[Fellshard]

And yet have been caught publishing some of the most overt lies of the last couple years, while buckling down on it. I keep seeing people try to defend them here, but they have already ruined any credibility they have both by their association and their behavior. It's not worth it; find a better institution to defend.

[smt88]

Genuinely curious what exactly you're referring to? I remember them publishing the Steele dossier, which had both truth and lies in it, but they added a strong caveat that they weren't able to verify the contents.

How is that different from what WikiLeaks did (with regards to NSA spying and the Manning leaks) that HN praises them for?

[Fellshard]

Mostly recalling some of the claims and allegations they pushed during the Kavanaugh debacle, which were very quickly destroyed even by other publications carrying more serious allegations.

[jessant]

They published a report that alleged Trump directed Michael Cohen to lie to congress. Mueller had to break silence to issue a denial about this.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/19/business/media/buzzfeed-n...

[jacobolus]

The Mueller team (under inappropriate explicit pressure from the White House / DOJ) made a denial presumably because they wanted to be as careful as possible to preserve Michael Cohen’s and their own credibility for possible trial/etc., to avoid any impression they hadn’t dotted every i, and perhaps in part to appease the White House.

Any “inaccuracy” in Buzzfeed’s reporting was more or less based on a semantic dispute. Under a narrow definition, Trump didn’t “direct” Cohen to lie to Congress, he just suggested it using mob-boss-type language and coordinated the lying testimony through his other lawyers, and his longtime fixer Cohen knew how to read between the lines.

Immediately after Cohen’s lying testimony, one of Trump’s lawyers then called Cohen to congratulate him and tell him Trump was happy with his performance.

Buzzfeed stood (and still stands) behind their story, and the Mueller report and Cohen trial materials largely corroborate their reporting.

However, the Mueller team concluded that there is not enough direct evidence to e.g. indict Trump for suborning perjury in this case.

* * *

The people still selling the story that Buzzfeed completely screwed up and had their facts wrong are (hopefully unwittingly) peddling the same kind of disinformation that the article currently under discussion is talking about. There are some wealthy and powerful people trying to push this message down to further their own antisocial agendas for personal benefit.

[jariel]

"made a denial presumably because they wanted to be as careful as possible to preserve Michael Cohen’s and their own credibility"

I'm exceedingly doubtful that Mueller et. al. would make statements that were misrepresentative or lacking in credibility.

[jacobolus]

Huh? I said their goal was to maintain their own credibility: they didn’t want the general public to misconstrue the Buzzfeed News article’s use of the word “direct” to indicate that the president explicitly said words like “Mr. Cohen please go lie to Congress” or some similar completely clear statement suborning perjury, which they didn’t find evidence of. The President’s desire was conveyed via implication rather than as a direct order, and coordination about the finer details was done through his other lawyers rather than personally communicated.

But when Buzzfeed asked several outside legal experts (not Mueller’s team), they supported the article’s use of the word “direct” to describe the President’s communications with Cohen. The way Buzzfeed’s critics have attacked them for this story is largely disingenuous, especially after the first few months, when additional evidence came to light largely corroborating Buzzfeed’s reporting.

As I said, this is a semantic dispute about the meaning of the word “direct”. There is plenty of available evidence that the President wanted Cohen to go make lying statements to Congress, and successfully (using his typical mob-boss-style language) communicated that desire to Cohen, and then followed up with congratulations about a job well done afterward.

But the Special Counsel’s office presumably wanted to avoid any possible confusion about the precise nature of available evidence that might undermine their credibility if taken up by e.g. right-wing media pundits.

[jariel]

You misread what I wrote.

I didn't say they were protecting their credibility or not.

I said they wouldn't say anything that lacked credibility.

I'm saying the Mueller team is not going to lie, whatever they are saying. They are careful and deliberate.

[creaghpatr]

Uh hello? https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/18/politics/mueller-statement-bu...

This is a titanic error, any new scoop from them must be verified from other sources now for them to be taken seriously.

[smt88]

The original BuzzFeed News article[1] says that Cohen was telling their reporters what he told prosecutors. They did not report it as undisputed fact.

Is it not newsworthy if a major witness is repeating his testimony to a reporter? How would you prefer they reported it? If news orgs never published the comments of known liars, we'd have very little political news.

BuzzFeed News also backs up Cohen's claims with the transcript of his House testimony[2].

Mueller's office (per your link) was pretty unspecific about what part of Cohen's statements they thought were misleading.

1. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/anthonycormier/cohen-tr...

2. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6021026-Michael-Cohe...

[creaghpatr]

That's false. Cohen was not the source of the fraudulent claims, rather he was the subject:

"President Donald Trump directed his longtime attorney Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about negotiations to build a Trump Tower in Moscow, according to two federal law enforcement officials involved in an investigation of the matter."

[nl]

I think the comment you are replying to is awkwardly worded, or misunderstanding the sequence of events or something.

