while looking up links to examples for some others I ran across ratings by real clear politics. It appeared to give snopes high marks. However there was something I found highly disturbing. Based on their ratings, it appears snopes does not actually do any fact checking. They go to google and then if some media outlet is saying the same thing, they use it as a source. Here is the problem, one that even WaPo criticized, most journalist depend heavily on Snopes for their own fact checking. If the fact-checkers are using journalists as facts, and the journalists are using snopes as the facts, then NOBODY is actually checking any facts at all. Its a rumormill by accident. Another interesting statistic is sometimes they use their own website as a source for fact-checking. In other words, if they were fact checking a question 'is tom brokaw gay?' and someone else previously wrote an opinion piece at snopes as to why they thought Tom Brokaw was gay, they would use that as their source to say True, Tom Brokaw is gay. Thats pretty insane right? Thats like asking Trump 'hey do you tell the truth or do you lie?' and he comes back with 'Believe me, I always tell the truth' and that being the end of the inquiry. I wouldnt stop there in my fact-checking and thats not what I get paid to do.
Yeah you’re right not any of the 42 fucking links I just sent on the same goddamn thread dumbass Go back to fucking Russia you troll. I even posted one from the fucking Washington Post so go fuck yourself
i said this story is probably true but they do have a credibility issue, theyve been caught skewing the results. Even the WaPo has called them out, I linked their article in another thread. RealClear politics rated them and showed that they actually cited THEMSELVES as sources of their fact checking. Its fact checking. You cannot site yoursel or for that matter opinion articles (they scored a 90% on the topic f using the media as their 'fact check'. Considering journalists often use snopes for their fact checking, this means that a journalist runs with an article because snopes said another journalist said its true)
Believe me, I am highly skeptical, of everything. Im one of the few that believe both sides of these debates work in concert to keep us believing the world would be a better place if only the other side wasnt preventing progress. The reality is this 50/50 split serves to guarantee no progress ever happens and noone is ever held accountable. its entirely by design. But some more tidbits of this supposedly fact-only not bias'ed group:
Snopes’ main political fact-checker is a writer, Kim Lacapria. Before writing for Snopes, Lacapria wrote for Inquisitr, a blog known for publishing fake quotes and even downright hoaxes. Couple of examples https://www.inquisitr.com/6700... https://www.rawstory.com/2015/...
While at Inquisitr, she consistently displayed clear partisanship. She described herself as “openly left-leaning” and a liberal. She trashed the Tea Party as “teahadists.” She called Bill Clinton “one of our greatest” presidents. She claimed that conservatives only criticized Lena Dunham’s comparison of voting to sex because they “fear female agency.” She once wrote: “Like many GOP ideas about the poor, the panic about using food stamps for alcohol, pornography or guns seems to have been cut from whole cloth–or more likely, the ideas many have about the fantasy of poverty.” (A simple fact-check would show that food stamp fraud does occur and costs taxpayers tens of millions.) These are not good traits if you're trying to portray yourself as someone only about the facts.
After blogging the Inquisitr, Lacapria joined Snopes, where she regularly plays defense for any rumor or otherwise against democrats. She wrote a “fact check” article about Jimmy Carter’s unilateral ban of Iranian nationals from entering the country that looks more like an opinion column arguing against Donald Trump’s proposed Muslim ban. https://www.snopes.com/fact-ch...
After the Orlando terror attack, Lacapria claimed that just because Omar Mateen was a registered Democrat with an active voter registration status didn’t mean he was actually a Democrat. Her “fact check” argued that he might “have chosen a random political affiliation when he initially registered.” Eactly how is this fact checking and not a platform to substitute her opinions as given facts. The FACT was he was a registered democrat. Why did she need to downplay this fact and rate it as a Mixture and not simply True. https://www.snopes.com/fact-ch... here is the quote "What that lone fact means is the subject of a good deal of speculation, with possibilities ranging from Mateen’s being a supporter of Democratic ideology to his simply having chosen a random political affiliation when he initially registered. Mateen didn’t appear on the FBI’s radar until 2013, and it’s possible that in the ten years between 2006 and 2016 his political outlook (whatever it was to begin with) might have changed radically, even
crap I hate citing this source, because using a right-leaning source to discredit an alleged left-leaning one is subjective at best... the takeaway is that you'll need to independently verify the claims outlined here..
