that segment. They knowingly engage in fraud and deception, believing that it is justified because their enemies do it more or first or something.
The cases involving intimate/sexual relations (consensual or not) are really difficult to address, and the general approach we have as the (at least nominally) secular and democratic part of the world is just crazy. Probably most allegations in most cases are true, but as it is now any male is quite open to the abuse of the general stance of the society and the law. Even being accused of something can easily ruin one's life, despite the "innocent until proven guilty" principle. If it's allowed to weaponise slander so easily, it actually hurts also whom suffer from sexual violence, reducing the credibility of their claims when they try to come out and pursue justice.
The problem is the bar has been way too high until now. “He’s important/beloved/whatever, he wouldn’t do that. It’s just your word against his”.
And a lot of men escaped a LOT of charges because of that.
I think we’re still pretty far from the pendulum going too extreme. We’ll have to figure out the balance.
But what’s happening right now still seems pretty healthy. The fact that so many stories can be found so easily and corroborated shows what has been waiting in the wings.
I hate to get into this topic on the internet, but I think you're exactly right MBCook.
This has been horrifyingly common and we are still a long way from justice.
Stories like this show the dedication that has gone into avoiding a "witch hunt" scenario (maybe even at the expense of victims without strong corroborating evidence). There's just so much low hanging (and very rotten) fruit.
Define the bar then, and make it a law. The beauty of laws is that they must be general and not arbitrary enforced. If create a law with a lower bar then society will also have to accept the addition abuse, and that is what society should look at when figuring out the balance.
The bar right now is extrajudicial punishment through trial by media that get arbitrary enforced by which ever journalist that decide if a story is believable or not. In this case the journalist of WaPo made the right judgment call, but is that the role of journalists in 2017? Extrajudicial punishment is not a viable solution to social problems, and has a very long history of causing harm to individuals and society. Today its a rule rather than exception that the accused get death threats based on this kind of news articles, including targeting of the accused family and children. That is how far the pendulum has swung.
I would last add that here in Sweden there is two crimes that have very similar clearing rates. Sexual violence and violence. Taken together everything from sexual harassment to rape has a total of 11% clearing rate. Similar, everything from assault to murder have a total rate of 11%. For both, the primary reason for police to stop investigating and prosecutor to not bring the case to court is a lack of evidence that is not word against word.
Part of the problem is that people wouldn’t prosecute even if you met the standard of evidence.
Another problem is that there are statutes of limitations, often quite short. So many people who were assaulted have no other recourse than the media to try to protect other future victims.
What should happen instead? They got away with it past the statute of limitations so no one is allowed to bring it up or criticize them? No one is allowed to decide how they will behave towards the abuser now that they know the information because a court didn’t convict them?
Here in Sweden there is a dedicated prosecutor unit that only deal with sexual violence and the law is designed in such a way that sexual violence are state crime, which mean that the state must prosecute even if the victim rescind their version of events. The cause of the 11% clearing rate is not that cases met the standard of evidence and prosecutors just refuse to go after crimes of violence or sexual violence.
A typical sexual assault case involve two individuals that are alone in a room. The accused says there was consent, the accuser says there wasn't. Similarly a typical assault case involve two individuals alone in a room where both accuse the other of being the aggressor. In both cases the accuser and accused know each other.
What should happen in those 90%? Lets make a law. What about a national news paper which get delivered to every person in the nation for free that describe every case from the point of view of the accuser of every crime that don't get cleared? Would that protect other future victims? Would it help giving every potential victim the same privilege of trial by media, or would it just create further problems for society?
It's not acceptable to punish today's men for what men of past got away with. That's vendetta, blood feud, primitive.
What I watch happening is lots of decisions happening based on nothing. That all or most the particular men accused at the moment are actually guilty is of no interest to me. But the way we decide on anecdotes and stories is. When we decide before the courts, we commit irreversible damage. If we say once Joe Person is a molester or a rapist or a paedophile, and then he's proven innocent, it's basically impossible to find every single person who has read the wrong accusations and convince them otherwise.
Also, it's not only the bar that is lowering, the definition of what's normal advances and what's molesting is changing. In not so distant past invasive behaviour of men were even expected in some circumstances. Good that we do away with these problematic behaviours and protect people from unwanted experiences, but that in no way legitimises leaving people defenceless in front of slander.
There is no LEGAL punishment happening. It’s all social.
People can behave how they wish, rightly or wrongly. There isn’t much of a way of stopping at. You could always try suing for libel/slander but even if you win everyone’s going to remember the lie.
A big part of the problem is there are so many people with a lot of credibility making these accusations.
First of all I'm not questioning the present accusations. I don't even follow them that closely, to be honest.
And, I was talking about the social punishment anyways. People can behave how they wish, but that does not mean they should be pushed in a wrong direction by the media and by the accusations before there's a court decision or very strong evidence (like a cam recording, a photo, etc.).
It seems to me that you're trying to not understand me, so, my participation in this thread ends here.
I understand what you’re saying. I simply don’t see another way.
I get you’re concerned that if someone were to be given an accusation they could lose their career and then we could find out later that it was all fake. Nothing legal went down, society simply decided to shun them.
Outside of making it illegal to publish any kind of accusation in less it has been proven in a court of law… I don’t see how we could avoid people deciding to shun the accused.
And maybe that’s fair given the number of women who have had their career is ruined because they chose not to work day in and day out with someone who harassed and/or raped them. Who had to leave the workforce instead, or take another job and start at the bottom of the ladder again.
There’s no good solutions to ANY of this. It’s a giant mess. We’ll just have to see how it society sorts it out.
In the end the long victimized group has gotten some temporary power. That seems like a step forward even if it raises the possibility of false accusations a small amount.
"It's not acceptable to punish today's men for what men of past got away with. "
The only men who are being punished are those who actually engaged in that behavior. I dare say that it is acceptable to punish them.
"But the way we decide on anecdotes and stories is."
We're not; and we're not actually sending anyone to jail based on just that. The accusations that have been publicized have been vetted, and they have been found to be quite likely true. Keep in mind that, for most of these accusations, there wouldn't be much, if any physical evidence. If I force a woman to kiss me, or grope without consent, there's not going to be any evidence of that. If I ask a woman if I can masturbate in front of her, it's highly unlikely that there would be a recording, or that she would take my semen with her.
"Also, it's not only the bar that is lowering, the definition of what's normal advances and what's molesting is changing."
