From "The 'Anonymous' saga ended with a dud — a perfect example of the problem of Trump-era media" by Steve Krakauer (The Hill).
November 2, 2020
"And then, this week, we got the big reveal. 'Anonymous' was Miles Taylor — a name that is likely literally anonymous to you to begin with."
"At the time he wrote the original column, Taylor was the deputy chief of staff to the director of Homeland Security — hardly a 'senior' Trump administration official. That description by The New York Times was the first major media misstep in all this. If Taylor published the column under his own name and title, it wouldn’t pack nearly the punch it did the way it was shrouded in mystery and secrecy. The only reason the Times would play this game was to deceive its readers, and the entire media world, into thinking the author was someone of far more prominence than Mr. Anonymous, Miles Taylor.... [T]he media spun a tale of a 'top administration official' working for Trump going public through The New York Times that turned out to be yet another massive letdown. The American public has seen the extreme lengths to which the press... has gone in abandoning its principles in the service of its perceived existential fight with the guy in the White House."
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Have any of them ever not landed with a dud? Like the big racist events the media keep going gaga about—if you’re smart, you assume it’s fake and you’re never wrong.
I appreciate our host's exposing the shift of media to a propaganda arm of the DNC. Thank You.
Now we need solutions. For a few years, social media gave citizens a chance to contradict the dnc/media with facts. Now social media censures those posts.
I wish I had a solution. It seems to me colleges are part of the problem. Censuring anything leftist find contrary to there uninformed opinions. The answer to propaganda, is all views, even racists evil views, get full exposure. I don't know how to get the most educated among us to understand this simple truth.
The news media is biased, but also corrupt to the core. They lie relentlessly and slander often. The question of whether one reads the NY Times is now an IQ test. Only an idiot would knowingly waste time and money to be lied to daily. Or perhaps someone who is so psychologically, emotionally and morally defective that they cannot handle reality.
Sources say post election Americans will abandon legacy media as a source of information. Some will continue cling to their words out of hope and habit.
Miles Taylor played a game with the New York Times.
Miles Taylor won.
The New York Times lost.
Miles Taylor played the New York Times.
you know, maybe; just maybe...
If the press didn't Continuously Lie; people might believe them?
The MSM is filled with partisan liars.
They work for the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, all the network news companies, and at every local news outlet in big cities.
Calling this guy a senior anything was a lie.
Liars lie.
Murray Gell-Mann would like a word.
The American public has seen the extreme lengths to which the press... has gone in abandoning its principles in the service of its perceived existential fight with the guy in the White House.
Nice of The Hill to catch a clue, but the American public picked up on this much earlier.
The NYT is asshoe.
Will we see more of the same if Trump wins on Tuesday? Or a return to principles if Biden is victorious?
Return to principles? They treated Dubya just about as bad, and were administration sychophants during Obama. If they ever had journalistic principles, you'd have to go back decades to find them in the East Coast media.
Read the full article. I agree with all his points.
Manipulative, childish, or both?
We've had four years of breathless "blockbuster" news coming at us. For awhile it seemed as if it was almost a daily choreographed roll out of BIG news that was neither big, nor news. From the almost daily half statements spilling out of the face of Adam Schiff inferring the worst is about to come out, to WaPo reporters waiting by their iPhones for "leaks" fed to them, to the networks holding siege on the White House with nightly leaks, quotes from anonymous sources, and false stories all designed to make it seem as if the fall of the Trump administration was imminent.
Journalism! as we knew it has been withering for years. Never has there been such a display of sophomoric thinking, behavior, and professional misconduct as has been perpetrated on the American and global public by the American media enterprise over the last four years.
You want more Trump? This is how you get more Trump. The thing is, Trump will be gone- either in a few weeks or four more years. But where do you go to gain back your credibility, journalists? Media news readers, 'experts'? The answer is that you don't. You were barely respected before Trump came into office. Hell, you are part of the reason he got into office to begin with. It'll take years- generations- before the press is considered anything but laughable again.
Congratulations. You've earned your contempt.
100%. and it makes you wonder about all their other stories.
Look at what the NYT did here and it is one of the many straight lines to businesses boarding up in anticipation of the election (if he wins)
"That description by The New York Times was the first major media misstep in all this."
What do you mean, misstep? It was a calculated move, and it worked.