it its true then its a very recent excample of what I saw them do a couple years ago. Are you any good at using the wayback machine? I never used it and would need to verify this screenshot that showed they were both on the board of that PAC.
it would have gone to SCOTUS, but the reason I mentioned McCain was because both 2008 candidates were born outside the US. SCOTUS would have upheld the election. My opinion, not that it matters much, is natural born means was a citizen at time of birth versus became a citizen through immigration, not geographical location. I could be wrong but considering how many politicians are children of other politicians the chance we have had a previous president who was born outside of the continental us is plausible. It would not surprise me if there was previous precedence. Defining the ambiguity of 'natural born' is precisely the job of SCOTUS. I think the foreign exchange theory has some merit. It would never have been anything to make him ineligible to be president, but probably would have affected the votes. That would be a reason not to release them more so than them saying he was kenyan. Up until a certain point things like releasing a buried drunk driving citation the night before an election was pretty damaging. But after too many times of that sort of crap now even an access hollywood tape no-one cares about. Mostly because of timing. They had the tape the whole time they pushed trump to win the RNC yet they gave free coverage, talked bout how great his speeches were, then the second he wins the RNC... bam 180 degrees. They suck at subtlety so by the time that tape came out people were just so done it did not have the effect they wanted. However, in 2008, yea something like cheating to get into college would have hurt in the polls.
The fact-checking site was originally founded in 1995 by David and Barbara Mikkelson, who divorced in 2015. In December 2017, Forbes ran a piece that concluded Snopes has major credibility problems such as: David Mikkelson’s “responses regarding the hiring of strongly partisan fact checkers and his lack of response on screening and assessment protocols present a deeply troubling picture of a secretive black box that acts as ultimate arbitrator of truth, yet reveals little of its inner workings.”
follow the thread rsilvergun started with the same request. I'll dig it up again but while searching i ran into other examples of them doing it for monsanto too.
sure, It was pretty dissapointing when it happened. I did not know before then it was just a husband and wife and after they got caught, it then came to life all the photos with high level players in politics, specifically left leaning. While Im digging that up though, read this. Its not political but it is from a left-leaning site that outed them for doing the same pretending a false is a 'maybe true' thing, this time for monsanto.
I find it highly concerning that googling 'snopes fails to report false' that the first 5 hits are articles written BY SNOPES about how non-biased snopes is. Thats like putting the fox in charge of the chicken coup.
I hate that phrase. It used to be a matter of integrity to avoid hypocrisy. If you did something that you railed against, and someone tells you that its pretty much the same thing as this other thing your against, you would say 'fair point' and give it more consideration. Now its an -ism. How dare you point out that I am railing against something I was all for just a couple years ago! Anyone using the phrase whataboutism should simply just run around going 'Do as I say, not as I do!', thats about all they are good for. Purposefully choosing to protect one group of people for the same behaviors another group of people are condemned for is the root basis for every single other social justice topic of the day. This doesn't matter if the topic is gay marriage, white privilege, racial profiling, xenephobia, homophobia, it really boils down to some manner of inequality. Yet by dismissing a clear point of allowing one side to do something and railing against another side doing the same thing when it pertains to politics is still, without question, inequality.
but snopes did get caught claiming someone might possible be true (not definitely true but true leaning) when everyone else admitted otherwise. When they, (and by 'they' you do know its just a guy and his wife right?) did that a few times their credibility suffered. Its very possible that they are accurate in this discovery. But when they choose to list other left-leaning claims as 'possible' instead of 'false' it turned them into effectively the same caliber as any other political smear campaign. Most smear campaigns actually do find factual information, but they will certainly, and purposely, withhold any potentially self-damaging information. Snopes should have stayed out of politics. They were awesome when they stuck to debunking nigerian price email.