No. What's changing is that people feel stronger and more able to stand up for themselves and come out with what happened. The behavior was never really acceptable; it's that women didn't feel strong enough to come forward and say that.
First of all, punishment is two-fold: the formal punishment the court orders; and the informal one: how the community receives you after what you've done is known. I'm mostly concerned about the second. Maybe I'm not being successful at making that obvious. How a court decides is out of the scope of my argument. How the public decides is. And what I say is that ideally the precautions should be taken so that the court is first to decide.
On the last paragraph, I do agree you, and don't see why it should negate my statement that you've quoted. I'm on my twenties, so maybe I don't know enough, but how people flirt is definitely changing, and what is acceptable does also change too (interpreting "acceptable" not as "moral" but as "not frowned upon").
Something to ensure that courts were the first to decide would, in the current situation, only benefit the perpetrators. Does a very long history of courts not being willing to take this seriously or listen to the evidence, or problems with short statute of limitations meaning that it’s very hard to get a conviction if a woman waited before making an accusation.
In abstract I think it’s a understandable/useful concept but in this particular situation I think it would only benefit the side that needs help the least (due to historical factors/biases).
I agree completely. Unfortunately this makes me adopt a rule where I disregard any accusation, especially accusations from decades ago, that isn't backed up with a police report/court case or some kind of substantial evidence.
In today's media and society, it's never guilt or innocence, it's the seriousness of the charge, and the target. Eventually shady organizations will form to target people with false narratives and accusations because, as we've seen in the #metoo campaign, just the accusation alone can torpedo a career.
The, "the real victims in all of this are the men!" takes on this are getting pretty old. False accusations are extremely rare. Whereas harassment and sexual assault are actual, real things that women have to deal with on a daily basis.
You know what can really ruin someone's life? Being harassed/assaulted and not being able to talk about it for fear that you'll be ostracised by your friends and family.
> You know what can really ruin someone's life? Being harassed/assaulted and not being able to talk about it for fear that you'll be ostracised by your friends and family.
I know that out of experience. Long long experiences. You never know who you're talking to on the interwebs, so be careful (not that I'm trying to intimidate you, but just an advice: a thoughtless remark might be hurting someone receiving your ones and zeros).
> The, "the real victims in all of this are the men!" takes on this are getting pretty old. False accusations are extremely rare. Whereas harassment and sexual assault are actual, real things that women have to deal with on a daily basis.
I'm not saying that at all, this is a strawman argument.
Right, so Trump running a propaganda campaign accusing Obama of not being born in the United States isn't slander, while all the women who accused Trump are guilty of slander?
Once again I learn HN is only good for tech talk... I have not said that any of the current cases are slander. I have said that the general state of laws allows slanderers to forcefully impact people's lives. But fuck it, everyone is here to find something to attack, some way to demonstrate how they are with the victims.
This is like me saying "some dose of alcohol can be lethal" and you going "yeah so you say we ban alcohol consumption because most of the stupid people who die consume alcohol". Good god...
>Even being accused of something can easily ruin one's life, despite the "innocent until proven guilty" principle.
Did 16 women accusing Trump of sexual harassment ruin his life? Did it get them sued for slander? Did it even prevent him from being elected president? No, no, and no.
Yet Trump is still playing the victim: we are now to believe the Access Hollywood tape that Trump confessed to and apologized for is not only "locker room talk", but actually fake.
Poor Billy Bush is a victim for losing his job over something that never even happened, but Trump got elected in spite of confessing to and apologize for something he didn't even do, huh?
That's about as weak an argument as you could have possibly made. If you don't like the facts, calling people names won't change them. It sounds to me like you're just projecting.
The facts, with citations (although none of this should be news to you unless you have been living under a rock in St. Petersburg):
Do you contest any of those well documented facts (for which I could provide many more citations), or are you just going to whine "fake news", dismiss all the proven facts without presenting any proof to the contrary, and call me more names? (Maybe you could make up a racist slur of a nick-name like "Pocahontas" to call me, instead of "troll", which is really not very creative of you. That will really bolster your argument.)
You claimed "the general state of laws allows slanderers to forcefully impact people's lives". I've shown you're dead wrong in ...
Funny that PV brings their undercover actors right in the front door of their offices. I'm guessing they aren't going to be doing that from now on, knowing that at the very least WaPo is watching who enters.
Is there a problem? Well played on both sides. WaPo won this round and brags about it, rightly. It's not too dissimilar from the adversarial justice system, but in a different domain, to be honest.
I would suggest that Project Veritas acting in this manner is very much a problem. Remember, they weren't just trying to discredit a major journalism institution here, but sexaul assault victims everywhere.
It's not too dissimilar from the adversarial justice system, but in a different domain, to be honest.
If this were analogous to a judicial proceeding, it would be one in which one side submitted fabricated evidence. How is that "well played on both sides"?
It may be illegal to trick someone else into publishing slander. WaPo might feel defrauded, and might have a case for that. IANAL though, so that's pure speculation on my part.
A lot of good laughs from this incident. I actually feel a bit sad for the woman who got hired to play the fake victim. She was recently laid off from from her mortgage job when she apparently accepted the job with Veritas, but she needed to start a GoFundMe just to move up there (and she only got 2 donors, one of which was her own daughter)
Veritas tasks her with the main role in busting the Washington Post with an undercover sting. But it doesn't look like she got any training or preparation at all. She used her real name when talking to the WaPo, had a phone number with the wrong area code (given her claimed state of residence), and Veritas didn't remind her to remove her GoFundMe page, which is how the WaPo ultimately confirmed that she was a fraud.
I'm definitely not a fan of Veritas or O'Keefe's bullshit, and this woman has to bear responsibility for her poor choices. But damn, if your mission was sincerely to expose the truth about the purportedly corrupt media, wouldn't you put more prep into it? It's not like Veritas is lacking in resources -- their latest 990 says they had an operating surplus of $1.3M and O'Keefe received $235,471 in salary https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3454912-Project-Veri...
edit: the 2016 990 was just released today. O'Keefe's salary is $317K and the org's revenue increased from 3.7M to 4.8M. Not bad at all.
"I'm moving to New York! I've accepted a job to work in the conservative media movement to combat the lies and deceipt of the liberal MSM. I'll be using my skills as a researcher and fact-checker to help our movement."
She was fully aware that her job was to lie and deceive the Washington Post, yet she claimed she aspired to "combat the lies and deceipt of the liberal MSM".
She claimed to have "skills as a researcher and fact-checker", yet she was blindsided and busted by skilled liberal MSM researchers and fact-checkers.