"The only reason the Times would play this game was to deceive its readers"
What do you mean, deceive? They know very well their rag is partisan, and they like it.
"The American public has seen the extreme lengths to which the press... has gone in abandoning its principles.
What do you mean, abandoning? They are acting on their principles. Which happen to be political principles, of which they and their readers are proud.
The MSM fight. One of the things they fight against is the utterly outdated petty-bourgeois sensibilities who think newspapers should provide accurate information and owe their reader honesty. Ef that.
Hack-D press, at your server. Ready to lie for the... Hivemind.
The American public has seen the extreme lengths to which the press... has gone in abandoning its principles in the service of its perceived existential fight with the guy in the White House.
Ironically, it's become an existential fight for them--because they destroyed their reputation in the struggle. That said, the fact that Biden is within 10 points of Trump means they still wield more influence than I thought they did. With an adoring media behind them, all Democrats need to do to score an easy victory is pick a candidate who isn't the worst person you could think of.
Sebastian said..."The only reason the Times would play this game was to deceive its readers"
What do you mean, deceive? They know very well their rag is partisan, and they like it.
There's a lot of money to be made in lying to people who want to be lied to.
Yet another minimal nobody puffed up by the media because he fit in with the correct narrative.
Our media and "betters" are such utter disappointments and if they had sufficient self awareness they would all be ashamed. Instead, they are all "speaking power over truth".
>>you'd have to go back decades to find them in the East Coast media.
Walter Cronkite says we deserved the 9/11 attacks. So you'd have to go back farther than that.
The media covered for Roosevelt's disability, so you'd have to go back farther than that.
I suspect it has ever been thus.
Did anyone buy or read his book? Me neither.
Did they ever apologize to victoria coates
By the way, none of this is about lying qua lying.
This is about delivering to the enormous corporate paymasters the product they demand.
That the things the paymasters want happen to be lies is what gets noticed.
But the people delivering the lies know what must be done.
Where did all these dweeby, pajama boy kind of men come from? The federal government seems to be infested with them. I guess they couldn't make it on Wall Street or in Big Law so they end up sucking the government t*t in DC until they can parlay the connections they make there into some cushy better paying gig elsewhere.
Once upon a time, tools were something you fixed things with.
Is this a sign that the corporate media is starting to try to step back from all the lies? Hmmmm. I don't think it will work.
NYTimes’ CFO is the winner these past quarters. More readers means more top line. A capitalist operation through and through. And the sales transaction grease is comprised of distortions and deception - all to get themselves and their shareholders rich. But don’t ask how they sleep at night. They sleep just fine. Their hearts have turned to stone and their consciences seared to the point of insensitivity and silence.
I notice that none of the polls asking Americans what their greatest concerns are ever include media/social media bias and censorship. And yet I would say that, after the economy, that is my biggest worry. The media has gone from being an annoyance to an actual threat to our Republic.
One friend similarly situated in the government wrote of this news, "Today I learned that I'm a senior administration official!" Heh.
I was guessing NSC staffer, a deputy of someone who was not fully on the Trump train, so DHS staffer working for Kirstjen Nielsen is not far off.
No lawyer here, but a first step to dialing down this nonsense is getting rid of the public figure doctrine, and make it easier for public figures to sue.
The law also needs to be changed to be able to prosecute 'reporters' and news organizations for publishing leaked information if that information is classified in any way.
Fuck the Pentagon Papers, seriously. We're a long way from Nixon.
I guarantee you that at least half of the 'anonymous sources' that we've heard about the last 4 years don't exist.
Name names. If not, jail the reporters until they comply.
Draconian? No. Just trying to find the truth. Isn't that what these media people keep saying they are seeking?
WHAT????? The left LIESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS to us???? The HORROR!! The horror... It's what they do.
The NYT is just doing what it's billionaire owner wants it to do.
He is from Mexico and hates the US.
He wants open borders and he wants US manufacturing all moved to his factories in Mexico where he pays people less than a dollar an hour.
The NYT's is a shitty organization that serves stupid and evil people for evil purposes.
The NYT's is complete trash. I find it interesting that Althouse reads it for how it looks while knowing at one level or another every word printed in the rag is a lie.
But I read (speculation) that Anonymous was the Chief of Staff, Melania, the SOS.....
