US Politics Mega-thread - Page 1312

On April 12 2019 04:42 Plansix wrote:

Reporters don’t pay sources because it is a tawdry practice, undercuts the creditability of the source and by extension, the reporter’s work. Criminal liability is also a major factor, as you articulate above.

On April 12 2019 04:50 IgnE wrote:


you might think it’s tawdry but if paying an informant to publish true stories about corruption affecting the public interest is wrong then i dont want to be right.

it seems similarly asinine to me, in these media-saturated times, for anyone to deny the value of a platform or to draw rigid moral lines between paying someone for information and printing someone’s own version of said information. sure, payment encourages people to come forward with bad information, but reporters already use their discretion all the time to discern whether people are lying, and there’s no reason in principle why they don’t do that when paying for information

arguably paying for information aligns the incentives of the publication with the truth, since there is a major (additional) cost to paying for bad information

On April 12 2019 03:46 Doublemint wrote:


if corroborated this story would have been another game changer in the Manafort/Trump/Russia/Wiki saga.
a good indicator it is false though, as already said, is the fact that no one else was able or willing to run with it.

try The Economist. if you get past the blind trust in the market in many articles, it's actually pretty darn good. though I am sure there are many others out there that do a good job. and to your liking as well.

what I meant to say is that by all accounts democracy is very much in danger because the (print)media is. I cannot stretch this enough, people need to get paid somehow to attract more good ones, maybe even from other industries. that job is just too important for a functioning democracy.

the (media) market - which does a fine job in many instances, though certainly not in all realms of our daily lives - does not work when too many consumers cannot distinguish between "good and bad information".
and social media is cannibalizing legacy media. and an adblocker is easier and cheaper than subscribing.

it is not an easy problem to fix, there are so many dimensions to it, so many interests and stakeholders involved...

//some more clarity.

On April 12 2019 05:08 Dangermousecatdog wrote:

I read the Economist you numpty. In fact I have quoted, referred to The Economist and written that I read it multiple times in this forum, as a good source of information. But by your refusal to answer my questions I can only take that there is no reason behind your slur of The Guardian, which is a good reputable newspaper. Forgive me for thinking that it more reasonable, rightfully so, than someone who doesn't know how to use the shift button.

On April 12 2019 05:08 Dangermousecatdog wrote:

I read the Economist you numpty. In fact I have quoted, referred to The Economist and written that I read it multiple times in this forum, as a good source of information. But by your refusal to answer my questions I can only take that there is no reason behind your slur of The Guardian, which is a good reputable newspaper. Forgive me for thinking that it more reasonable, rightfully so, than someone who doesn't know how to use the shift button.

On April 12 2019 05:32 Plansix wrote:
I unequivocally dispute the idea that paying someone raw information or documents is the equivalent to paying a professional journalist for a story they have written. The information provided in both is of value, but the reporter’s reputation and credibility are also part of what is being paid for and separate from the value of the information.

Furthermore, the craft of the journalist in obtaining and parsing which information is of value to the public is also what is being paid for.

Your claim that they are so similar as to be equal in this discussion is simply a churlish attempt to flatting a nuanced subject.

On April 12 2019 06:00 IgnE wrote:


reputation and credibility goes all the way up and down: publication, reporter, sources. this is not an argument that paying for information is bad nor is it an argument that paying for true information should tarnish reputation



journalists have “craft,” yes ok this is not in dispute. but there is no craft without information and this is not a reason not to pay for information. ive never said that journalists are useless, that is not the argument. are you objecting then, that assange has no “craft”? that is not what you said earlier



i didnt say they were identical in all respects, i said they were identical in at least one respect: both are selling information. you are just clinging to any difference in a vain attempt to find a relevant difference.

On April 11 2019 11:36 Mohdoo wrote:


So long as crimes were uncovered that would not have been otherwise found, it is a net positive.

On April 12 2019 06:34 crms wrote:


I'm about as left as you can get and totally disagree. I want the investigations to be legitimate because allowing the government to just decide without proper predication to violate citizens constitutional rights is a mess I'm not comfortable with whatsoever.

From your statement it sounds like you'd be a proponent of other constitutional murky policies like 'stop and frisk'. Hey lets just search these black guys, I mean who cares if the search is likely a violation of their rights, we found some xyz so I guess it was a net positive!

Hellllllll no.

On April 12 2019 06:44 Mohdoo wrote:


No, because I am saying a Mueller-type of investigation is only valid for people who are being given insane amounts of power, doing jobs we have seen corrupt many people. And I am not saying it should be stop and frisk. I am saying anyone who wants to have that much power needs to also consent to allowing citizens to KNOW they are clean. They work for us. I also imagine there are people on this board who would gladly consent to every detail of their lives being investigated if it meant being able to contribute to a functional, honest government. And lots of other good people feel the same way. It is an *honor* to serve government. If someone doesn't feel it is an honor, they aren't someone you want running the government.

It is no different than saying cops should wear body camera. Lots of cops are shit bags. We need to be recording them. I am not saying all citizens need cameras. Just the ones who are given the right to kill people based on their intuition. People who we say can decide to exterminate life? Yeah, lets keep a closer eye on them.

People who are military advisers? Yeah, lets make sure they don't have undisclosed contracts with other nations.

On April 12 2019 06:25 Plansix wrote:

I find digging into the specific meanings and differences between words and artifice as compelling any the next person, but in this case you seem unduly focused on a single objection to how Wikileaks conducts itself. My objection to them was not that they paid for information directly, but that they created an NDA to go after their employees for stealing any of their illicitly gained information. And that it appears that Wikileaks was also interested in ransoming some information or at least being paid for it in some fashion. This obfuscated mercenary behavior did not line up with their front facing persona of an organization about transparency. And I cannot know how mercenary they are because we know so little about how Wikileaks operates.

On April 12 2019 06:55 crms wrote:


I agree that people of immense power should be held to a higher standard and should likely (and are supposed to in many cases) offer full disclosure on a variety of dealings. I think something like the OIG, Government Ethics boards etc., could be leveraged in a way to have real teeth to go after and monitor people in these powerful positions to ensure they aren't engaged in illegal activity while holding these positions. We're in full agreement here (I think).

However, I disagree with anything like that relating to the Mueller investigation because these steps are not already established. I'm all for supporting legislation like what you are proposing but I can't in good faith honor that retroactively. If the catalyst for the spying on Trumps campaign is in fact illegal (I haven't seen compelling evidence that's the case yet) that is absolutely not a net positive but a chilling realization of the politicization of our justice system.

Moving forward, yes, let's get something with teeth to hold our elected and appointed officials accountable but I'm not willing to look the other way retroactively because I don't like the other team.

On April 12 2019 07:11 Mohdoo wrote:


In the end, the goal is for shady people to decide it is not worth it to dabble in government. I'm not necessarily saying it needs to be exactly Mueller.

But look at what happened to Manafort. I want a system where that is the result of anyone like Manafort trying to work in government. Doesn't need to be FBI, CIA, whatever. What happened to Manafort should happen to every single politician doing anything remotely similar to Manafort. Too much damage is done to society by corruption. The costs are absolutely enormous. And plenty of people will still do the work. We don't need all the sociopaths.

On April 12 2019 07:16 IgnE wrote:


my objection to this idea is that you only get bland normies as leaders, because anybody with any deviance from the norms had a lot to lose, especially given how leak-prone the deep-state has been against its political enemies. this is how you get all pete buttigiegs, a bland former consultant (although the fact of his being gay should heighten the constricting threat of norms if we want fully transparent candidates)