She should learn how to use a spell-checker, too.
I don't feel bad at all for that mendacious hypocrite.
Yeah, my feelings are more muted than mixed. I'm having a hard time feeling anger toward her because of how comically and catastrophically she fucked up. OTOH, she did sign up to fake being a rape victim to try a scheme that if it had been successful, would have discredited rape victims everywhere. Not going to spend much time worrying if she ever recovers from her self-made disaster.
I don't think it makes sense to focus so strongly on the woman here. She was hired by a Republican operative known for deceptive practices who was a man, who is funded by at least two prominent Republicans who were men (Theil and Trump), being used to throw chaff against a male republican accused of preying on vulnerable young women. They needed a woman to play this part and they found (another) naive and vulnerable woman to take advantage of.
Particularly since this was a two pronged attack on the classic right-wing totems of a) the lying liberal media and b) lying woman who falsely accuse prominent men of sexual assault, I'm a bit disturbed at how many headlines seem to focus on the woman, and not the fascist machine that hired her and intended to profit from this scheme.
It's a fair bet this will be continually referenced in the right-wing media as "woman made false accusation about Roy Moore" (since they continued to cite every other Veritas sting operation even after they'd been debunked) so maybe we shouldn't help them out, since what they're doing is pretty blatantly evil?
Of course they'll omit important details like "woman who Jamie O'Keefe paid to make false accusation about Roy Moore".
But the fact that they're delusional liars who will always twist and deny the truth doesn't mean the Washington Post shouldn't report the news.
They are themselves precisely what they claim to be fighting against: lying partisan media, paying women to make false accusations against Roy Moore.
The most delicious thing about this whole affair is hearing Jamie O'Keefe so flustered to be confronted on the street that he makes the false equivalence of accusing the Washington Post reporters of pulling his own "tricks" on him, as if it was just fine for him to play all those deceptive rat-fucking tricks, just not OK for him to be on the receiving end of some fact-checking and old fashioned street pounding question asking journalism. "I think it's really cute that you guys are borrowing our techniques."
It's incredible how mainstream these kinds of practice have become. We are more happy that WaPo didn't fall for the sting than angry that there was a sting in the first place!
I can't believe how much the media landscape changed in the past 2 years...
I feel such powerlessness against it. As long as deep pocketed people are ready to pay to spread lies, I don't see any way to stop them.
He specifically meant to use the term "alt-left", parroting Trump's and David Duke's own words, just the way right-wing Republicans love to use the incorrect term "Democrat Party" on purpose as an insult.
The alt-right pretending the alt-left exists is "thing", a talking point, a false equivalence, and a mendacious lie.
It's a dog-whistle attempting to normalize the alt-right and Nazis, and accuse the left of acting as extreme and irrational as alt-right Whit Supremacists are acting, which is total bullshit.
Being anti-Nazi and anti-racist and anti-misogynist isn't "alt-left", it's "patriotic" and "democratic" and "American" and "mainstream" and "sane" and "ethical".
It's not "hard left" to be anti-Nazi. Even hard right Republicans SHOULD be anti-Nazi too, but apparently now they're not any more. Don't blame it on the left that the right has gone off the deep end and now consider Nazis "very fine people". That doesn't make the left "hard".
The "alt-left" didn't invade Nazi Germany on D-Day, the Allied Forces did. And the Allied Forces never behaved anything like the way the alt-right is behaving.
There is no 'Alt-Left,' no matter what Trump says.
Hours after a rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, organized by white nationalists, turned deadly, President Donald Trump blamed "many sides" for the violence that transpired. Three days later, at an impromptu press conference at Trump Tower, the president doubled down on this message, condemning groups "on both sides" of the fighting. “What about the alt-left that came charging at, as you say, at the alt-right?” the president said.
There is no such thing as the "alt-left". But in a piece for Vanity Fair, James Wolcott pretends otherwise:
>Disillusionment with Obama’s presidency, loathing of Hillary Clinton, disgust with “identity politics,” and a craving for a climactic reckoning that will clear the stage for a bold tomorrow have created a kinship between the “alt-right” and an alt-left. They’re not kissin’ cousins, but they caterwaul some of the same tunes in different keys.
Wolcott admits the left “can’t match” the alt-right “for strength, malignancy, or tentacled reach”—then proceeds to make just such an argument. This is bad writing in service of a bad argument: “People say things I don’t like” is not the same thing as “people advocate for a white ethnostate.” This is precisely the false equivalency Wolcott makes by using the phrase “alt-left.” It is a disingenuous characterization designed to undermine leftist claims.
You are arguing something I'm not talking about at all.
This is obviously a heated topic for you, and as a democrat myself I don't think you are doing us any favors.
The hard-left isn't a good thing, they promote violence to achieve their agendas, and say things like "centrists get the bullet too".
I really despise the normalization of political violence.
The "hard left" is a tiny minority that isn't represented and is soundly rejected by the Democratic party, and it is not running the country like the alt-right is.
There are no "hard left" senators or representatives or supreme court justices or attorney generals or campaign chief executives or presidents, but there are many alt-right ones.
Err, so I see a defense of the news arm and it's impartiality and acknowledgement that the editorial section has an ax to grind? Is that supposed to be some big expose? That's the point of the editorial department, a chance for reporters to give opinions rather than be impartial.
The sad part is that people might assume it actually supports the position that WaPo can't be trusted. That seems to be the norm these days. Say something and throw out random video or audio as evidence when it isn't anything of the sort, since most people won't pay enough attention to really check and will just assume that if it was presented as evidence, it must be evidence. :/
This is unfortunate but I support Veritas. I think, in general, they do good work in exposing corruption, and bias. Just because WaPo caught them this time doesn't mean they're wrong, or WaPo is wrong. The past few years have given me a deep distrust of all media.
This would be a reasonable opinion if the far right reacted to this event by giving credit to WaPo--if their genuine interest was in the truth and good reporting. Unfortunately truth and good reporting is not their goal, and this entire story will be presented in a very different light on far right sites.
From my perspective the fake "Bernie Bernstein" calls claiming to be from the WP, the disproven claims of an audio tape of WP reporters offering 1000$(sp), the claims that Olde Hickory House didn't exist at the address which were disproven by newspaper ads and other evidence, the claims that the county was dry at the time Moore was alleged to have bought girls alcohol (it was not and the pizzeria actually served wine) -
All of these come together to be a flood of unvetted claims to keep Moore ahead until the election. It doesn't matter if they're disproven because many voters hear about them and take them as gospel without ever hearing the other side of the story.
