Omnibus Politics Thread: Campaign 2016 EditionFollow

Channel nothing, it was gbaji and varus.

And for the record, I don't believe there's much difference between the two tribes.

Edited, Feb 24th 2017 8:12pm by lolgaxe

So other than, ABC, NBC, CBS, Bloomberg, WSJ, Fox, Time, AP, and a ton of other journalists in the normal "pool", plus a few more, you're absolutely correct. Media access was just, like, totally blocked! Just like what a dictator does!!! OMG. Let's all be super alarmed about this.

Or... maybe... we learn about about how press pools work, how they are assigned, and more importantly, how they have always been assigned, and then maybe... just maybe... we'll realize there's nothing to this at all.

Wow. Just... wow. Um. Let me know when no media is allowed to report on anything, is barred from entering the building, no press briefings are held at all, etc. Then we can talk. This is just a handful of liberal media outlets accustomed to getting their way, getting butthurt because they weren't added into the list of "also included" on top of the regular press pool, with that honor going to a handful of other media outlets instead.

Congratulations on predicting water would be wet.

(This is a FacePalm smiley from iOS)

Edited, Feb 24th 2017 6:58pm by stupidmonkey

Lesson #1: Breitbart is about as much "the press" as =4 is.

So, I looked up the definitions of the two and I can't see any meaningful difference where the high profile attacks wouldn't be considered terrorism.

Side note: ISIS was supposed to be gone within 3o days. Is it official?

Guess we'll find out Wednesday since no one is going to watch the address tomorrow night.

I've though for a moment of just muting the TV and have Close Captioning selected.

Then I figure I might not even be able to handle that.

So if I feed a need to have some news in real time, I'll open up the NY Times page with real time commentary by their reporters about the garbage that comes out of 45's mouth.

I expect he'll spend most of the time boosting about how much he done already and complaining about the Fake News and evil MSM.

edit because my keyboard and mouse don't like to stay with me, as i type.

Edited, Feb 27th 2017 4:23pm by ElneClare

Only if you strip off adjectives like "fake", "misleading", "lying", etc from the phrase. The administration's issue is with media outlets that seem to be less interested in informing their viewers/readers than they are with finding any way at all to twist the language of something in a way to make it negative towards the administration, the Republican party, and Conservatives in general. So more or less the same thing I've railed about for like the entire life of this forum.

And yeah, btw, mislabeling a gaggle as a briefing (doubly funny if you look at the title of the article and compare to the url itself btw) and then claiming that some violation of our freedom of the press has occurred as a result, is absolutely "fake news". It's exactly the kind of thing that Trump has been attacking, and they respond by... providing yet another example of the behavior.

Not exactly winning points there, are they?



You mean the media? I think they'll continue to lose credibility the more they keep doubling down on the same BS. All they just did was confirm Trump's claim with this. Doing more of the same will only make things worse for them, not better.

Um... You provided your own answer. The "high profile" cases are a subset of all "hate crimes" (and are presumably large scale type events). Some guy randomly beating up a gay guy because of his sexual orientation is committing a hate crime. He's not even remotely committing an act of terrorism though. Somewhat by definition a hate crime is the result of someone's hate (obvious yeah). If you hate <insert group here> you're not necessarily planning some grand scheme to influence people's opinions much less broad political policies when you take a hateful action towards a member of that group. The thought process for such people likely does not extend much beyond "there's someone in <insert group> right there! Let's get him!".

For it to be terrorism, there has to be an intent to use the event to put fear into the population as a whole, with an eye towards changing positions/policies in some way. The IRA planted bombs in public places and then called up the cops and told them where the bombs were. In most cases, no one was injured (with some notable exceptions). The implicit threat to this was "we didn't have to call you, and maybe we wont next time". That's terrorism. Even if no one was hurt, it's terrorism. Even if there's no "hate" involved, the methodology makes it terrorism. I'm not saying that many members of the IRA didn't also hate the Brits, but their motivation was primarily political changes involving how Northern Ireland was treated and represented in the UK (or for some a desire to not be in the UK in the first place). It wasn't just "I hate those guys". It was "I don't like what those guys are doing and I've settled on this as a means to get them to change".

Bullshit.

Oh. And I particularly love this bit of completely BS grandstanding:



Let's just pause to recognize how utterly false and deliberately misleading this is. The implication one gets from this is that since many media outlets were excluded from the gaggle, they have no access to what was said inside, and thus the need to put out a plea for those in attendance to pass along what was said and heard to the rest of the press corps.

Here's the problem with that (and why it's intentionally misleading). As I've mentioned a couple of times already, the press pool was invited to the gaggle. The press pool is selected by the WHCA (the same organization making this statement). The press pool exists specifically to cover events where the size of the room/venue/whatever isn't large enough for the entire press corps to attend (like, say a meeting in the Press Secretary's office). To be selected as a member of the press pool, you must be a member of the press corp and agree to pass along any information, recordings, video, etc obtained at the event for the free use by all other media members in the press corp. That's the entire point of the press pool. It's to ensure that every member of the corp can print a quote, or use a video or audio taken at any event, even if they could not personally attend due to space issues. They are basically the chosen representatives of the entire press corps. Hence why I've repeatedly stated that as long as the pool reporters are present, there can be no "exclusion". Everyone in the entire press corps has access to and use of everything that happens in the presence of the press pool. That's how the system works.

Calling on those who attended to share the material with the others in the press corp is a completely unnecessary and redundant request. The pool was in the room. They're already required to do this, and have already agreed to do this. The only reason to make this statement, isn't to actually try to get access to what was said in the gaggle, but to mislead the public into thinking that they didn't already have that access and had to make some kind of special request to get it. Which in turn helps to perpetuate the false belief that anything at all unusual or wrong has occurred.

Which, you know, just kinda takes the cake here. Now if it were some random bloggers (or posters on a forum board) out there ignorantly demanding this, so that the "free media" has access to what was said in the gaggle, you could excuse it. They're just ignorant of the process. But this came directly from the WHCA board. A group of people who know very well how the press pool system works. They're the ones who developed it, and the ones who manage it, and the ones who select those who are in it. They can't claim ignorance. So we must conclude that this is a very deliberate bit of misinformation. Which yeah... Just doubles down on fake news.


Pretty darn indefensible IMO. But maybe I'm wrong. Anyone care to defend this statement by the WHCA? I'd love to hear it. For the lulz if nothing else.

No need to pause. You posted it so it's just second nature to treat it as utterly false and deliberately misleading.