Of course a year or two of SEE HOW VERY BAD THE BAD ORANGE MAN IS?
Outweighs the , Gee Anonymous wasn't that big a playa by a factor of 100.
So you lied?
We won didn't we? - H. Reid
As Harry Reid once said:
"So what if I lied? It worked didn't it?"
Do you ever feel made the fool of for paying for the NYTimes?
It occurs to me and I bet a lot of other people too, that it's pretty easy to get rich off the rot in our media. If you have any slightly plausible connection to Trump, it can be exploited by telling lies the left wants to hear. They will not seriously question the authenticity or your motives if you just feed their demons. They will publish you, pay you, and protect you for as long as you feed their emotional needs to lie about Trump. Being anonymous makes it really easy to get away with long enough to get that payday. You can even admit it's all lies after that, and you will get to keep your money and they still quote you when they need to, even at the highest levels. What do you have to lose?
How do you know when the NYT is lying to you?
You don't unless you assume they always are, and if that's the price of reading it, why would you?
Using an anonymous source means either the source is nonexistent, the source is lying or the source is very low in the pecking order and doesn't know jack.
Embrace the power of "and" in the above.
The editorial and book by "Anonymous" are only good for making compost.
Readering asked: Did anyone buy or read his book? Me neither.
My wife did and ate it up. Wanted me to read it too. I glanced through it and saw there were no footnotes or references. A book written by someone who wouldn't put his name on it without any on-record sitations. Not a credible work. Only good for compost.
The NYT is now peddling "U.S. has never had final results on Election Day" story by Maggie Astor. They're trying to ease the Biden voters into reality that Biden is going to lose in a landslide.
I could list a dozen things they could have done to avoid this embarrassment. The problem is (a) they knew all of these things beforehand and actively ignored it and (b) they don't find it embarrassing. If they were trying to perform journalism this would be an utter humiliation, but the goals were to (a) create a narrative that they could exploit to (b) further a political cause. The only drawback to this situation is the risk that people will think less of them and, therefore, will be less likely to take their newspaper seriously. However, the New York Times reputation has been in tatters with a large (majority?) of the population for at least a decade or two. Their business model is now to tell their remaining left-wing audience what they want to hear and then launder it into other media outlets as if it was straight news. I'm not sure if the bulk of the journalism staff, especially the young "woke" variety, even care if the NYT survives as long as they get what they want politically and get paid somewhere, perhaps in a government position.
My general advice to the rest of us is if the story is anonymously sourced and there is no vetted evidence provided, ignore it until evidence materializes or a real name is attached. And I mean that no matter which outlet it comes from.
"Miles Taylor- a name that is literally anonymous" -c'mon man! Anonymous literally means "without a name".
Imagine my surprise when I saw his photo and there was nary a grey hair on his head.
Well, Deep Plunger is real, and working assiduously to clear the residual muck from Water Closet.
"Do you ever feel made the fool of for paying for the NYTimes?”
I used to feel I had to read it to know what they were thinking, but I realized at one point that it was immoral to encourage them by giving them money. I feel the same way about street junkies you see in Boston. It’s immoral to give them money, because it keeps them on the street and in drugs.
"Walter Cronkite says we deserved the 9/11 attacks. “
We didn’t have a CBS affiliate in my town in those days, just NBC and the Huntly Brinkly Report. I trusted Huntly, but not so much Brinkly, but as they say in the stories “little did he know.”
From Chet Huntly’s final sign off:
I thank you first for your patience, then for your many kindnesses and the flattering things you have said and written. More difficult to take, to be sure, has been your criticism, but that, too, has been helpful, and, in most cases, valid. But you have bolsted my conviction that this land contains incredible quality and quantity of good, common sense, and it's in no danger of being led down a primrose path by a journalist.
Journalists everywhere: “Hold my beer!"
with mark felt, at least he did something this something,
The Trump impeachment whistleblower was similarly "anonymous" and similarly titled. I wonder how many of the media's anonymous sources overall are thirtyish deputy level moles.
I'd be more interested to know what the night janitorial staff at DHS thinks than this snowflake.
NYT to NYT readers:
You fucked up. You trusted us.
iirc, the NYT article did set off a 2-day flurry in the White house, about who was the traitor.
They should have known to never trust the New York Times.
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