> Just because WaPo caught them this time doesn't mean they're wrong, or WaPo is wrong. The past few years have given me a deep distrust of all media.
So just because they made a story up, and lied to reporters in order to spread a lie, that’s not wrong? Jeez, what do you think is wrong? Can you even tell anymore?
I am a huge news junkie. Probably why I am a Hacker News follower. With the Trump news cycle at a max burn setting lately, I ran out of mobile browsers to read WaPo articles for free. While I also have the same issue with the NYTimes, WaPo's journalism has been at Stand-by-Me-sic-balls level lately. Thoroughly enjoyable.
Also an Amazon Prime member, so I'm getting my 6 months free trial and a discounted rate thereafter.
>But on Monday morning, Post reporters saw her walking into the New York offices of Project Veritas, an organization that targets the mainstream news media and left-leaning groups.
So they basically stalked her? Interesting to see how WP treats some (all?) whistleblowers that come their way.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 175 ms ] threadThis phenomenon is at least new to me. As bonus points, it's a nice example of an attempt at social "hacking".
Politics is not exactly a clean business.
It is not even a new technique for the specific group (James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas) organizing this instance, which has repeatedly and notoriously used similar false-flag techniques to attempt to discredit organizations that are (or are perceived by them to be) on the left side of the American political spectrum.
I'm sure if the reporters had responded to this fake woman's story with any soundbites about how it would effect Moore's election results, regardless of if they published anything or if they kicked her out the door the next minute they would put up a video about how "WaPo reporters are desperate to destroy the honorable Roy Moore!"; just look here is one saying this fake story would be bad for his campaign!
Disgusting.
The question is if the truth they stumble upon outweighs the misinformation and lies they spread to come across it.
They're all doing shady shit, but sometimes one of them hits on something useful.
I’m not talking about some partisan thing, I mean a story that gets picked up as teal by MSM outlets and a real issue.
I honestly don’t know.
Donna Brazile and Roland Martin[edit] In October 2016, WikiLeaks published emails from John Podesta which showed CNN contributor Donna Brazile passing the questions for a CNN-sponsored debate to the Clinton campaign.[13] In the email, Brazile discussed her concern of Clinton's ability to field a question regarding the death penalty. The following day Clinton would receive the question about the death penalty, verbatim from an audience member at the CNN-hosted Town Hall event.[14] According to a CNNMoney investigation, the debate moderator Roland Martin of TV One "did not deny sharing information with Brazile."[15] CNN severed ties with Brazile on October 14, 2016.[16][17]
^ Rigging debates. (Dishonesty + Political Gain)
Conflicts with Trump administration[edit] On January 10, 2017, CNN reported on the existence of classified documents that said Russia had compromising personal and financial information about then President-elect Donald Trump. CNN did not publish the dossier, or any specific details of the dossier. Later that day, BuzzFeed published the entire 35-page dossier with a disclaimer that it was unverified and "includes some clear errors".[21][22][23] The dossier had been read widely by political and media figures in Washington, and had been sent to multiple other journalists who had declined to publish it as it was unsubstantiated.[21] At a press conference the following day, Trump referred to CNN as fake news and refused to take a question from CNN reporter Jim Acosta.[24]
^ 'Russian hooker' dossier (Dishonesty + Political Gain + Sexual Assault)
Coverage of Margaret Thatcher's death[edit] CNN was criticized for using a photograph of former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Margaret Thatcher with disgraced BBC presenter Jimmy Savile four times during coverage of her death on April 8, 2013.[34] Allegations of sexual abuse against Savile were made public in 2012, a year after his death, leading UK police to believe that Savile may have been one of Britain's most prolific sex offenders.[35] An image of Thatcher with Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet was also run during the broadcast, leading some commentators to accuse CNN of bias.[36][37]
^ Selective Editing (Dishonesty + Political Gain)
Rigged debates, lying about sexual assault, and selective editing doesn't sound like Project Veritas to you?
Admittedly I can't find a trespass claim against CNN so perhaps more accurately Project Veritas is a right wing CNN that also trespasses.
No, not at all. Are you really unable to tell the difference between these two organizations tactics? If so... like, I don’t even know what to say about that, beyond I’ll have to remember not to trust your opinion on anything.
With that second point, is that similar to the dossier compiled by a respected security veteran which also says Russia has compromising material on Trump and is becoming more and more corroborated as time goes on? Just wondering.
Oddly if you’re a prime member the yearly subscription is still $100.
I wonder how many subscriptions this story resulted in?
This is a great story and it definitely pushed me over the edge. I’m not sure I would have ended up subscribing in the next month or two if it wasn’t for this.
(I do not believe in the slightest that the Washington Post is so compromised.)
The Wall Street Journal
I can't help but feel like Bezos loves them. I can see him open up the paper he owns, see an attack piece on him, and feel absolutely giddy that he's not going to do anything about it. Because he so desperately wants to be the most self-actualized entrepreneur that ever lived.
They were claiming since the CIA uses AWS to the tune of ~$900 million a year, the CIA has a direct line to WaPo.
Any rational person (including the Post editor who commented on it) would agree this is a non-issue, but it does pose an interesting, all be it slight, conflict.
Guess I'm irrational then. $900M/yr is an insanely substantial chunk of change for even the largest companies in the world.
Nope.
1: http://www.businessinsider.com/amazons-cloud-business-hits-o...
At that level, editorial independence is practically a commandment, and Marty Baron wouldn't allow conflicts like that to happen. Think about it, since any of that would have to go through him, the guy who went after the Catholics in Boston. You're telling me he gets to the Washington Post, of all places, and hangs up his integrity? Come on.
It's amazing how often those fake news theories fly in the face of simple logic, and amazing how effective they are at swaying people who do not utilize it or do not understand how a newsroom works. That's probably the failure we're seeing unfold, that journalism has emphasized content over form and failed to educate the public on exactly how it works, and is asking readers to overlook their increasing distrust in institutions. Journalism looking something like "I spoke to blah, she said blah," with recordings next to the text, rather than the way it's currently written in the third person, is probably a necessary evolution now.
Conspiracy theorists will always find because they want to. I don’t think anyone needs to worry about what they will or won’t latch on to, because worrying about it implies that if something wasn’t the case, they wouldn’t latch on to something else. But they always will.
AWS grosses ~$4Bn yearly, so if the CIA truly spends $0.9Bn (~23%) favours can happen and doors can get opened.