the difference is that our old debates were about us discussing how we are marching right toward an orwellian future. This blind loyalty to one side is new. I mean who would ever suspect that the company making radar detectors was the same company selling the radar enforcement equipment to law enforcement. Or that the anti-virus companies released virus' to drive product demand. Oh wait, we heard that and it totally made sense. Tell someone that their picking a side in a 1-sided battle and no matter who you pick your going to get the same result, they think your crazy. The more they can get us to sign up for the blame game the less work they have to do. The ultimate goal is to keep it 50/50 so as to always claim the other side is the reason nothing gets done. We fall for it, they collect paychecks and backdoor cash. We get screwed in the end no matter which way the wind blows.
mostly the same here. If only because they do NOT censor. The mod points might get abused a bit but overall I can see every post by simply adjusting the filter. I get to see multiple points and arguments. I get to see things I had not considered. Of course sometimes I see just parroting of talking points, which is sad because this site does not appeal to facebook morons. We've all read 1984, some of us a very long time ago. We should always be prepared to discover we have been the victims of double-think. I would more people were more skeptical instead of thinking they are in some epic battle of good-vs-evil when the good side happens to be a political party. The 'good' side in these debates are us everyday people, not any political party. Their goal is to tell you what to do, no matter who wins, thats their goal. They all have an inherit motive to mislead you in pursuit of that goal.
side note, i managed to fix my iphone from putting in all those weird characters in my posts when I use quotation marks. I clicked the link to use the real site instead of the mobile version. It also has kept me from having to sign in every single post.
its having shows on a news network that are not news. They call them Commentary. It has no place on a news channel. They might as well just rent out the extra air time running Rogain commercials. Sean Hannity - not a news segment, Rachel Maddow - not a news segment, Bill O'Reilly - not a news segment, I really dont have the energy to list them all. The problem is that people see them on a news station and assume that they are there to simply report facts. When your segment consists of bringing on guests who are partisan and practically had the 'talking points of the day' faxed to them 10min before going on air, you simply are not a news segment. Unfortunately everyone else seems to think they are.
so what happens when they get caught publishing non-facts, ones they forgot to fact check? How does that automatically make you want to believe it because its parroting your personal opinion? thats not facts friend. Thats manipulation. You would think for someone so sick of Fox doing this, you'd recognize others doing it too. I mean if your ex-wife got caught cheating on you, you'd think you'd be more likely to spot the same warning signs if your new wife starts doing it too.
its all of them, CNN too. basically if its not the two achormen sitting at the desk giving the 15min news segment, its a show where a host gives opinion in order to sway the viewer to their point of view. By the very definition that is not news. Its a persuasive argument paper, or in terms of politics, propaganda.
IMO its not just Fox news. Its ALL of the 24hr news channels. To be clear, the actual News segments are not full of bullshit opinion and political spin. Unfortunately the 24hr news channels only air news for about 10-15min every hour at most. The rest of the time its the stupid ass talk shows which are clearly not news, but opinions about a particular snippet of half of a news story. I think our country would be in a lot less divided state if we simply ditched all these news channels and just went back to the evening news like the days of Walter Cronkite.
I liked the way Myth Busters did their fact checking. They filmed experimentation to prove or disprove results. You know, that scientific method we seem to be lacking these days. Independent verified experimentation.
even if its true, and I am not saying its not, should we still not keep the blame still focused on those media sites you listed? They are ultimately responsible to verify the information they report. The fact that they wanted something to be true so badly they published false news only further proves they have no credibility. Who pulled the strings to expose themselves is only a minor matter in that scenario. It is akin to when Hillary got caught up in all that shit and wanted to blame russian hackers. Maybe it was russian hackers. Does it really matter? They admitted the content of the email was legitimate. If I rob a bank and get caught on surveillance cameras do I have an affirmative defense because the camera in question was a counterfeit manufactured in china? Despite the content being undisputed? Shouldn't the WaPo, CNN, etc have had every single eye looking for fake leads? They deal with false stories all the time and pass on them. Its only when its a high profile story that aligns with their most wished for results that they fail to do so. I dont know about you but thats pretty damning. No matter which way it came down, their integrity is in the toilet.
