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Beware of Breitbart lies

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It seems no one can prove anything in it. It's been floating around for months, apparently information from a 'retired British spy' paid for by the Republicans which has subsequently been offered and rejected by every news outlet in the US. Even now the papers won't print it for fear of being sued.

 

Michael Cohen, Trump's lawyer, has already denied he has been to Prague as alleged in the documentation.

 

It's okay though, it's about Trump so it's fine. Apparently. I don't care about Trump one jot but it's plainly a fallacy to assume that fake news only exists from pro-right sources.

 

There is actually a difference between publishing a document containing unsubstantiated allegations and fake news, providing the publisher makes clear the unsubstantiated nature of the allegations. I still think it's very dubious but it's not fake news in the way that the Breitbart story I linked to is. If buzzfeed had written about a dossier that doesn't exist or lied about the content of the dossier that would be fake news.

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Guido and Zero hedge have some good links regarding this story .

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'There is literally no evidence on offer in these memos or from BuzzFeed that any single sentence in these documents is factual or true. What’s more, we know most major news organizations in America had seen them and despite their well-known institutional antipathy toward Trump, had chosen not to publish them or even make reference to them after efforts to substantiate their charges had failed.'

 

What sort of evidence do you want?

 

A lack of evidence that they're true does not mean they've been disproved. Some of the news organisations that didn't publish them months ago chose not to do so because they were pro-Trump. At the moment the allegations are there to be proven or disproved but they have not been shot down in flames as you have claimed.

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I saw a quote from the daily telegraph on the bbc website confirming theyd seen the dosier but couldnt prove or disprove its contents. Its all from "unamed intelligence sources".

 

I was going to say it's not from Buzzfeed for heavens sake! They just ran the story. The info has come from a British Intelligence agent on many articles I've seen, who has 'given reliable information before many times so is considered a reliable source'.

 

However, it's also been said there are things in the report that the public has seen that are glaringly incorrect such as people not going to places reported, however, this is the reports of the data and NOT the actual data itself if that makes sense. Perfectly likely and possible that Buzzfeed and others have tried to make it look more juicy than it really is simply to generate 'buzz', hence the name.

 

And no, of course all fake news that pretends to be real isn't ok, but you do have to admire the utter hypocrisy of Trump who has lived off faked news for his entire campaign and now suddenly thinks it's the worst thing on earth. All his opponents have to do is just shut up and let him talk himself into his own grave of hilarity and irony.

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There is actually a difference between publishing a document containing unsubstantiated allegations and fake news, providing the publisher makes clear the unsubstantiated nature of the allegations. I still think it's very dubious but it's not fake news in the way that the Breitbart story I linked to is. If buzzfeed had written about a dossier that doesn't exist or lied about the content of the dossier that would be fake news.
How about in today's Mirror?

 

It's well-known and fully documented

that the US bought SU-27s from Ukraine in 2009, for its decades-old and 'Top Gun'-famous Aggressors squadron (which has long used Russian camo schemes exactly per the DM story, and is based a minutes-flight away from A51). All of that a mere Google click away.

 

I'd laugh, if the story wasn't so despairingly frenzy-whipping, and not just another one amongst a mind-numbingly large number of other, similarly reality-distorting 'news'.

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