What about these Hunter Biden emails?

KCfromNC said:

No, that's mostly a right wing myth.

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No, it's not a right wing myth...it's something that's been happening for quite some time with media outlets on both sides.

The Fox's and CNN's of the world have spent the last 2 decades choosing to zero in only on the stories that either A) make their "side" look good, or B) the "other side" look bad...or just deliberately resorting to dishonest tactics like spinning outright false info.

A person can't honestly/objectively watch either of those networks, and not see that both are trying to steer people toward one political faction or the other.

None of our major networks get a very good score card when reviewed by independent fact-checkers.

So you have Fox:


You have MSNBC:


And you have CNN:


It's not a good look when "the most accurate" American media outlet has a scorecard like that.

...but as I noted, CNN takes a different angle, which is selective reporting and manufacturing selective outrage.

For instance, it's 100% factually accurate to say that when Trump got back from the hospital after covid, he said something like "the medications they have are great, I feel better than I did 20 years ago!"... However, having a 20 minute round table discussion with 4 pundits talking about "I think this is a slap in the face of the people who can't afford those treatments", and then "Let's interview this person who's husband was a rare statistical outlier and died from covid at age 33 with no preexisting conditions" may not move the "Truth-o-meter" needle on politifact, but it's certainly aimed at steering public opinion rather than merely informing.

WSJ opinion article: “How long can the media blackout [of Joe & Hunter Biden/Bobulinski, etc.] continue?”

WSJ news article: “Corporate records reviewed by The Wall Street Journal show no role for Joe Biden.” The Journal also quoted another partner in the venture, James Gilliar, saying he was “unaware of any involvement at anytime of the former Vice President.”

“Text messages and emails related to the venture that were provided to the Journal by Mr. Bobulinski...don’t show either Hunter Biden or James Biden discussing a role for Joe Biden in the venture.”

The Bobulinski story was first reported by another Rupert Murdoch-owned property, the New York Post.

ThatRobGuy said:

It's not a good look when "the most accurate" American media outlet has a scorecard like that.

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Obviously, this only counts the stories that some factchecker thought warranted even looking into.

FireDragon76 said:

Even if something appears factual, it can be contextualized in a way to manipulate people, and shouldn't be simply treated as a benevolent factoid. It's always important to ask what narrative is being served, and if that narrative is really relevant in the first place.

This kind of stuff is how Russian intelligence works. They don't deal necessarily in lies, but they are trying to push people around who are already prone to believing a certain narrative anyways. The purpose is to make Americans cynical about the whole political process, and to either push people towards extremes or suppress their participation. It all goes back to the pre-Soviet doctrine of strategic and tactical maskerovka (masquerade), which is about confusion and deception.

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In many ways, I feel like the "Russian misinformation campaign" angle is given more weight that it deserves.

The major outlets like Fox and CNN were playing that "agenda driven selective reporting" game long before Russian bots were posting on Facebook (or before there even was a Facebook)

In reality, how much, exactly did Russia spend on Facebook misinformation? (the Washington post suggested that their misinformation campaign on Facebook involved about $100k worth of ads?) The estimates I've heard were nothing staggering, and certainly nothing close to the amount domestic entities spend on misinformation in terms of manipulating elections.

If dictating election outcomes were as simple as $100k worth of bogus targeted ads on a social media platform, many of our domestic top corporations could've done that dozens of times over (and probably already do for all we know).

Facebook executive Colin Stretch told Congress in October 2017 that about 126 million users on the platform were exposed to Russian propaganda masquerading as real news. At the same time, Stretch added, the propaganda was hardly ubiquitous; suspected Russian content amounted to about one out of every 23,000 posts.

Russia’s Internet Research Agency spent just $46,000 on Facebook ads before the 2016 elections, compared to the $81 million the Trump and Clinton campaigns spent on the platform combined.