why are you posting AC, its hard to follow which of the two of you is posting? The first time I heard the phrase was post 2012 when a bunch of congressional dems wanted to shut down news sites that were not 'certified' by them as legitimate. However, their list of sites they did not like were 100% conservative ones and not one liberal site among them. That in itself seems strange considering it would be a statistical impossibility that only conservative sites would be capable of running skewed stories. I warned everyone here back then that if they did not take a 1st amendment stand, and they went along with this blatantly obvious partisan attack, simply out of political convenience, this shit would come back to haunt them. Apparently you guys (not you specifically but/. as a whole) did not take my warning seriously enough. Here we are a decade later and we simply cant trust any news source any more unless its parroting what we want to believe. Thats simply not how news is supposed to work.
Actually the rumor was that the reason the transcripts were never released was that he got a foreign student scholarship by claiming to be kenyan. It would have been fuel for the birther movement. Personally, knowing that his mother is a citizen, automatically makes him a citizen. McCain was born in Panama BTW. However, the transcript would be more damning, if true, than actually having been born in kenya. It would have shown some level of fraud in order to get into college. It would have been unclear how that would have been received. There are a lot of people struggling to pay for college. Lying to get a free ride, and potentially displacing someone who was legitimately eligible, would be an integrity problem for a president. Most people kept holding onto how they could invalidate his presidency based on some geographical limitation of where he was born. That would have never survived a SCOTUS challenge since his mother is a citizen, extending his citizenship as a right of birth.
Slashdot Mirror
while looking up links to examples for some others I ran across ratings by real clear politics. It appeared to give snopes high marks. However there was something I found highly disturbing. Based on their ratings, it appears snopes does not actually do any fact checking. They go to google and then if some media outlet is saying the same thing, they use it as a source. Here is the problem, one that even WaPo criticized, most journalist depend heavily on Snopes for their own fact checking. If the fact-checkers are using journalists as facts, and the journalists are using snopes as the facts, then NOBODY is actually checking any facts at all. Its a rumormill by accident. Another interesting statistic is sometimes they use their own website as a source for fact-checking. In other words, if they were fact checking a question 'is tom brokaw gay?' and someone else previously wrote an opinion piece at snopes as to why they thought Tom Brokaw was gay, they would use that as their source to say True, Tom Brokaw is gay. Thats pretty insane right? Thats like asking Trump 'hey do you tell the truth or do you lie?' and he comes back with 'Believe me, I always tell the truth' and that being the end of the inquiry. I wouldnt stop there in my fact-checking and thats not what I get paid to do.
Yeah you’re right not any of the 42 fucking links I just sent on the same goddamn thread dumbass Go back to fucking Russia you troll. I even posted one from the fucking Washington Post so go fuck yourself
i said this story is probably true but they do have a credibility issue, theyve been caught skewing the results. Even the WaPo has called them out, I linked their article in another thread. RealClear politics rated them and showed that they actually cited THEMSELVES as sources of their fact checking. Its fact checking. You cannot site yoursel or for that matter opinion articles (they scored a 90% on the topic f using the media as their 'fact check'. Considering journalists often use snopes for their fact checking, this means that a journalist runs with an article because snopes said another journalist said its true)
Believe me, I am highly skeptical, of everything. Im one of the few that believe both sides of these debates work in concert to keep us believing the world would be a better place if only the other side wasnt preventing progress. The reality is this 50/50 split serves to guarantee no progress ever happens and noone is ever held accountable. its entirely by design. But some more tidbits of this supposedly fact-only not bias'ed group:
Snopes’ main political fact-checker is a writer, Kim Lacapria. Before writing for Snopes, Lacapria wrote for Inquisitr, a blog known for publishing fake quotes and even downright hoaxes. Couple of examples
https://www.inquisitr.com/6700...
https://www.rawstory.com/2015/...
