Donald Trump

[rmanx]

Have a look at Estate Tax Repeal and how much all the those cabinet picks are due to make from it...

[pongo]

i have already asked you once before for a list of your "credible" non fake news sites pongo. i would be prepared to at least read them. how about it?

 

Russia has no tradition of a free press. Journalists live under permanent threat and the Russian media exists only with the permission of those in power. Sputnik News and Russia Today are effectively part of the same state organisation. Their purpose is to undermine and confuse factual reporting. Media, in the Soviet Union, was a tool of dictatorship and control - a tradition which continues today on the internet - eg the well known Russian troll factories which daily churn out fake news stories, forum comments, abusive social media posts etc.

 

Effort to Expose Russia’s ‘Troll Army’ Draws Vicious Retaliation - New York Times

 

Responsible and trustworthy media is typically characterised by reputation and a strong tradition of editorial experience and integrity. It’s about being able to trust the way in which sources and stories, even if unattributed, are carefully verified and contextualised before responsible publication. That whole tradition of separate sources. If you want a list of trustworthy US media then you could do worse than look at which organisations have won Pulitzers over the past century. You want to know that someone thought long and hard about a thing before publishing it - rather than doing it to cause trouble or for giggles.

 

In the UK - the BBC, The FT and The Economist, for example, clearly all provide responsible and trustworthy reporting, analysis and commentary. Inevitably there are mistakes - but the fact that the BBC, for example, is so frequently criticised from both left and right is a strong indication that the balance is approximately right. Internationally there are countless news agencies and publications with similar standing and deserved reputation.

 

The media is an establishment - in the best possible sense of that word. Media should be an establishment, something with codes and traditions. The brightest and best educated should be informing debate - in the same way that the brightest and the best educated should be running the great departments of govt and The City. Conspiracy theorists, contrarians and political extremists dismiss established practice and tradition as the mainstream media. As if "mainstream" were somehow a pejorative. As if there were anything wise about instead believing unaccredited rumour, non-expert opinion, the pub bore, Twitter noise, what someone said on Facebook, Julian Assange etc. It's like trusting witch-doctors instead of going to the hospital.

 

There is a strong case today for verified reporting and analysis to carry some independent mark of standard and integrity - perhaps something like an ISO. It’s not that mad free speech, conspiracy nonsense, or made up news should not be allowed - just that such content should not be reported as if it were produced to a reliable standard. It should be clear that sites reporting such content cannot be trusted.

 

—

 

One of Putin’s closest advisors is Vladislav Yuryevich Surkov

 

In contemporary Russia … the stage is constantly changing: the country is a dictatorship in the morning, a democracy at lunch, an oligarchy by suppertime, while, backstage, oil companies are expropriated, journalists killed, billions siphoned away. Surkov is at the centre of the show, sponsoring nationalist skinheads one moment, backing human rights groups the next. It's a strategy of power based on keeping any opposition there may be constantly confused, a ceaseless shape-shifting that is unstoppable because it's indefinable.

— Peter Pomerantsev, in "Putin's Rasputin", London Review of Books issue of 20 October 2011

[woolley]

@ Pongo: What you say about the Russian "media" for both external and internal consumption is undoubtedly true. Mr Putin did not achieve his 80%+ approval rating by accident. You do though, in my opinion, ascribe far more rose-tinted credit for impartiality to Western media than they now merit. Performance of a source over the past century is not necessarily a recommendation of what is being espoused by it today, and when you can feel yourself being manipulated while watching the BBC in much the same way as you do when watching RT, something precious has been lost.

 

As for an ISO or "kite" mark for integrity, who is to be the arbiter on such a weighty matter? Certainly not somebody like you or I with our own divergent opinions. Even the Almighty himself would struggle to assert credible neutrality in such a role.

 

Even though it might at first reading seem like a no-brainer, I am also somewhat uneasy about your bald assertion that the "best educated" should control and run things. "Brightest", "smartest", by all means, yes, but when it comes to "best educated", it depends what they had their minds filled with at the time they underwent the process. Many of the "best educated" people we have had running the country's institutions may well have been full of information but they have also been totally divorced from reality when in positions of power and influence. You can be so learned and exalted in your ivory tower that you have no clue what happens in the real world and thus the elite becomes totally out of touch with the masses and their struggles. That is what is happening to us now, and it is how societies and civilisations inevitably crumble.

[Mr. Sausages]

Best educated doesn't mean having gone to Eton and Cambridge. It means having knowledge in the relevant field.

 

E.g. scientists who study climate change should have a bigger influence over environmental policy than someone whose gut instinct (and oil baron friends) tell them it's bollocks. That is how societies and civilisations inevitably crumble.

[woolley]

Best educated doesn't mean having gone to Eton and Cambridge. It means having knowledge in the relevant field.

 

E.g. scientists who study climate change should have a bigger influence over environmental policy than someone whose gut instinct (and oil baron friends) tell them it's bollocks. That is how societies and civilisations inevitably crumble.

I agree. Knowledge, but not just book learning from a specific perspective that ignores the real world. And that is what often emerges from the alumni of Eton and Cambridge et al.

