[jlawson]

Dismiss PV's analysis if you want. I do the same to some sources.

But it's nonsense to discard a primary source, like that video, because it went through a particular person's hands.

If hypothetically, ThinkProgress (who I do not trust) gets a hidden camera video of Trump talking about his dream of mass-expelling nonwhites from America, I wouldn't just pretend it didn't exist because ThinkProgress is the one who took it. Primary sources are primary sources.

[afthonos]

I do not have the technical know-how to evaluate their claim that the video is unedited, nor have they earned the right to my time to validate it if I did. If the video is egregious enough, people with less mistrust than me will do the legwork, validate it, and will push it up the trust chain until I get it from a source I trust, which will say “this was originally leaked to PV, but we have done extensive checking and believe it is genuine.”

At which point, well, I still won’t be able to comment on it, but at least I’ll stop saying “dismiss this source out of hand.” :-)

(EDIT: small tweaks to spelling and phrasing.)

[jlawson]

>If the video is egregious enough, people with less mistrust than me will do the legwork, validate it, and will push it up the trust chain until I get it from a source I trust

The issue is that this can't happen because the sources you trust have decided that achieving their political goals (currently - getting rid of Trump) are more important than telling the truth. That's what this entire expose is about, in fact.

Obviously the sources you trust will not pass along information indicating that they are themselves untrustworthy.

When you offload your mental faculties to others, you become their pawn.

People have a duty to at least try to use their brain as an independent judging citizen. Help me, I can't stop these megacorps on my own...