They set up for the final goal post move before the election.

"HRC is going to fuck with putin in Syria because she's a hawk and we'll be in WW3"

legality, morals, etc mean nothing when you could "prevent the next hitler" (read: world war)

if all other defenses fail it will have been for the good of the country because HRC was going to ruin america and perhaps literally end the world. it's silly but it's not an arguable thing since they have their mind made up.

By the same token, the Trump haters and/or the Hillarites, have decided to brand the spy, a confidential informant, believing the less nefarious term would resonate with the idiots. And they were right. The Trump haters and the Hillarites actually believe that the term spy and the term confidential informant, have radically different meanings.

Because its extremely obviously a media sculpting a deflecting narrative. Like you say, its up to politicians to craft the language and optics, thats politics 101. What gets bonkers is when the media are the ones crafting the opposition narrative and attempting desperately to reframe the controversy- not the opposition party. They're using an unnamed source in some totally unknown context, which for all we know could be totally made up or just playing purple-monkey-dishwasher. And to what end? To craft a counter-narrative of the connotation of the action, not what the action actually is.

As we established early on, its plainly spying. Obviously by the loose definitions of spying as surveillance in general, but even by the stricter definitions of state agencies using hired operatives to conduct surveillance without the knowledge of their target and report it back to their handler. And if one politician wants to call it 'spying' and the other 'investigating', well that's like 'freedom fighters' vs 'terrorists'. But when the media, even supposedly credible outlets, go out and try to desperately deny that 'spying' is applicable and then seek out whatever tortured headline they can assemble from the unsourced words of an anonymous official- that's the problem.

Imagine if the media had taken this same level of scrutiny with the DNC and Hillary in the wake of the DNC emails being published. Was the media tripping over itself to seek out anonymous sources to claim that Hillary was seeking to rebrand the leaked emails as russia interference to distract from the fallout of the controversy? Maybe some blips on fox news or breitbart, bless their hearts for being just as crooked but in the other direction. No, instead we got shit like this; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izpT4Ye6wdE

Come now, this is what offends me more than anything else in politics, the assault on logic, rational thought and the truth. Instead of being a debate over the actual merits of whether Halper was justifiably spying on the campaign and if the FBI had good reason to put him there- which they arguably might, considering he targeted only carter page before the investigation started and page was already a target, nevermind the bad decision of using Halper of all people- instead of that debate, we're- hang on now I"m almost through this run-on sentence- instead we're dealing with what the definition of the word 'is' is.

this is a really long winded way to say "since the internet is a thing political parties and the media that represent them have a blurred line separating them"

welcome to the internet, its 2018, and it controls literally every facet and negates all precedent before it in terms of relating information.

these anon sources aren't some failure of journalism, they're the internet. its all the internet. its all interconnections between people that used to be too separate to make the front page in time. now the front page changes every 30 seconds with a refresh button. it's the internet. that's it. sources dont matter when the story drops down the page in an hour.

i just find it funny that time and again your attacks on the media are frames in some moral failing connotation. they didn't chose anything, the internet chose them. this is nothing but a technology jump.

This post was edited by thesnipa on May 25 2018 11:25am

It exists, and it exists for good reason. Its shaped by the same forces the shaped the yellow journalism of old, its shaped by the same political interference. Its certainly explicable
And its still wrong, and should be called out as such. Everyones got their reasons and their stories and we're all products of our circumstances. Doesn't mean we should excuse it

I could pick out any random politician or demographic or corporation and boil down their motivations and environment that motivate them to act in seemingly irrational or dishonest ways. Even for nutters like Michele Bachmann or radical Islamists, there's an internal logic and its usually not all that complicated. And the media is no exception, they have their reasons. But I don't see why recognizing how things work can't go hand in hand with calling it a steaming pile of dung

it's moot for a simple reason, the motivation to do the type of journalism we have today was always there. this image of the Dan Rather types sitting behind a desk informing the masses in a perfect way is a lie. They did journalism from the center because details came out slow and the media was lucky to have the viewers it did. without the internet or even cable before it you couldnt financially justify splitting your viewership. people have always and will always want to be biased, especially in a meta where biased journalism is far easier, but still profitable.

we have exponentially increased exposure to media and interconnections between people. that's it. the people haven't changed. which flies counter to the tone of all of your posts on the subject imo, they just seem out of touch. i realize you're not doing this intentionally, and are trying to focus on the elephant in the room that we're all ignoring. my question is, why? it wont change anything. i think its a lot more interesting to observe the snowball as it gains speed downhill and swallows up houses than to ponder if the snowball is good. we all know the internet is problematic, we know it's polarizing, and we know it's here to stay and we'll be lucky if it gets anything except for far worse. people love the biased af mud slinging, they're eating it up faster than 5$ boxes from taco bell.

Trends have a habit of reversing in backlashes. Cultural movements meet countercultural movements. This is one thing I've remarked on as Trump being hopefully the merciful manifestation of a populist backlash that is sparing us what could have been much more dire if the establishment hung onto power long enough for economic conditions and geopolitics to deteriorate and spark something more dangerous. I think its a cynical worldview to look out at any current problem we have and just assume that we're in some unprecedented point in history from which there is no turning back. Theres always luddite doomsayers and old farts shaking their fist at the moral impropriety of youth.

there are 2 subjects i will never entertain counterculture causing a backlash that results in an about face. The internet, and automation of manufacturing processes that will cause rampant unemployment. it is not in my mental realm of possibilities.

there is one world in which that exists, a strain of super robots take over and we have to shut down the internet to combat them. in that sense it's both subjects i wont entertain combined. and that's it. bad journalism is popular, problematic, but popular. plain and simple.

just because you can't put the genie back in the bottle doesn't mean he's going to curse the kingdom with 40 days and nights of rains of sand and salt and turn people into stone until someone collects the nine tears of esmesanti.
lets remember that up until very recently, our futurologists had this vision of a future of interconnectedness from social media and the information superhighway that would erode tribalism and rectify prejudices and bring people together. They thought that if information can be shared instantly on a global scale, the truth will out. Well clearly, those cunts never played a game of dota with spaniards or pinoys, because I never had a bone in my body against them until I had to put up with their shit. And as has been noted by all those crow-eating talking heads, the internet has instead formed echo chambers and clouds of disinformation and propaganda.
But was their vision really wrong? Just because we haven't reached it yet, doesn't mean its not going to happen. Whether we're passing through a phase or rolling downhill into oblivion- if I could make that call with certainty, I'd be a stock analyst. But I put my money on the optimist interpretation.