 

Climate change is happening. It has happened before. It will happen again. Humanity may well be contributing to it. It may not. We have no way of knowing. For sure we have lots of opinions, but there is no expert who could state with certainty that this would not be happening here and now if man did not exist on the planet. One thing IS for sure. Nobody is going to change the way they live on the off chance that it just might have something to do with their own activities. That's the way humans are, you see. They pay lip service to the poor of the world and future generations, but will they cancel their carbon hungry holidays in the sun? Of course not. Well, only if they think there might be a Muslim there with a suicide vest to kill them. But then it becomes self-interest and they are far more likely to act on that than some abstract notion of a waterlogged future.

Edited January 5, 2017 by woolley

[pongo]

you can feel yourself being manipulated while watching the BBC in much the same way as you do when watching RT, something precious has been lost.

Nothing has been lost and very little has changed. The BBC has faced similar criticisms almost since it began and especially up through the 1930s and into the war era when its growing importance as a news source was seen as a threat to the power and influence of the sinister press barons. The idea that the BBC was leftish in relation to typical public opinion was pushed by the same media which supported the Blackshirts and opposed Jewish refugees coming into Britain.

 

 

 

It's facetious to imply an equivalence between the BBC and RT.

Edited January 5, 2017 by pongo

[rmanx]

For sure we have lots of opinions, but there is no expert who could state with certainty that this would not be happening here and now if man did not exist on the planet. One thing IS for sure.

 

That sounds like the kind of anti-intellectualism that is dragging the "developed" world back into the dark ages.

 

"Don't trust experts...what do they know..."

[Mr. Sausages]

"We have no way of knowing". I.e. me, and probably you. But that's why I defer to people who do have ways of knowing. Ways that I don't understand. I don't understand how televisions work, how they knew how to get to the moon, how they can make 100 tons of metal fly half way around the world. Nuts, isn't it? All of it goes against your gut instinct. Shouldn't be possible to do. But people more educated than me figured out how to do it. They know stuff.

Edited January 5, 2017 by Mr. Sausages

[woolley]

"We have no way of knowing". I.e. me, and probably you. But that's why I defer to people who do have ways of knowing. Ways that I don't understand. I don't understand how televisions work, how they knew how to get to the moon, how they can make 100 tons of metal fly half way around the world. Nuts, isn't it? All of it goes against your gut instinct. Shouldn't be possible to do. But people more educated than me figured out how to do it. They know stuff.

I didn't say otherwise. Read what I write, not what you assume I will write.

 

I said that nobody could tell you with certainty that the climate change we are experiencing would be any different in the absence of humanity. Warming has happened many times before. It is not unprecedented in the history of the planet. It is a cyclical event. I went on to observe that even if it could be proven there is nobody who is prepared to change their life in any meaningful way to accommodate it. Except of course in attending worthy conferences and signing accords to address the problem....... a bit........ maybe........ in 50 years time when we are all comfortably dead.

[woolley]

 

you can feel yourself being manipulated while watching the BBC in much the same way as you do when watching RT, something precious has been lost.

Nothing has been lost and very little has changed. The BBC has faced similar criticisms almost since it began and especially up through the 1930s and into the war era when its growing importance as a news source was seen as a threat to the power and influence of the sinister press barons. The idea that the BBC was leftish in relation to typical public opinion was pushed by the same media which supported the Blackshirts and opposed Jewish refugees coming into Britain.

 

 

 

It's facetious to imply an equivalence between the BBC and RT.

 

I didn't do that either. I acknowledged that RT and Russian media are organs of the ruling clique. However, it is not only the state that can manipulate. The BBC has a left leaning agenda that it pushes remorselessly and this is also a form of manipulation. Simply a different one.

[Mr. Sausages]

I didn't say otherwise. Read what I write, not what you assume I will write.

I did read what you wrote, my assumption is that you're unqualified to make the statement.

[rmanx]

 

The BBC has a left leaning agenda that it pushes remorselessly and this is also a form of manipulation. Simply a different one.

 

Except when it has a right wing agenda....

[woolley]

 

I didn't say otherwise. Read what I write, not what you assume I will write.

I did read what you wrote, my assumption is that you're unqualified to make the statement.

 

So what do you disagree with below? It seems totally uncontroversial to me as an observation.

 

I said that nobody could tell you with certainty that the climate change we are experiencing would be any different in the absence of humanity. Warming has happened many times before. It is not unprecedented in the history of the planet. It is a cyclical event. I went on to observe that even if it could be proven there is nobody who is prepared to change their life in any meaningful way to accommodate it. Except of course in attending worthy conferences and signing accords to address the problem....... a bit........ maybe........ in 50 years time when we are all comfortably dead.

[woolley]

 

 

The BBC has a left leaning agenda that it pushes remorselessly and this is also a form of manipulation. Simply a different one.

 

Except when it has a right wing agenda....

 

That'll be the day!

[rmanx]

The bit where you failed to mention that, yes it is cyclical, however with human intervention the cycle is happening at a much faster rate?