[pg314]

On his efforts to undermine a free press, just a couple that come to mind:

  - he threatened legal action against the NYT [1]
  - he said he would 'open up those libel laws' [2]
  - he lies about falling subscription numbers at the 'failing NYT' [3]
  - in his first press conference in the White House he attacked a reporter as 'fake news', and refused to answer questions by CNN [4]
  - he tweets [5] incorrect ratings numbers about Fox vs CNN, calling CNN 'fake news'.
  - he's been singling out and attacking/mocking individual reporters [6], [7]

All these actions are efforts to undermine and discredit the free press. They should be alarming to anybody who cares about the US democracy.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/14/us/politics/donald-trump-...

[2] http://www.politico.com/blogs/on-media/2016/02/donald-trump-...

[3] http://fortune.com/2016/11/17/trump-new-york-times-subscript...

[4] http://uk.businessinsider.com/president-elect-donald-trump-c...

[5] https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/82407841721374720...

[6] http://fortune.com/2016/11/03/donald-trump-katy-tur/

[7] http://www.cnn.com/videos/tv/2015/11/26/donald-trump-mocks-r...

[masondixon]

[2] Talk is cheap. Honestly, what do you think is going to happen? And in 4 years when we look back, if it doesn't happen - what will you think?

[3] How is it a lie?

> is losing thousands of subscribers

You interpret this as net subscriber count to suit your narrative.

Now if the NYT lost subscribers during the election which they almost certainly did then the first part of the statement is literally correct.

Now the "because" phrase implies causation of "poor coverage". This would be difficult to work out unless the NYT had an exit survey and that data was public.

Without information, Trump is inferring that this is a reason. So if 1000 people left because of poor coverage, his statement is still literally correct.

So I do not understand how you can say it is a "lie" when the statement is "literally" correct.

If you wanted to say that it is "incorrect" then you must argue for your interpretation based on relevance.

If you wanted to say "vague" then you can also say that.

It seems very common place to call everything a "lie" these days, when there is never enough information to evaluate the factuality of it.

Modern "fact-checking" is a scary thing because depending on how you want to define things, you can "prove" any statement true or false how you like. This is a very scary thing.

[5] FOX 8.7M vs CNN 2.6M

[7] didn't happen. That is fake news.

[pg314]

> [2] Talk is cheap. Honestly, what do you think is going to happen? And in 4 years when we look back, if it doesn't happen - what will you think?

You think it is ok for a presidential candidate to make those statements? Do you know of any other democratically elected leaders making those statements? You do not think this could have a chilling effect on the free press?

> So if 1000 people left because of poor coverage, his statement is still literally correct. > So I do not understand how you can say it is a "lie" when the statement is "literally" correct.

You assume it is literally correct, after admitting that there is no evidence for it.

A literally correct statement can still be a lie. From Merriam-Webster:

  Definition of lie
  1  to make an untrue statement with intent to deceive <She was lying when she said she didn't break the vase.> <He lied about his past experience.>
  2  to create a false or misleading impression <Statistics sometimes lie.> <The mirror never lies.>

Can you agree that saying the NYT is losing thousands of subscribers without saying they are at the same time gaining 41,000 net new subscribers is misleading?

In some of the other tweets in that article he is claiming readership is way down, and they are failing. I can not find any evidence for that, quite the contrary: their digital subscribers are way up and even though profits are down, they still aren't losing money.

[masondixon]

> You do not think this could have a chilling effect on the free press?

I personally do not think it will. And I don't think anyone can make that argument that is has as of yet.

But if it does, what objective measures can we point to, to say that it has?

> You assume it is literally correct, after admitting that there is no evidence for it.

No hard evidence. But are you going to make the argument that 1000 ppl did not leave NYT over the course of the campaign. No, its a pretty reasonable churn rate for a newspaper.

Did they leave because of poor coverage? I personally noticed the coverage deteriorate, and tracking the sentiment against the NYT from Twitter, Reddit, etc. I believe this statement to be true. Am I certain of it. No. But do we need hard evidence of everything we say? No. Only if it matters. And this, simply does not matter. The question is would you hold a similar statement by Hillary or Obama with to the same standard. Depends what side of politics you are on.

> A literally correct statement can still be a lie.

If you had 100% proof (voice recording) that someone knew something, and then they stated publicly that they didn't, what do you call this? I would call it a lie.

Calling everything else a lie that cannot be proved is like the boy crying wolf. The word loses its meaning and is less effective at pointing out proven lies which both sides of politics could agree on. The left likes to cry wolf a lot over sexism, racism, etc. These words are almost meaningless now - whilst there are still proper racists in the world.

> Can you agree that saying the NYT is losing thousands of subscribers without saying they are at the same time gaining 41,000 net new subscribers is misleading?

They could be gaining 41K left wing supporters while losing moderates. Personally, I feel that they are losing a lot of moderates and republicans, and accruing a new base of progressive leftists because the paper has headlines that they agree with and don't want to question. So I don't think its misleading. It can be read as saying that the Times reader base is shifting, and the people who are reading it now are just looking for something to confirm their narrative. So in this scenario, net numbers don't matter so much. You can agree or disagree with that, but all I am arguing is that using lie is too strong and if you call everything a lie it has no meaning anymore.

[mason240]

Thanks for posting the links so that everyone can see the ridiculous hyperbole that your arguments are based on.