There's nothing "direct" about that, to be sure, but "give me WaPo EOC's cell number" is viable.
Besides the fact that it is not in the interests of the company to report in a way that could negatively affect the stock price, it is also in its interests not to report negatively on topics which could impact its lucrative customer contracts. And on top of it all, if Bezos - the richest man in the world - just gets something in his craw, that could also affect what gets reported, as it has been with every media baron in history.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Their dedication is to go after people Jeff Bezos doesn't like
They’re not “going after” anyone. They vet their sources and report what can be verified. If you’re still not getting that after reading this article, then I don’t know what to say to you. Maybe try to diversify your media consumption a little bit. I suspect your news sources may mostly skew far to one side of the political spectrum.
Politico is good for center left reporting, and The Hill is good for center right reporting. Reuters and the Associated Press are a little bland in their presentation, but are fiercely centrist. If you want something that may piss you off but will be written by people who generally do solid analysis with a leftward slant, I suggest Talking Points Memo.
Consuming opinions that differ from your own can give a helpful dose of perspective. I read articles from a number of pretty conservative publications on a regular basis. Sometimes they say things that are interesting, and sometimes they just make me angry. Either way, it’s good to know what everyone else is saying about the events of the day.
I wonder if this sort of pen-testing could be done more regularly across the industry (by non-shady organizations).
1. Proves fakers are making up stories against Moore
or
2. Is a false flag to try to discredit those claiming #1
When no one is considered credible by both sides I think you would just end up doing more damage.
Hasn’t the Rosenhan experiment been used as an argument against the validity of psychology and psychiatry?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment
On one hand, these groups are clearly out to slander and discredit hard-working, honest people. On the other hand, I don't think the field of journalism should be entirely self-governing. It would give me great peace of mind to see some score that said these news sources were indeed able to turn away fake sources with regularity.
The crazy "all mainstream news is fake" crowd will not be swayed, but if nothing is done to appease moderates, there won't be any left.
.. and if my aunt had different bits she'd be my uncle. Of course a perfectly executed plot with hard-to-fake corroborating details and no holes whatsoever could have fooled them. WaPo reporters aren't perfect.
But they ARE genuinely interested in the truth, and interested in doing due diligence to ensure they're reporting it. Above personal politics or personal likes/dislikes of public figures. Conservative media don't seem to understand that. Maybe they can't understand it.
The Washington Post interviewed 30 people for their original Roy Moore story. And they checked court records. It was a rigorously researched and thoroughly fact-checked story.
None of the women in that story sought out the Washington Post, who reached out to them first. That's why Jaime Phillips contacting the Post first herself raised some initial suspicions, and she deserved at least as much rigorous vetting as the other women who weren't actively shopping their story around, and who Roy Moore actually diddled.
In other words, it's not just that Project Veritas was extremely sloppy, but that their whole model and narrative about the "Liberal Mainstream Media" is deeply and totally wrong, but does apply to themselves, and they're not generally interested in the truth.
They believe their own lies, and project them onto their enemies. They were trying to prove something about the Washington Post that wasn't true, by assuming it was true, in a way that depended on it being true, but it wasn't true.
Jaime Phillips herself claimed on her GoFundie page: "I'm moving to New York! I've accepted a job to work in the conservative media movement to combat the lies and deceipt of the liberal MSM. I'll be using my skills as a researcher and fact-checker to help our movement."
But her job was actually to "combat the liberal MSM with lies and deceipt". (Or "deceit", as it turned out.)
She fancies herself a fact checker, not a spell checker, and presumes the MSM doesn't check facts even though it's their job, because she isn't really a fact checker herself, she just said that to get a job, and presumes other people like the Washington Post reporters who call themselves fact checkers are also misrepresenting themselves and totally incompetent, just like she is.
I guess they believe the stories they tell about the media? It doesn’t seem to have occurred to them that journalists actually do their job.
They just wanted the journalist to say something that they could edit into a narrative. Then all the right-wing rags would in concert publish stories about "secret tapes" that "reveal" the "hidden plot" by "liberal feminists" to discredit "brave christian soldier" Roy Moore.
Actually getting a story published in the paper probably wasn't their goal, what's that Richleau quote again? Give me 6 minutes of secretly recorded video of the most innocent journalist and I can edit it into something to have them fired. Something like that anyway.
That's why the actor was so keen to get them on tape saying that the scandal would definately take down Moore.
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/counter-sting-catches-...
edit: I just remembered that a previous fake video of his inspired someone to go into a Planned Parenthood centre with a gun, killing three people and injuring 9.
This situation passed 'fucked-up' a long time ago.
Yes, this is what they do. But ‘profrssional’ just doesn’t seem like a word that should apply.
That is, they've been pretty much complete successes where the actual purpose for which they are done is concerned.
They are professionals that seem like amateurs if you don't consider their purpose.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/05/30/james-okeefe-a...
I never know if James O'keefe and his ilk are really into this cause (not sure exactly what, something vaguely conservative?) or if they're just grifters trying to make a buck by whatever means necessary
The story on right wing websites tomorrow will probably be "one of the accusers was obviously lying - this raises questions about the other ones," never mind the lying one was paid by a right wing site.
I think, generally, the result has been that it's harder to do fake journalism; at least when it comes to the undercover work.
It's harder to do fake journalism that is liberal or anti-authoritarian; but it's easier than ever to successfully distribute authoritarian and conservative propaganda.
When my very Republican stepfather fell into dementia, I helped my mom monitor his mail so he'd stop spending so much money on things he didn't understand. It was a deluge of stuff every day. Often from groups I had never heard of who wanted money to stop Sharia law or stop the "war on Christmas" or whatever the big conservative cause was that day. And even the mainstream GOP got into the act. More than once, a FedEx envelope would show up with a plea that everything was doomed unless a check was overnighted. Once the GOP FedEx solicitation contained a letter accusing my stepfather of no longer being a member of the Republican Party, but he could clear up this misunderstanding by writing a check.
https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-long-con
The conservative movement is elder abuse on a grand scale.
Wouldn’t you characterize that as scaremongering given the facts?
He is a political hitman and stalking horse.
Consider: what if O'Keefe is just a decoy?
https://twitter.com/willsommer/status/935274569778319360
I’d be quite happy for his funders to continue wasting their money on things like this
But, they can: the refunding and destruction of ACORN succeeded, as in many jurisdictions has the defunding of Planned Parenthood, both on the back of O'Keefe propaganda stunts (that we debunked in the mainstream media rapidly, sure, but that did little to blunt the political impact of the resulting propaganda.)
