Comment by close04

1 day ago

> look how influential Patreus cheating on his wife was

Those times have passed. I'll restate what I said in a comment some days ago:

>> 50 years ago the press was "impeaching" presidents. Today presidents are "impeaching" the press

The current strategy is "keep the outrage hose on full blast and eventually people get desensitized". It works.

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close04

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mc32  1 day ago

The press was stupid. They were doing stupid gotchas like swiftboats, fake reports on GWB (Dan Rather), but couldn’t care less about things like the CIA and the crack cocaine connection[1], or lots of other things the government gets away with (including Clappers total information awareness unconstitutional surveillance efforts) The press is always carrying water for someone but that someone is rarely the public unless is just pure coincidence.

[1] there was one reporter who dared but the toll from the story resulted in his suicide, some years later. His colleagues poo-pooed his reporting on the connection.

  • jyounker  4 hours ago

    * The Swiftboat thing was completely an ad campaign if I remember correctly. I remember most media covering it as BS.

    * The contents of Dan Rather report on GWB was true. There was one document which was sketchy, but the whole report didn't hinge on the one document from an officer's office. (E.g. Ex-senator Ben Barnes's interview is reasonably indicting: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/transcript-barnes-on-bush/)

      The media did fall down though. Only one outlet went to the the Officer's
  secretary (who was still alive) to ask if she had typed the document.
  She looked at it and said (summarizing here) that it wasn't the document
  she typed, but it was the same contents.

    What's interesting is how easily the media is distracted. What's even more concerning though, is that when the more centrist major media has tried to be less gullible, they've been vilified. (E.g. trying not to be suckered by miraculous appearance Hunter Biden's laptop.)

    It's a mess, and the only way out of it is probably limits own media ownership.