It is a basic rule from Journalism 101 that when an allegation is in serious doubt – or hasn’t been established as fact – you should convey that uncertainty to your reader by using words like “alleged” or “purportedly.” But The New York Times and pretty much the entire U.S. news media have abandoned that principle in their avid pursuit of Russia-gate.
When Russia is the target of an article, the Times typically casts aside all uncertainty about Russia’s guilt, a pattern that we’ve seen in the Times in earlier sloppy reporting about other “enemy” countries, such as Iraq or Syria, as well Russia’s involvement in Ukraine’s civil war. Again and again, the Times regurgitates highly tendentious claims by the U.S. government as undeniable truth.
So, despite the lack of publicly provided evidence that the Russian government did “hack” Democratic emails and slip them to WikiLeaks to damage Hillary Clinton and help Donald Trump, the Times continues to treat those allegations as flat fact.It beggars belief that a professional organization would do such a thing without it being intentional. Which is a tell that the "reporting" is propaganda rather than news — in short, faked "news" rather than real news.
This doesn't disprove the allegations. It simply asserts the well-established principle that allegations are not facts and should be clearly distinguished from facts.
"Totalitarian style" maybe an exaggeration but it is certainly unprofessional and smacks of McCarthyism. There are some grounds for calling it "totalitarian" though. In present day Russia, the US media reportedly has the reputation of sounding like Pravda and Izvestia under the Soviet regime.
The Guardian is bad too. And it reports any assertion made by anyone who says the Russians hacked them. Then you have the readers who I argue with. They are do brainwashed that they think the Russian hack is an act of war because they have been told that, so I usually post the article about the US hacking Merkel's phone and demand immediate sanctions against the US. So one hack is an act of war and the other hardly raises an eyelid. And we have proof of the Merkel hack, but absolutely none for the Russian one.
ReplyDeleteBut what about the fact that the shredded emails through a private server was considered an act of treason. How how come no story was made of the content of the emails and their illegal shredding. This could have been the Clinton email scandal rather than the Russian if the media decided. Just think what what would have happens if Trump had shredded loads of emails to hide his business deals, but but nothing said about Hilary. Just shows how propaganda works.
We need a public body set up to ensure newspapers don't lie, they can have opinions, but mustn't lie, especially about trade unions. Big government or what, but it's people power?