The propaganda isn't to persuade the broad public, it's to mobilize a sufficient segment of the activist base of the right. And, sure, only one in a dozen or so has any real effect, but it's that one in a dozen or so that keeps him getting funded through the other 11. Because the losses don't have much political cost.
http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2017/11/24/washington-p...
Now, Peter Thiel, "is" a hidden evil overlord pulling the strings?
Because if you're going to suggest that hidden evil overlords can and do exist, then why are we giving Soros the benefit of the doubt? Why are journalists meeting with this guy and speaking at his events if he has nothing to do with politics?
I'm asking honestly, which is it: Are billionaires trying to manipulate us, or not? And if so, why do we give an exception to one specific man? And if not, why do we give exception to one specific man?
[Ooh, downvotes without replies. I must be on to something here. Katastic, the most dangerous thing to Hacker News, is a guy with sources. I can't wait to hear how sources and logic are the new arm of the Patriarchy and Neo-Nazism.]
People are welcome to fund what they like. Everyone has an agenda.
However, this guy's stunts seem to have the expressly destructive purposes. He's a troll.
Maybe Trump was correct to claim he invented fake news.
I'll pen a letter out to my state representatives and state attorney general this week. This is the sort of low-visibility, easy-to-act on thing that tends to be worth reaching out about.
[1] http://990s.foundationcenter.org/990_pdf_archive/272/2728948...
[2] http://990s.foundationcenter.org/990_pdf_archive/471/4718096...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/501(c)_organization
[4] https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/charitable-organiz...
This time it was an attempt to undermine journalism in a tricky situation.
> Hitting export on hidden camera footage into Washington Post shortly. Project Veritas vs Bezos 100mm monopoly. Fasten your seatbelts.
https://twitter.com/jamesokeefeiii/status/935266973176487936
EDIT: He posted the video, which is not a denial of the accusations in the WaPo article.
https://english.stackexchange.com/a/182072
Edit: you guys really will downvote anything, won't you?
I'm not from the UK though, and why they would eschew the simple-and-obvious m and b suffixes in favor of alternatives, especially when Europeans love to lecture us about how metric is so neat and intuitive.
Probably has something to do with the root words -- mil means 'thousand' in a lot of latin languages, and a thousand is M in roman numerals, and I heard somewhere that "MM" stands for "mil mil" or "million million" which, in the context of M equaling 1,000, woudl make sense.
Because not everyone is an American. Those suffixes are not used in other countries.
This is something that I didn't think would be this contentious. It's an old standard.
https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/181917/mixing-us...
It likely comes from SI prefixes. While there's not a standard base unit for currency, the fact they work for so many other units lends them towards easily inferred usage when applied to others.
1: http://www.npl.co.uk/reference/measurement-units/si-prefixes...
outright lying and fabricating stories to try and discredit news organizations seems like it can come back on your no matter what happens.
In this case, Veritas has egg on its face, one of its employees is now outed, and everyone that they "may" have been able to expose that wasn't already on high alert for these frauds is. They've managed to not only prove WP follows proper journalist practices, but they've also given warning to those that don't to be extra careful of them.
WP on the other hand, appears to have done what it usually does, vets information and publishes what it finds. They come out a huge winner over doing nothing, which is exactly the opposite of what Veritas was trying to accomplish.
Maybe they can escape this by rebranding themselves Project Mendacium.
Not when your clear history of willingness to do that is what drives donations. It's literally the entire reason Project Veritas exists and gets funded.
Why? News organizations should never accept fabricated stories. If they do, then something is wrong with their vetting process, and it means that non "pen-testing" fake stories can get through as well, where the intent is to have some effect in the world(say, getting a person out of an election) as opposed to just making the newspaper blush.
This is like running around committing fraud and then claiming "people should have never participated in my fraud!" No, they shouldn't. But no, you shouldn't.
edit: changed "right" to "far right"
Yeah, way to fuck that one up. She's burned.
But I'm afraid this is just the beginning.
The hypocrisy is... Well, there's a lot of nasty words for it.
And a lot of men escaped a LOT of charges because of that.
I think we’re still pretty far from the pendulum going too extreme. We’ll have to figure out the balance.
But what’s happening right now still seems pretty healthy. The fact that so many stories can be found so easily and corroborated shows what has been waiting in the wings.
This has been horrifyingly common and we are still a long way from justice.
Stories like this show the dedication that has gone into avoiding a "witch hunt" scenario (maybe even at the expense of victims without strong corroborating evidence). There's just so much low hanging (and very rotten) fruit.
The bar right now is extrajudicial punishment through trial by media that get arbitrary enforced by which ever journalist that decide if a story is believable or not. In this case the journalist of WaPo made the right judgment call, but is that the role of journalists in 2017? Extrajudicial punishment is not a viable solution to social problems, and has a very long history of causing harm to individuals and society. Today its a rule rather than exception that the accused get death threats based on this kind of news articles, including targeting of the accused family and children. That is how far the pendulum has swung.
I would last add that here in Sweden there is two crimes that have very similar clearing rates. Sexual violence and violence. Taken together everything from sexual harassment to rape has a total of 11% clearing rate. Similar, everything from assault to murder have a total rate of 11%. For both, the primary reason for police to stop investigating and prosecutor to not bring the case to court is a lack of evidence that is not word against word.
Part of the problem is that people wouldn’t prosecute even if you met the standard of evidence.
Another problem is that there are statutes of limitations, often quite short. So many people who were assaulted have no other recourse than the media to try to protect other future victims.
What should happen instead? They got away with it past the statute of limitations so no one is allowed to bring it up or criticize them? No one is allowed to decide how they will behave towards the abuser now that they know the information because a court didn’t convict them?
What would you solution be?
A typical sexual assault case involve two individuals that are alone in a room. The accused says there was consent, the accuser says there wasn't. Similarly a typical assault case involve two individuals alone in a room where both accuse the other of being the aggressor. In both cases the accuser and accused know each other.
What should happen in those 90%? Lets make a law. What about a national news paper which get delivered to every person in the nation for free that describe every case from the point of view of the accuser of every crime that don't get cleared? Would that protect other future victims? Would it help giving every potential victim the same privilege of trial by media, or would it just create further problems for society?