While at Inquisitr, she consistently displayed clear partisanship. She described herself as “openly left-leaning” and a liberal. She trashed the Tea Party as “teahadists.” She called Bill Clinton “one of our greatest” presidents. She claimed that conservatives only criticized Lena Dunham’s comparison of voting to sex because they “fear female agency.” She once wrote: “Like many GOP ideas about the poor, the panic about using food stamps for alcohol, pornography or guns seems to have been cut from whole cloth–or more likely, the ideas many have about the fantasy of poverty.” (A simple fact-check would show that food stamp fraud does occur and costs taxpayers tens of millions.) These are not good traits if you're trying to portray yourself as someone only about the facts.
After blogging the Inquisitr, Lacapria joined Snopes, where she regularly plays defense for any rumor or otherwise against democrats.
She wrote a “fact check” article about Jimmy Carter’s unilateral ban of Iranian nationals from entering the country that looks more like an opinion column arguing against Donald Trump’s proposed Muslim ban. https://www.snopes.com/fact-ch...
After the Orlando terror attack, Lacapria claimed that just because Omar Mateen was a registered Democrat with an active voter registration status didn’t mean he was actually a Democrat. Her “fact check” argued that he might “have chosen a random political affiliation when he initially registered.” Eactly how is this fact checking and not a platform to substitute her opinions as given facts. The FACT was he was a registered democrat. Why did she need to downplay this fact and rate it as a Mixture and not simply True. https://www.snopes.com/fact-ch...
here is the quote
"What that lone fact means is the subject of a good deal of speculation, with possibilities ranging from Mateen’s being a supporter of Democratic ideology to his simply having chosen a random political affiliation when he initially registered. Mateen didn’t appear on the FBI’s radar until 2013, and it’s possible that in the ten years between 2006 and 2016 his political outlook (whatever it was to begin with) might have changed radically, even
crap I hate citing this source, because using a right-leaning source to discredit an alleged left-leaning one is subjective at best... the takeaway is that you'll need to independently verify the claims outlined here..
https://dailycaller.com/2019/0...
it its true then its a very recent excample of what I saw them do a couple years ago. Are you any good at using the wayback machine? I never used it and would need to verify this screenshot that showed they were both on the board of that PAC.
it would have gone to SCOTUS, but the reason I mentioned McCain was because both 2008 candidates were born outside the US. SCOTUS would have upheld the election. My opinion, not that it matters much, is natural born means was a citizen at time of birth versus became a citizen through immigration, not geographical location. I could be wrong but considering how many politicians are children of other politicians the chance we have had a previous president who was born outside of the continental us is plausible. It would not surprise me if there was previous precedence. Defining the ambiguity of 'natural born' is precisely the job of SCOTUS. I think the foreign exchange theory has some merit. It would never have been anything to make him ineligible to be president, but probably would have affected the votes. That would be a reason not to release them more so than them saying he was kenyan. Up until a certain point things like releasing a buried drunk driving citation the night before an election was pretty damaging. But after too many times of that sort of crap now even an access hollywood tape no-one cares about. Mostly because of timing. They had the tape the whole time they pushed trump to win the RNC yet they gave free coverage, talked bout how great his speeches were, then the second he wins the RNC ... bam 180 degrees. They suck at subtlety so by the time that tape came out people were just so done it did not have the effect they wanted. However, in 2008, yea something like cheating to get into college would have hurt in the polls.
heres an earlier forbes article where they outlined other credibility issues with snopes
https://www.forbes.com/sites/k...
here is one where WaPo attacked their credibility and I wouldnt call WaPo right-leaning at all.
https://www.washingtontimes.co...