Statistically speaking, anyone who was influenced to vote one way or the other based on a Facebook post they saw (and maybe I'm just optimistic, but I don't think that particular brand of simpleton is as common as people seem to think), more likely saw a Facebook ad from the Trump campaign, itself, rather than one that was created by a Russian misinformation campaign.

Or another way of putting it, I think there's a bigger chance that if anyone was influenced by Facebook content, they're more likely to have been influenced by something they saw from DailyWire or TheYoungTurks rather than something from russia.

I have found that Fox reports selectively quite a bit.

When some huge shocker comes out (in the Trump Administration, it happens every 48 hours or so) I always turn on Fox for a little while, listening with half an ear, to see what creative ways they find to avoid the story.

Usually it's some warmed over invented scandal from the Obama administration. I never stay on long enough to see whether they are telling the truth about anything else.

But creds for Fox in that they are better than OAN.

And creds to the NY Post for being slightly better than the Enquirer.

ThatRobGuy said:

In many ways, I feel like the "Russian misinformation campaign" angle is given more weight that it deserves.

The major outlets like Fox and CNN were playing that "agenda driven selective reporting" game long before Russian bots were posting on Facebook (or before there even was a Facebook)

In reality, how much, exactly did Russia spend on Facebook misinformation? (the Washington post suggested that their misinformation campaign on Facebook involved about $100k worth of ads?) The estimates I've heard were nothing staggering, and certainly nothing close to the amount domestic entities spend on misinformation in terms of manipulating elections.

If dictating election outcomes were as simple as $100k worth of bogus targeted ads on a social media platform, many of our domestic top corporations could've done that dozens of times over (and probably already do for all we know).

Facebook executive Colin Stretch told Congress in October 2017 that about 126 million users on the platform were exposed to Russian propaganda masquerading as real news. At the same time, Stretch added, the propaganda was hardly ubiquitous; suspected Russian content amounted to about one out of every 23,000 posts.

Russia’s Internet Research Agency spent just $46,000 on Facebook ads before the 2016 elections, compared to the $81 million the Trump and Clinton campaigns spent on the platform combined.

Statistically speaking, anyone who was influenced to vote one way or the other based on a Facebook post they saw (and maybe I'm just optimistic, but I don't think that particular brand of simpleton is as common as people seem to think), more likely saw a Facebook ad from the Trump campaign, itself, rather than one that was created by a Russian misinformation campaign.

Or another way of putting it, I think there's a bigger chance that if anyone was influenced by Facebook content, they're more likely to have been influenced by something they saw from DailyWire or TheYoungTurks rather than something from russia.

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The issue is that the manipulation came from a foreign actor who is an enemy of the United States and would happily seek our destruction if they could.

ThatRobGuy said:

No, it's not a right wing myth...it's something that's been happening for quite some time with media outlets on both sides.

The Fox's and CNN's of the world have spent the last 2 decades choosing to zero in only on the stories that either A) make their "side" look good, or B) the "other side" look bad...or just deliberately resorting to dishonest tactics like spinning outright false info.

A person can't honestly/objectively watch either of those networks, and not see that both are trying to steer people toward one political faction or the other.

None of our major networks get a very good score card when reviewed by independent fact-checkers.

So you have Fox:
View attachment 287090

You have MSNBC:
View attachment 287091

And you have CNN:
View attachment 287092

It's not a good look when "the most accurate" American media outlet has a scorecard like that.

...but as I noted, CNN takes a different angle, which is selective reporting and manufacturing selective outrage.

For instance, it's 100% factually accurate to say that when Trump got back from the hospital after covid, he said something like "the medications they have are great, I feel better than I did 20 years ago!"... However, having a 20 minute round table discussion with 4 pundits talking about "I think this is a slap in the face of the people who can't afford those treatments", and then "Let's interview this person who's husband was a rare statistical outlier and died from covid at age 33 with no preexisting conditions" may not move the "Truth-o-meter" needle on politifact, but it's certainly aimed at steering public opinion rather than merely informing.