What I watch happening is lots of decisions happening based on nothing. That all or most the particular men accused at the moment are actually guilty is of no interest to me. But the way we decide on anecdotes and stories is. When we decide before the courts, we commit irreversible damage. If we say once Joe Person is a molester or a rapist or a paedophile, and then he's proven innocent, it's basically impossible to find every single person who has read the wrong accusations and convince them otherwise.
Also, it's not only the bar that is lowering, the definition of what's normal advances and what's molesting is changing. In not so distant past invasive behaviour of men were even expected in some circumstances. Good that we do away with these problematic behaviours and protect people from unwanted experiences, but that in no way legitimises leaving people defenceless in front of slander.
We’re punishing today’s men for what today’s men were still doing. And what yesterday’s men continued to do into today.
People can behave how they wish, rightly or wrongly. There isn’t much of a way of stopping at. You could always try suing for libel/slander but even if you win everyone’s going to remember the lie.
A big part of the problem is there are so many people with a lot of credibility making these accusations.
And, I was talking about the social punishment anyways. People can behave how they wish, but that does not mean they should be pushed in a wrong direction by the media and by the accusations before there's a court decision or very strong evidence (like a cam recording, a photo, etc.).
It seems to me that you're trying to not understand me, so, my participation in this thread ends here.
I get you’re concerned that if someone were to be given an accusation they could lose their career and then we could find out later that it was all fake. Nothing legal went down, society simply decided to shun them.
Outside of making it illegal to publish any kind of accusation in less it has been proven in a court of law… I don’t see how we could avoid people deciding to shun the accused.
And maybe that’s fair given the number of women who have had their career is ruined because they chose not to work day in and day out with someone who harassed and/or raped them. Who had to leave the workforce instead, or take another job and start at the bottom of the ladder again.
There’s no good solutions to ANY of this. It’s a giant mess. We’ll just have to see how it society sorts it out.
In the end the long victimized group has gotten some temporary power. That seems like a step forward even if it raises the possibility of false accusations a small amount.
The only men who are being punished are those who actually engaged in that behavior. I dare say that it is acceptable to punish them.
"But the way we decide on anecdotes and stories is."
We're not; and we're not actually sending anyone to jail based on just that. The accusations that have been publicized have been vetted, and they have been found to be quite likely true. Keep in mind that, for most of these accusations, there wouldn't be much, if any physical evidence. If I force a woman to kiss me, or grope without consent, there's not going to be any evidence of that. If I ask a woman if I can masturbate in front of her, it's highly unlikely that there would be a recording, or that she would take my semen with her.
"Also, it's not only the bar that is lowering, the definition of what's normal advances and what's molesting is changing."
No. What's changing is that people feel stronger and more able to stand up for themselves and come out with what happened. The behavior was never really acceptable; it's that women didn't feel strong enough to come forward and say that.
On the last paragraph, I do agree you, and don't see why it should negate my statement that you've quoted. I'm on my twenties, so maybe I don't know enough, but how people flirt is definitely changing, and what is acceptable does also change too (interpreting "acceptable" not as "moral" but as "not frowned upon").
In abstract I think it’s a understandable/useful concept but in this particular situation I think it would only benefit the side that needs help the least (due to historical factors/biases).
You know what can really ruin someone's life? Being harassed/assaulted and not being able to talk about it for fear that you'll be ostracised by your friends and family.
I know that out of experience. Long long experiences. You never know who you're talking to on the interwebs, so be careful (not that I'm trying to intimidate you, but just an advice: a thoughtless remark might be hurting someone receiving your ones and zeros).
> The, "the real victims in all of this are the men!" takes on this are getting pretty old. False accusations are extremely rare. Whereas harassment and sexual assault are actual, real things that women have to deal with on a daily basis.
I'm not saying that at all, this is a strawman argument.
This is like me saying "some dose of alcohol can be lethal" and you going "yeah so you say we ban alcohol consumption because most of the stupid people who die consume alcohol". Good god...
Did 16 women accusing Trump of sexual harassment ruin his life? Did it get them sued for slander? Did it even prevent him from being elected president? No, no, and no.
Yet Trump is still playing the victim: we are now to believe the Access Hollywood tape that Trump confessed to and apologized for is not only "locker room talk", but actually fake.
Poor Billy Bush is a victim for losing his job over something that never even happened, but Trump got elected in spite of confessing to and apologize for something he didn't even do, huh?
The facts, with citations (although none of this should be news to you unless you have been living under a rock in St. Petersburg):
1) 16 women accused Trump of sexual harassment.
What Happened to the 16 Women Who Accused Trump of Sexual Misconduct: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/11/what-happened-t...
2) It did not ruin his life.
Before Roy Moore, major political campaigns have survived sexual assault allegations: http://www.newsweek.com/roy-moore-just-latest-long-history-m...
3) Trump threatened to sue all the women who accused him of sexual harassment, but never has.
CBS's Major Garrett: Why hasn't Trump sued his sexual misconduct accusers? http://thehill.com/homenews/media/360975-cbss-major-garrett-...
4) Trump was elected president.
Donald Trump Is Elected President in Stunning Repudiation of the Establishment: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/09/us/politics/hillary-clint...
5) Trump always plays the victim card.
Donald Trump always plays the victim card: http://edition.cnn.com/2017/08/23/politics/trump-arizona-vic...
6) Trump confessed and apologized for what he said in the Access Holly tape.
Donald Trump Apologizes for Lewd Remarks: ‘I Pledge to Be a Better Man’: http://variety.com/2016/biz/news/donald-trump-access-hollywo...
7) Trump now claims the Access Hollywood tape is fake.
Trump now says the access hollywood tape may be fake. He privately told two White House members that he doubts the tape’s authenticity. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/11/trump-access-hollywo...
8) Billy Bush lost his job over the Access Hollywood tape.
Billy Bush breaks silence after losing job over controversial Trump, ‘Access Hollywood’ tape: http://pix11.com/2017/05/22/billy-bush-breaks-silence-after-...
Do you contest any of those well documented facts (for which I could provide many more citations), or are you just going to whine "fake news", dismiss all the proven facts without presenting any proof to the contrary, and call me more names? (Maybe you could make up a racist slur of a nick-name like "Pocahontas" to call me, instead of "troll", which is really not very creative of you. That will really bolster your argument.)
You claimed "the general state of laws allows slanderers to forcefully impact people's lives". I've shown you're dead wrong in ...
It's not the ones you catch you should be worried about, it's the ones you don't...
If this were analogous to a judicial proceeding, it would be one in which one side submitted fabricated evidence. How is that "well played on both sides"?