they even quoted a forbes article
The fact-checking site was originally founded in 1995 by David and Barbara Mikkelson, who divorced in 2015. In December 2017, Forbes ran a piece that concluded Snopes has major credibility problems such as: David Mikkelson’s “responses regarding the hiring of strongly partisan fact checkers and his lack of response on screening and assessment protocols present a deeply troubling picture of a secretive black box that acts as ultimate arbitrator of truth, yet reveals little of its inner workings.”
follow the thread rsilvergun started with the same request. I'll dig it up again but while searching i ran into other examples of them doing it for monsanto too.
sure, It was pretty dissapointing when it happened. I did not know before then it was just a husband and wife and after they got caught, it then came to life all the photos with high level players in politics, specifically left leaning. While Im digging that up though, read this. Its not political but it is from a left-leaning site that outed them for doing the same pretending a false is a 'maybe true' thing, this time for monsanto.
https://foodbabe.com/do-you-tr...
I find it highly concerning that googling 'snopes fails to report false' that the first 5 hits are articles written BY SNOPES about how non-biased snopes is. Thats like putting the fox in charge of the chicken coup.
I hate that phrase. It used to be a matter of integrity to avoid hypocrisy. If you did something that you railed against, and someone tells you that its pretty much the same thing as this other thing your against, you would say 'fair point' and give it more consideration. Now its an -ism. How dare you point out that I am railing against something I was all for just a couple years ago! Anyone using the phrase whataboutism should simply just run around going 'Do as I say, not as I do!', thats about all they are good for. Purposefully choosing to protect one group of people for the same behaviors another group of people are condemned for is the root basis for every single other social justice topic of the day. This doesn't matter if the topic is gay marriage, white privilege, racial profiling, xenephobia, homophobia, it really boils down to some manner of inequality. Yet by dismissing a clear point of allowing one side to do something and railing against another side doing the same thing when it pertains to politics is still, without question, inequality.
but snopes did get caught claiming someone might possible be true (not definitely true but true leaning) when everyone else admitted otherwise. When they, (and by 'they' you do know its just a guy and his wife right?) did that a few times their credibility suffered. Its very possible that they are accurate in this discovery. But when they choose to list other left-leaning claims as 'possible' instead of 'false' it turned them into effectively the same caliber as any other political smear campaign. Most smear campaigns actually do find factual information, but they will certainly, and purposely, withhold any potentially self-damaging information. Snopes should have stayed out of politics. They were awesome when they stuck to debunking nigerian price email.
the difference is that our old debates were about us discussing how we are marching right toward an orwellian future. This blind loyalty to one side is new. I mean who would ever suspect that the company making radar detectors was the same company selling the radar enforcement equipment to law enforcement. Or that the anti-virus companies released virus' to drive product demand. Oh wait, we heard that and it totally made sense. Tell someone that their picking a side in a 1-sided battle and no matter who you pick your going to get the same result, they think your crazy. The more they can get us to sign up for the blame game the less work they have to do. The ultimate goal is to keep it 50/50 so as to always claim the other side is the reason nothing gets done. We fall for it, they collect paychecks and backdoor cash. We get screwed in the end no matter which way the wind blows.
mostly the same here. If only because they do NOT censor. The mod points might get abused a bit but overall I can see every post by simply adjusting the filter. I get to see multiple points and arguments. I get to see things I had not considered. Of course sometimes I see just parroting of talking points, which is sad because this site does not appeal to facebook morons. We've all read 1984, some of us a very long time ago. We should always be prepared to discover we have been the victims of double-think. I would more people were more skeptical instead of thinking they are in some epic battle of good-vs-evil when the good side happens to be a political party. The 'good' side in these debates are us everyday people, not any political party. Their goal is to tell you what to do, no matter who wins, thats their goal. They all have an inherit motive to mislead you in pursuit of that goal.
side note, i managed to fix my iphone from putting in all those weird characters in my posts when I use quotation marks. I clicked the link to use the real site instead of the mobile version. It also has kept me from having to sign in every single post.
