So — in other words — they report, you decide.
The WSJ should be renamed Fox News-Paper?
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Especially since “questionable” is a term used when you don’t have actual proof on hand but are pretty sure you could find some if necessary. It either means the journal is too lazy or too inhibited to perform journalism. Either one means it’s useless as a source of news.
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It is correct to say that he’s not lying. Technically, he’s bullshitting1, but WSJ can’t use that term, either.
1Frankfurter, H. On Bullshit (I provide a convenient Amazon link, but the Wikipedia entry is all you really need to read).
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Bullshitting isn’t mutually exclusive with lying though. Trump clearly intermingles both in his speech.
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Nothing owned by Rupert Murdoch is deserving of the name --or description-- of news. They are editorialists, opinionists, essayists, and some mere talking heads, but never journalists, never reporters.
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seems like an uncomfortably tractionless surface leading to “we print what he tells us to,” you know?
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No, it’s both. First you have to assess the truth of someone’s statement (assuming that can be determined). If the person’s statement is demonstrable false, then you have to assess whether the person is lying or just ignorant.
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This may be logical, but it is nevertheless an extreme point of view…
If you cannot prove the statement false then Trump is exonerated.
If the statement is false, but you cannot prove Trump was misinformed then Trump is exonerated.
If Trump does not admit that he knew the fact was false at the time then Trump is exonerated.
Even if Trump boasts about lying after the event, you have two conflicting statements from the same person, so you still cannot be sure which one to believe. So you have to give him the benefit of the doubt, and Trump is exonerated.
At some point most people have to reach some sort of compromise if we are to know anything. We may be in a completely false universe, fed false facts by Decartes’ demon. Decartes’ best solution was that God would not allow this to happen, which is hardly a rigorous proof. So, at some point we have to say on anything whether we have faced all reasonable doubts. To quote the judge in Dorothy L Sayers’ ‘Strong Poison’…
"You may perhaps wish to hear from me exactly what is meant by those words ‘reasonable doubt.’ They mean, just so much doubt as you might have in every-day life about an ordinary matter of business. This is a case of murder, and it might be natural for you to think that, in such a case, the words mean more than this. But that is not so. They do not mean that you must cast about for fantastical solutions of what seems to you plain and simple. They do not mean those nightmare doubts which sometimes torment us at four o’clock in the morning when we have not slept very well. They only mean that the proof must be such as you would accept about a plain matter of buying and selling, or some such commonplace transaction. You must not strain your belief in favour of the prisoner any more, of course, than you must accept proof of her guilt without the most careful scrutiny.
Again, this is not rigorous description, but I hope it may serve here.
Would you (general you, not necessarily the original poster) apply the same level of proof of guilt to (say) the Clinton e-mail hooha? That case would never have come up, let alone be reviewed 24 times if so. But, no, bring it up a 25th time by all means. Just Trump cannot be said to have lied. Ever.
Yes. I completely agree. If you don’t want to say “lie” because you’re afraid that’s drawing an unfair conclusion that relies on knowing the speaker’s intent or state of mind, fine. But to call something “challengeable” when you know it is, in fact, false—that’s craven.
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When it comes to statements that are objectively false, the paper could identify them as such, while leaving it to the reader to decide whether Trump is lying, or ignorant of the truth, or just doesn’t give a sh*t what he says.
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Welp, and here we go.
The annoying Orange isn´t inagurated, yet the Gleichschaltung has allready begun.
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A man runs on being politically incorrect, yet the NYT is being politically correct.
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This is Trump, so you can skip step one.
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That fucker cannot die fast enough. Surely it can’t be long now?
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Logical is extreme? OK, I admit most people don’t adhere to logic, and that logic is iffy when applied to human behavior. It’s unfortunate, I think. However, a politician lying to the public is different that trying a person for a crime. In the latter there is the possibility of punishing an innocent man. In the former, the public itself may be harmed. Thus I submit that a higher threshold has to be met. We should expect more from our leaders.
This is why it irritated me so much when Clarence Thomas was given the benefit of the doubt when accused of some pretty awful behavior. He wasn’t on trial; he was being interviewed for a job. Seems to me if he were being interviewed for, say, a teacher’s position, things would have ended different: “I’m sorry Mr. Thomas, these accusations are pretty bad and we need to take them seriously for this kind of job.” I don’t know.
I only agree totally with the first proposition.
I only agree with the second and third propositions the first time he makes a statement that’s demonstrably false. If he’s called out, he or his staff have a responsibility to look into the facts, and not only get it right the second time, but acknowledge getting it wrong the first time, or stating that he didn’t know that it was wrong the first time.
If he gives two conflicting statements, then he’s lying one of the two times.
One more thing: a pattern of repeated, demonstrable lying should raise the threshold even further. From now on, he should be called out for lying every time he gets something wrong that’s demonstrably proven to be wrong. He’s probably got the best research staff in the world. He can check things out ahead of time.
And, yes, I demand the same level of proof in the Clinton email business. I also demand it of the people who brought up the same case over and over, or the Benghazi business, where she has been accused of murdering people, which is blatantly untrue. I demand it of our leaders. If they can’t be bothered to tell the truth, then they are shit leaders.
Edit: Typo
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Funny! But I would hope the fact checking will continue . . .
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For those who watched the program, the point was to show that when the media was reporting on falsehoods of both candidates, it would often state that Trump had lied, whereas that Clinton was just incorrect. The editor pointed out that this made the media appear biased, and their solution is to succinctly point out if the statement was untrue, without implying intent.
You don’t have to call it a “lie” but you should probably say “this claim is false”, otherwise you’re no better than the National Enquirer.
But hey, whatever sells papers, right?
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I guess fair point that a lie is knowing the truth and saying a falsehood. That can be hard to prove.
But stating something he said is “false” and “incorrect” is both accurate, and less double-speaky.
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…Aaand the normalization of this president begins in earnest…
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