Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by malvosenior 2365 days ago
> People sided with him because they believed he was impartial, and turned away from him when it was clear he wasn't.

He literally provided evidence of mainstream media being highly impartial in favor of Clinton (against Sanders and Trump). If people cared about impartiality, they’d be on Wikileaks side here.

1 comments

>He literally provided evidence of mainstream media being highly impartial in favor of Clinton (against Sanders and Trump). If people cared about impartiality, they’d be on Wikileaks side here.

Good quality newspapers tend to separate reporting and editorials/opinion fairly clearly, but have always contained both. It is also wholly common for newspapers to endorse candidates for high political office within the editorial context.

It is a matter of record that newspapers and magazines endorsed Clinton over other candidates by a massive margin in the 2016 elections:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspaper_endorsements_in_the_...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspaper_endorsements_in_the_...

I don't know where the idea that the news media is supposed to be a purely-objective fact source comes from, to be honest. This seems to be some kind of straw man.

The charge against Wikileaks, such as it is, is that while the material disclosed might be verbatim, it is obviously still subject to the editorial decisions of its leadership about which material to seek out and to disclose.

What Wikileaks revealed went far beyond endorsing a candidate. For example:

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wikileaks-dnc-and-cnn-col...

Most of the "news" reported by mainstream newspapers and news stations is almost across the board anti-Trump and anti-conservative. It is extremely biased, but tries to keep up the appearance of being unbiased, which is part of why the unaware masses consider them mainstream and standard bearers of truth.

What WikiLeaks revealed was the extent of this bias. If what the mainstream news networks and their executives are doing is acceptable, then what's the problem with WikiLeaks revealing it? The problem is that opponents of the Right understand how damaging it is to the image of the mainstream news networks - which shape the opinion of tens of millions in America and across the world - for the people to understand just how biased they really are.