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That's great and all, but what does it have to do with the claim that most media outlets are now biased? I mean, yeah, you've shown a few aren't 100% accurate but that's neither evidence of bias nor of the behavior of a majority.

KCfromNC said:

That's great and all, but what does it have to do with the claim that most media outlets are now biased? I mean, yeah, you've shown a few aren't 100% accurate but that's neither evidence of bias nor of the behavior of a majority.

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Which sources or metrics would you be willing to consider in term evaluating media bias?
(obviously CNN will say Fox is far-right, and Fox will say CNN is far-left...that's not the type of evaluation I'm referring to where a outlet accuses a competitor)


...there have been independent groups that have weighed it out and come the conclusion that many of our larger media outlets to exhibit some bias and accuracy issues.

Interactive Media Bias Chart - 2 - Ad Fontes Media

This one is a pretty cool little interactive chart that evaluates both accuracy and bias.

We do have outlets where they have decent score in terms of having good scores scores on both reliability and not being hyper partisan, but at the top of that "pyramid", many of those are outlets that don't have nearly as much traction or near the audience size as ones that are further down on the left for the right.

If you filter the list down to outlets that have a reliability score of 45 or better, and is in the bias window of -6 to +6, it becomes a pretty short list.

...and within that short list, half of them have fairly small audience sizes in comparison to the more popular outlets


When you look at left-biased media outlets (having a bias score of -6 or below), and having reliability scores of < 46



...and when you look at the right-wing stuff with the same score metrics.




It becomes pretty clear that bias and reliability issues are pretty pervasive within the media at the national level.

I'd love it if every news outlet were as good as Bloomberg, NPR, PBS, and The Hill or WSJ...but that's simply not the case when you look at the overall list.

KCfromNC said:

That's great and all, but what does it have to do with the claim that most media outlets are now biased? I mean, yeah, you've shown a few aren't 100% accurate but that's neither evidence of bias nor of the behavior of a majority.

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Selective reporting may be both accurate and biased at the same time. However, while you can correct for bias (by reading multiple accurate sources with different biases), correcting for inaccuracy is harder.

ThatRobGuy said:

Which sources or metrics would you be willing to consider in term evaluating media bias?

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Ones which don't confuse accuracy with bias, for a start.

...there have been independent groups that have weighed it out and come the conclusion that many of our larger media outlets to exhibit some bias and accuracy issues.

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Do any of them support the claim that this has changed significantly over the past 3 years? You'll remember that was the claim I was questioning.

KCfromNC said:

Ones which don't confuse accuracy with bias, for a start.

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The link I provided takes into account both.

While the two concepts aren't the same thing...I'm not surprised that there happens to be a linear relationship between the two in a lot of cases (as shown by the infographics in the link I posted).

You can find some outliers that are overtly bias, but still largely accurate, but for the overwhelming majority of the outlets covered, bias/inaccuracy tend to trend together at a certain point.

Likely due to the fact that if the intention of an outlet is not to inform, but rather to nudge you in direction or the other, if bias/selective reporting (in a still mostly factual manner) isn't working after a while, the next step is to start taking liberties with the truth.

KCfromNC said:

Do any of them support the claim that this has changed significantly over the past 3 years? You'll remember that was the claim I was questioning.

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Your original quote I was responding to was :
That's great and all, but what does it have to do with the claim that most media outlets are now biased? I mean, yeah, you've shown a few aren't 100% accurate but that's neither evidence of bias nor of the behavior of a majority.

Unless I missed it, you posted a question to me (that was quoting my response to another poster in #153), so I'm not familiar with the 3-year qualifier you're referring to - unless that was something you posted to someone else?

Your original question was directed at if there was any evidence that most media outlets were now biased?

So that was the question I was answering.

Evaluating media shift over a 3-year period would be tough since presidents serve 4-year terms, and over the past few election cycles, both wings of the media already had their battle stations manned prior to the president-elect officially taking office.

