The Media has a large part of the blame for the discord in our country today

Media_Truth said:

This is the title of this thread, in case you haven't read it: The Media has a large part of the blame for the discord in our country today

Faux News is the king of media bias and lies, so yes, they are the primary instigator to blame for the discord in our country today. If you can't see that, I'd say that the 1%ers have done a good job at getting inside your head.

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With CNN Flap, the Media's Identity Crisis Continues
Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone

holbritter said:

I read an article that really hit on how many people seem to be feeling. The confusion and contradicting reports are leaving people (me and others I've personally spoke to) frustrated. KISS and the basics of Who, What, Where and When are effectively gone by the wayside.

It’s all a mess of unnamed sources making accusations and named sources denying them but offering no proof. The American people are left in a murky fog, forced to choose which unverified version of events they want to believe. The past months have brought a near-daily ritual of White House reporters’ offering revelations of egregious scandals, citing anonymous sources, often “current and former U.S. officials.”

When we see the phrase “former U.S. officials,” are those Obama-administration officials? Would these officials still be in a position to legally know what’s going on in sensitive White House conversations? Wouldn’t Obama-administration officials have a fairly glaring motivation to characterize the Trump White House in the worst possible light? If an unnamed source says something like, “Rex Tillerson is a bumbling buffoon who can’t hold a candle to the last secretary of state,” doesn’t it matter a great deal if the source is John Kerry?

Sure, it’s willful blindness to dismiss any story involving an unidentified source. But reporters are asking a lot from readers when they rely on unnamed sources day after day. And at least sometimes, those reports of shocking scandals don’t pan out. No, the Saudis didn’t contribute to “Ivanka’s Fund,” they contributed to a World Bank initiative, one that Ivanka Trump does not control or direct.

The story that the Trump administration turned down requests for additional resources for the investigation into Russia runs afoul of acting FBI director Andrew McCabe declaring under oath before Congress, “I know that we have resourced that investigation adequately.”

Trump wasn’t rudely ignoring other foreign leaders at the G7 summit; he had a small earpiece in his ear that wasn’t visible from a particular camera angle.

Those cases of beer on Capitol Hill weren’t for the GOP celebrating the passage of the American Health Care Act after all. Not every scandalous claim about Trump turns out to be a false alarm. But it happens often enough, and enough credulous media repeat and retweet those false claims, for Trump fans to develop an instinctive skepticism.

Yes, reporters trust their unnamed sources. But should readers?

James Comey's Testimony Will Provide Clear Answers in the Trump/Russia Investigation | National Review

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This is the problem with 24 hour cable news. We have stations like FOX News that are going to spin it to the right, and MSNBC that are going to spin it to the left. They do this by leaving out critical information. But I think the absolute worst are right wing talk show hosts. Whom regurgitate information and then spoon feed it back to their audiences in 3 or more daily hours of right wing hyperbole, stuffed full have half truths, and enough conspiracy theorires to fill the capital building from floor to ceiling.

So I will always watch main stream media and CNN that are required to retract a story if it's not true. Recently CNN had to fire 3 reporters for making a false claim, and FOX News was threatened with a law suit over the Seth Rich story---yet Sean Hannity is still there. The New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN money, Business Insider etc. that are also required to retract false or misleading information. I will not read off brand right or left wing news sites or use them a links for credibile information. They're either completely false, or grossly distorted news articles--written especially for their right or left wing audiences. It allows people to believe what they want to believe, and does not necessarily inform them of the truth.

holbritter said:

I read an article that really hit on how many people seem to be feeling. The confusion and contradicting reports are leaving people (me and others I've personally spoke to) frustrated. KISS and the basics of Who, What, Where and When are effectively gone by the wayside.

It’s all a mess of unnamed sources making accusations and named sources denying them but offering no proof. The American people are left in a murky fog, forced to choose which unverified version of events they want to believe. The past months have brought a near-daily ritual of White House reporters’ offering revelations of egregious scandals, citing anonymous sources, often “current and former U.S. officials.”

When we see the phrase “former U.S. officials,” are those Obama-administration officials? Would these officials still be in a position to legally know what’s going on in sensitive White House conversations? Wouldn’t Obama-administration officials have a fairly glaring motivation to characterize the Trump White House in the worst possible light? If an unnamed source says something like, “Rex Tillerson is a bumbling buffoon who can’t hold a candle to the last secretary of state,” doesn’t it matter a great deal if the source is John Kerry?

Sure, it’s willful blindness to dismiss any story involving an unidentified source. But reporters are asking a lot from readers when they rely on unnamed sources day after day. And at least sometimes, those reports of shocking scandals don’t pan out. No, the Saudis didn’t contribute to “Ivanka’s Fund,” they contributed to a World Bank initiative, one that Ivanka Trump does not control or direct.

The story that the Trump administration turned down requests for additional resources for the investigation into Russia runs afoul of acting FBI director Andrew McCabe declaring under oath before Congress, “I know that we have resourced that investigation adequately.”

Trump wasn’t rudely ignoring other foreign leaders at the G7 summit; he had a small earpiece in his ear that wasn’t visible from a particular camera angle.

Those cases of beer on Capitol Hill weren’t for the GOP celebrating the passage of the American Health Care Act after all. Not every scandalous claim about Trump turns out to be a false alarm. But it happens often enough, and enough credulous media repeat and retweet those false claims, for Trump fans to develop an instinctive skepticism.

Yes, reporters trust their unnamed sources. But should readers?

James Comey's Testimony Will Provide Clear Answers in the Trump/Russia Investigation | National Review

Click to expand...

When a journalist gets caught plagiarizing....they get usually get fired and ostracized by their peers. Since trust is invaluable to a journalists career...most try not to jeopardize it with fake stories and sources. So yeah, I would say readers can trust most unnamed sources IF there is other information about the source...such as "former WH official who wished to remain anonymous"...or "former State Department official". But if it just says an "anonymous source said".....then no, I wouldn't trust it because there isn't enough information about the source and it usually means the source is fake.

Most credible new organizations require an editor to verify a reporter or journalists sources whether they're anonymous or not. That means the journalist tells the editor who his source is for the story or quote....and then the editor contacts the source to verify the story and/or that he/she's the source. Once the source is verified then the editor approves the story for publication.