Presidential election, 2016

[Warren Dew]

(12-06-2016, 01:15 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(12-04-2016, 01:42 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: Clueless.  They actually think propaganda sources like The New York Times are reliable sources, despite their history of making up the news.

I'm not sure if this is intended to be serious or just serious snark.  Real cases of fake news are both common and found almost exclusively on social media or RW news sites.  I would be interested in a cite or two of NY Times fake news reporting.

The best example is probably the Times' constant drumbeat of articles, based on false information, about Iraq's efforts to acquire WMD in the buildup to the Iraq War.  They paved the way for the credulous reception of Powell's erroneous presentation to the UN on the matter by convincing most of the establishment in the US ahead of time.  The Washington Post exposee on the Times's errors was the best article on how far wrong they went, but I can't find it at the moment; however, this article also discusses it:

Quote:During the winter of 2001 and throughout 2002, [New York Times reporter] Miller produced a series of stunning stories about Saddam Hussein’s ambition and capacity to produce weapons of mass destruction, based largely on information provided by Chalabi and his allies—almost all of which have turned out to be stunningly inaccurate [polite euphemism for "fake"].

http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/media/features/9226/

Then there was the time when one of their reporters did "on the scene" reporting of the Washington sniper in 2002-2003 from the comfort of his office in New York City:

Quote:The resulting inquiry led to the discovery of fabrication and plagiarism in a number of articles [New York Times reporter Jayson] Blair had written.  Some fabrications include Blair's claims to have traveled from New York to the city mentioned in the dateline, when he did not.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayson_Bla...on_scandal

Note that these cases were so extreme that the newspaper had to issue retractions - in the Iraq War case, only after the war had started and no stockpiles of WMD were found, of course.  Given these were tolerated until other sources called them on it, one can only guess how many such Times articles were nearly as bad, but just never caught.

Since then The New York Times has gotten more careful about how they fabricate news, but they still specialize in it, even in normally noncontroversial areas such as science, as I discuss here:

Quote:When I cite a news article, I almost never cite The New York Times. There is a reason for this. The reason is that New York Times articles are long, detailed, well written - and carefully crafted to present only one side of the story. In more plebeian sources, one sidedness is often easily detected, but in the New York Times, the level of detail and the writing skill are very effective in lulling the reader into thinking they are getting the whole story - when in fact they are getting only half the story, if that.

http://psychohist.livejournal.com/76138.html

Once upon a time, The New York Times might have been a reliable newspaper, but that ended some time in the 1980s at the latest.