ThatRobGuy said:

No, it's not a right wing myth...it's something that's been happening for quite some time with media outlets on both sides.

The Fox's and CNN's of the world have spent the last 2 decades choosing to zero in only on the stories that either A) make their "side" look good, or B) the "other side" look bad...or just deliberately resorting to dishonest tactics like spinning outright false info.

A person can't honestly/objectively watch either of those networks, and not see that both are trying to steer people toward one political faction or the other.

None of our major networks get a very good score card when reviewed by independent fact-checkers.

So you have Fox:
View attachment 287090

You have MSNBC:
View attachment 287091

And you have CNN:
View attachment 287092

Click to expand...

To look at these three charts and say that none of the major networks is getting a good score card is a rather interesting approach to truth.

The networks in these charts that aren't Fox News have a distribution that lands on 'mostly true' typically. Fox lands on 'mostly false' typically.

Those are pretty different from each other.

ThatRobGuy said:

If you filter the list down to outlets that have a reliability score of 45 or better, and is in the bias window of -6 to +6, it becomes a pretty short list.

...and within that short list, half of them have fairly small audience sizes in comparison to the more popular outlets
View attachment 287126

When you look at left-biased media outlets (having a bias score of -6 or below), and having reliability scores of < 46

View attachment 287127

...and when you look at the right-wing stuff with the same score metrics.
View attachment 287128



It becomes pretty clear that bias and reliability issues are pretty pervasive within the media at the national level.

I'd love it if every news outlet were as good as Bloomberg, NPR, PBS, and The Hill or WSJ...but that's simply not the case when you look at the overall list.

Click to expand...

One problem that's always existed with this chart is that it plots facts and analysis along a spectrum of "reliability" such that "facts" are scored as more reliable than "analysis", which... I can kind of see an argument for that, but it also compares apples to oranges to some degree.

Either way, what it really shows is that left-leaning readers prefer sources that tend to a good job of reporting facts and providing analysis with only modest partisan skew, whereas right-leaning readers don't. There are almost no outlets in the upper right section of the chart. The overwhelming majority of the right-wing outlets who do analysis, and the audiences who read them, are in the garbage pile on the bottom right.

ThatRobGuy said:

I'm not familiar with the 3-year qualifier you're referring to - unless that was something you posted to someone else?

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ThatRobGuy said:

The problem is, is that most legit (but becoming less legit by the day) news outlets have exhibited so much bias (in one direction or the other) over the past 3 years

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Here's an opinion piece in the NYTimes about the recent Hunter (non)story. Trump Had One Last Story to Sell. The Wall Street Journal Wouldn’t Buy It.

I'm interested in it mostly for what it says about how news media are dealing with things. They're trying to avoid a repeat of 2016, where they blew up a minor story about Hillary's emails, and other attacks on her. The reaction is to nearly ignore attacks that appear to be false. It's not just liberal media. The WSJ also refused the print the recent Hunter Biden story.

The opinion piece seems to suggest that these things shouldn't just be buried, but that a bit more should be published about the attempt, while making it clear that they don't seem to be factual.

I should note that both the NYTimes and CNN have had some articles on the various Hunter Biden attacks. But they haven't been prominent and didn't last long on the man page of the web site.

hedrick said:

Here's an opinion piece in the NYTimes about the recent Hunter (non)story. Trump Had One Last Story to Sell. The Wall Street Journal Wouldn’t Buy It.

I'm interested in it mostly for what it says about how news media are dealing with things. They're trying to avoid a repeat of 2016, where they blew up a minor story about Hillary's emails, and other attacks on her. The reaction is to nearly ignore attacks that appear to be false. It's not just liberal media. The WSJ also refused the print the recent Hunter Biden story.

The opinion piece seems to suggest that these things shouldn't just be buried, but that a bit more should be published about the attempt, while making it clear that they don't seem to be factual.

I should note that both the NYTimes and CNN have had some articles on the various Hunter Biden attacks. But they haven't been prominent and didn't last long on the man page of the web site.