Veritas tasks her with the main role in busting the Washington Post with an undercover sting. But it doesn't look like she got any training or preparation at all. She used her real name when talking to the WaPo, had a phone number with the wrong area code (given her claimed state of residence), and Veritas didn't remind her to remove her GoFundMe page, which is how the WaPo ultimately confirmed that she was a fraud.
I'm definitely not a fan of Veritas or O'Keefe's bullshit, and this woman has to bear responsibility for her poor choices. But damn, if your mission was sincerely to expose the truth about the purportedly corrupt media, wouldn't you put more prep into it? It's not like Veritas is lacking in resources -- their latest 990 says they had an operating surplus of $1.3M and O'Keefe received $235,471 in salary https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3454912-Project-Veri...
edit: the 2016 990 was just released today. O'Keefe's salary is $317K and the org's revenue increased from 3.7M to 4.8M. Not bad at all.
Source of their income here:
https://twitter.com/alexkotch/status/935278757862170624
"I'm moving to New York! I've accepted a job to work in the conservative media movement to combat the lies and deceipt of the liberal MSM. I'll be using my skills as a researcher and fact-checker to help our movement."
She was fully aware that her job was to lie and deceive the Washington Post, yet she claimed she aspired to "combat the lies and deceipt of the liberal MSM".
She claimed to have "skills as a researcher and fact-checker", yet she was blindsided and busted by skilled liberal MSM researchers and fact-checkers.
She should learn how to use a spell-checker, too.
I don't feel bad at all for that mendacious hypocrite.
Particularly since this was a two pronged attack on the classic right-wing totems of a) the lying liberal media and b) lying woman who falsely accuse prominent men of sexual assault, I'm a bit disturbed at how many headlines seem to focus on the woman, and not the fascist machine that hired her and intended to profit from this scheme.
It's a fair bet this will be continually referenced in the right-wing media as "woman made false accusation about Roy Moore" (since they continued to cite every other Veritas sting operation even after they'd been debunked) so maybe we shouldn't help them out, since what they're doing is pretty blatantly evil?
But the fact that they're delusional liars who will always twist and deny the truth doesn't mean the Washington Post shouldn't report the news.
They are themselves precisely what they claim to be fighting against: lying partisan media, paying women to make false accusations against Roy Moore.
The most delicious thing about this whole affair is hearing Jamie O'Keefe so flustered to be confronted on the street that he makes the false equivalence of accusing the Washington Post reporters of pulling his own "tricks" on him, as if it was just fine for him to play all those deceptive rat-fucking tricks, just not OK for him to be on the receiving end of some fact-checking and old fashioned street pounding question asking journalism. "I think it's really cute that you guys are borrowing our techniques."
I can't believe how much the media landscape changed in the past 2 years...
I feel such powerlessness against it. As long as deep pocketed people are ready to pay to spread lies, I don't see any way to stop them.
The lack of faith is also a bipartisan issue. The alt left and alt right are growing and hate the msm.
Republicans (trump, the republican media) are trying to rebrand the hard left as the alt-left.
And the hard left most definitely exists.
The alt-right pretending the alt-left exists is "thing", a talking point, a false equivalence, and a mendacious lie.
It's a dog-whistle attempting to normalize the alt-right and Nazis, and accuse the left of acting as extreme and irrational as alt-right Whit Supremacists are acting, which is total bullshit.
Being anti-Nazi and anti-racist and anti-misogynist isn't "alt-left", it's "patriotic" and "democratic" and "American" and "mainstream" and "sane" and "ethical".
It's not "hard left" to be anti-Nazi. Even hard right Republicans SHOULD be anti-Nazi too, but apparently now they're not any more. Don't blame it on the left that the right has gone off the deep end and now consider Nazis "very fine people". That doesn't make the left "hard".
The "alt-left" didn't invade Nazi Germany on D-Day, the Allied Forces did. And the Allied Forces never behaved anything like the way the alt-right is behaving.
https://www.wired.com/story/what-is-alt-left/
There is no 'Alt-Left,' no matter what Trump says.
Hours after a rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, organized by white nationalists, turned deadly, President Donald Trump blamed "many sides" for the violence that transpired. Three days later, at an impromptu press conference at Trump Tower, the president doubled down on this message, condemning groups "on both sides" of the fighting. “What about the alt-left that came charging at, as you say, at the alt-right?” the president said.
https://newrepublic.com/minutes/141108/no-thing-alt-left
There is no such thing as the "alt-left". But in a piece for Vanity Fair, James Wolcott pretends otherwise:
>Disillusionment with Obama’s presidency, loathing of Hillary Clinton, disgust with “identity politics,” and a craving for a climactic reckoning that will clear the stage for a bold tomorrow have created a kinship between the “alt-right” and an alt-left. They’re not kissin’ cousins, but they caterwaul some of the same tunes in different keys.
Wolcott admits the left “can’t match” the alt-right “for strength, malignancy, or tentacled reach”—then proceeds to make just such an argument. This is bad writing in service of a bad argument: “People say things I don’t like” is not the same thing as “people advocate for a white ethnostate.” This is precisely the false equivalency Wolcott makes by using the phrase “alt-left.” It is a disingenuous characterization designed to undermine leftist claims.
This is obviously a heated topic for you, and as a democrat myself I don't think you are doing us any favors. The hard-left isn't a good thing, they promote violence to achieve their agendas, and say things like "centrists get the bullet too". I really despise the normalization of political violence.
You need to take a step back.
There are no "hard left" senators or representatives or supreme court justices or attorney generals or campaign chief executives or presidents, but there are many alt-right ones.
The sad part is that people might assume it actually supports the position that WaPo can't be trusted. That seems to be the norm these days. Say something and throw out random video or audio as evidence when it isn't anything of the sort, since most people won't pay enough attention to really check and will just assume that if it was presented as evidence, it must be evidence. :/
All of these come together to be a flood of unvetted claims to keep Moore ahead until the election. It doesn't matter if they're disproven because many voters hear about them and take them as gospel without ever hearing the other side of the story.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Where is an example where they've done that? I haven't seen a single one.
So just because they made a story up, and lied to reporters in order to spread a lie, that’s not wrong? Jeez, what do you think is wrong? Can you even tell anymore?
Also an Amazon Prime member, so I'm getting my 6 months free trial and a discounted rate thereafter.
So they basically stalked her? Interesting to see how WP treats some (all?) whistleblowers that come their way.