AGW?
its having shows on a news network that are not news. They call them Commentary. It has no place on a news channel. They might as well just rent out the extra air time running Rogain commercials. Sean Hannity - not a news segment, Rachel Maddow - not a news segment, Bill O'Reilly - not a news segment, I really dont have the energy to list them all. The problem is that people see them on a news station and assume that they are there to simply report facts. When your segment consists of bringing on guests who are partisan and practically had the 'talking points of the day' faxed to them 10min before going on air, you simply are not a news segment. Unfortunately everyone else seems to think they are.
so what happens when they get caught publishing non-facts, ones they forgot to fact check? How does that automatically make you want to believe it because its parroting your personal opinion? thats not facts friend. Thats manipulation. You would think for someone so sick of Fox doing this, you'd recognize others doing it too. I mean if your ex-wife got caught cheating on you, you'd think you'd be more likely to spot the same warning signs if your new wife starts doing it too.
guy and his wife actually, but yes
its all of them, CNN too. basically if its not the two achormen sitting at the desk giving the 15min news segment, its a show where a host gives opinion in order to sway the viewer to their point of view. By the very definition that is not news. Its a persuasive argument paper, or in terms of politics, propaganda.
IMO its not just Fox news. Its ALL of the 24hr news channels. To be clear, the actual News segments are not full of bullshit opinion and political spin. Unfortunately the 24hr news channels only air news for about 10-15min every hour at most. The rest of the time its the stupid ass talk shows which are clearly not news, but opinions about a particular snippet of half of a news story. I think our country would be in a lot less divided state if we simply ditched all these news channels and just went back to the evening news like the days of Walter Cronkite.
I liked the way Myth Busters did their fact checking. They filmed experimentation to prove or disprove results. You know, that scientific method we seem to be lacking these days. Independent verified experimentation.
even if its true, and I am not saying its not, should we still not keep the blame still focused on those media sites you listed? They are ultimately responsible to verify the information they report. The fact that they wanted something to be true so badly they published false news only further proves they have no credibility. Who pulled the strings to expose themselves is only a minor matter in that scenario. It is akin to when Hillary got caught up in all that shit and wanted to blame russian hackers. Maybe it was russian hackers. Does it really matter? They admitted the content of the email was legitimate. If I rob a bank and get caught on surveillance cameras do I have an affirmative defense because the camera in question was a counterfeit manufactured in china? Despite the content being undisputed? Shouldn't the WaPo, CNN, etc have had every single eye looking for fake leads? They deal with false stories all the time and pass on them. Its only when its a high profile story that aligns with their most wished for results that they fail to do so. I dont know about you but thats pretty damning. No matter which way it came down, their integrity is in the toilet.
Bye Felicia!
why are you posting AC, its hard to follow which of the two of you is posting? The first time I heard the phrase was post 2012 when a bunch of congressional dems wanted to shut down news sites that were not 'certified' by them as legitimate. However, their list of sites they did not like were 100% conservative ones and not one liberal site among them. That in itself seems strange considering it would be a statistical impossibility that only conservative sites would be capable of running skewed stories. I warned everyone here back then that if they did not take a 1st amendment stand, and they went along with this blatantly obvious partisan attack, simply out of political convenience, this shit would come back to haunt them. Apparently you guys (not you specifically but /. as a whole) did not take my warning seriously enough. Here we are a decade later and we simply cant trust any news source any more unless its parroting what we want to believe. Thats simply not how news is supposed to work.
Actually the rumor was that the reason the transcripts were never released was that he got a foreign student scholarship by claiming to be kenyan. It would have been fuel for the birther movement. Personally, knowing that his mother is a citizen, automatically makes him a citizen. McCain was born in Panama BTW. However, the transcript would be more damning, if true, than actually having been born in kenya. It would have shown some level of fraud in order to get into college. It would have been unclear how that would have been received. There are a lot of people struggling to pay for college. Lying to get a free ride, and potentially displacing someone who was legitimately eligible, would be an integrity problem for a president. Most people kept holding onto how they could invalidate his presidency based on some geographical limitation of where he was born. That would have never survived a SCOTUS challenge since his mother is a citizen, extending his citizenship as a right of birth.