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It's also funny because by comparison, we did at least have verification from multiple third parties very quickly about the fact that the purloined emails in 2016 were genuine. But yes, both sets of stories are ultimately very insignificant.

It seems a bit pointless to not make the entire dataset available in this present case, although an obvious reason for not doing so is the material is actually not credible. But if this is legit, it is crackers to sit on it for this long. There's only a few days left for this to impact the potential election of.....er...Hunter Biden, who I believe is running for POTUS

White House lawyer helped shop controversial Hunter Biden story to Wall Street Journal: NYT

According to the Times, White House lawyer Eric Herschmann and former deputy White House counsel Stefan Passantino were among those within President Trump's circle who had pitched the Biden story to Wall Street Journal reporters. Trump's allies reportedly hoped the story in the Journal, a trusted paper, would play in Trump's favor ahead of the November election.

I know Trump has eroded political ethics to the point that people won't be appalled or even surprised, but think about this...

This wasn't a campaign staffer. This wasn't Trump's personal lawyer. This was a White House lawyer, a public servant who serves the office of the president, not Donald Trump personally. Going around on a smear campaign against a political opponent.

Hey, what happened? Based on all the noise about the big laptop and email reveal we had last week, shouldn't Hunter and Joe Biden be in prison by now?

essentialsaltes said:

White House lawyer helped shop controversial Hunter Biden story to Wall Street Journal: NYT

According to the Times, White House lawyer Eric Herschmann and former deputy White House counsel Stefan Passantino were among those within President Trump's circle who had pitched the Biden story to Wall Street Journal reporters. Trump's allies reportedly hoped the story in the Journal, a trusted paper, would play in Trump's favor ahead of the November election.

I know Trump has eroded political ethics to the point that people won't be appalled or even surprised, but think about this...

This wasn't a campaign staffer. This wasn't Trump's personal lawyer. This was a White House lawyer, a public servant who serves the office of the president, not Donald Trump personally. Going around on a smear campaign against a political opponent.

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The NYT story is an interesting article. Apparently the story was being "shopped" by Tony Bobulinski, the person that Fox used to "confirm" the NY Post story. Mr. Herschmann, Arthur Schwartz (a PR man working for Don, Jr), and Stefan Passantino (a former White House Counsel). The three met with Michael Bender, a reporter from the WSJ to try and convince him to run the story about how Joe Biden was profiting off of his sons business affairs.

The WSJ started working on the story and doing the necessary fact checking. Getting impatient that the news wasn't breaking, Rudy Giuliani got impatient and delivered the hard drive to the NY Post. The Trump team had wanted the story to break through the WSJ, a respected news source, and not the tabloid Post.

Worse, Trump then implied that the WSJ would publish “important piece” soon. The WSJ didn't like that Trump was apparently using them for his campaign, which caused them to hold the article for complete fact checking. At that point, Mr. Bobulinski got tired of waiting and sent out a press release, about Joe Biden being the "big man."

The WSJ, after reviewing all of Mr. Bobulinski's information, the various emails and business documents, found that none of it supported Joe Biden having a part in the company -- that the paperwork did not support Mr. Bobulinski's claims. Since then, another of the individuals involved has also stated that Joe Biden was not involved.

The question of where Hunter Biden's "laptop" came from is still something of a mystery. More importantly, there is still no evidence that Joe Biden was in any way involved in his son's business, regardless of what is proven about the laptop.

KCfromNC said:

...

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My comment was
"(they) have exhibited so much bias (in one direction or the other) over the past 3 years, that making the choice to either talk about or avoid talking about it comes with the implication that they're playing political favorites."

I don't recall stating the the problem started 3 years ago, or implying that's it's gotten exponentially worse over the past 3 years in particular.

The "past 3 years" was referring to the fact that that's how long the current president was in office.

In terms of when it really started to escalate, that seemed to happen during the transition period from Clinton to Bush.