Nevertheless, the article they linked to adds weight to the idea that the Buzzfeed reporting was definitely not "fraudulent" (as you characterised it).

Notably this exchange:

“So we’ve identified two crimes that you say you believe Donald Trump in some way directed you to take the actions for which you have pled guilty?” asked Rep. John Ratcliffe, a Republican from Texas.

“No sir,” Cohen said. “Three.”

“Ok. What is the third?”

“The third one is the misstatement to Congress. Two for campaign finance violations and one for misrepresentation — well, for lying to Congress.”

Now it's true that Muller didn't find enough evidence to support that. But nevertheless, Cohen certainly believed it, and claimed it to congress, and what he claims mirrors what Buzzfeed reported.

If we are discussing the reliability of Buzzfeed - well they reported something that ended up being confirmed by the person they were reporting about. I think that makes them at least somewhat credible.

[dd36]

How is that bad? Cohen claimed and still claims that. He even did so under oath. Something to the effect of, “he says it without saying it but I knew what he meant.” Not really any other reason for Cohen to lie to Congress than to help Trump.

[creaghpatr]

This was the highest-profile fuck up by a news organization in 2019. They didn't merely publish propaganda or disinformation: they published fraudulent news of the highest consequence, so bad that the Special Counsel had to issue an emergency statement to prevent all hell from breaking loose.

[nl]

Buzzfeed later wrote an explanation of their reporting[1].

It's interesting - Buzzfeed's claim is:

The facts of Cohen’s lies and his interactions with Trump are, largely, now settled. Our sources — federal law enforcement officials — interpreted the evidence Cohen presented as meaning that the president “directed” Cohen to lie. We now know that Mueller did not.

The Mueller denial of the Buzzfeed reporting is very limited:

"BuzzFeed's description of specific statements to the Special Counsel's Office, and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Michael Cohen's Congressional testimony are not accurate,” Robert Mueller’s spokesman, Peter Carr, said.

This was prior the Mueller report being released.

We now know Mueller report says: "While working on the congressional statement, Cohen had extensive discussions with the President's personal counsel, who, according to Cohen, said that Cohen should not contradict the President" and "Cohen also discussed pardons with the President?s personal counsel and believed that if he stayed on message, he would get a pardon or the President would do "something else" to make the investigation end.[2]

The dispute seems mostly around the term "directed", and if it was directly by Trump or by his legal team. Both Mueller and Buzzfeed's sources agree that Trump and his legal team knew in advance that Cohen's congressional testimony contained lies.

The Buzzfeed reporting was based on an official's notes that said “he was asked to lie by DJT/DJT Jr., lawyers.”

Politfact agrees it is open to interpretation.[3]

In any case, it seems calling it "fraudulent" is going too far. It seems like there is broad agreement that Trump didn't use the words "Please lie", but he did imply that is what he wanted and that Cohen would be rewarded if he did, and Trump's legal team approved the statements that they knew included lies.

I'm going to do a HN taboo here and talk about voting. I realise this is an emotive subject and people have their predefined views. I'd ask people not to just vote on if they like Buzzfeed or not, and if they support Trump or not and instead consider if any of the things here have information they didn't know before. I believe that the answer to misinformation is information and I've tried to gather as much relevant information as possible here, and present both sides in as clear way as possible.

[1] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/bensmith/how-we-charact...

[2] Muller Report, part 3, page 134 https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5955118-The-Mueller-... (Note that because of the weird pagination in this document you need to go to page 346 of this link to read part 3 page 134)

[3] https://www.politifact.com/punditfact/article/2019/feb/28/di...

[neuronic]

What organization is really even credible anymore? In Germany, I liked to read the SPIEGEL magazine (not Spiegel Online, that's half a step before boulevard) until the Claas Relotius case happened [1]. They tried to save face and apologized etc. etc. but who says that just fixes it?

The Internet that has developed since the first ad-monetization almost demands, and at least incentivizes, shady behavior if you want to economically survive as an information processor - news outlet or others.

Many of us on HN would gladly buy premium for something they enjoy but I fear the vast majority of people wants everything for "free".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claas_Relotius#Fabrication_of_...

[davidw]

> What organization is really even credible anymore

Most of the major newspapers in the US are fairly credible, despite having issues like 'both-sidesism' and not doing well with asymmetry.

'Credible' doesn't mean "no mistakes". It means they own them and apologize for them. The Economist is still occasionally apologizing for buying into the WMD narrative during the run up to the war in Iraq.

The danger in "no one is credible" is that it elevates flat out propagandists to the same level as institutions that mostly get things right.

It's sort of like science as a process: what we think we know now may need correcting in the future, but real scientists have a process that allows for (sometimes difficult) course correction.

[jariel]

Almost all American outlets are biased.

There are many with 'high integrity' (i.e. fact check, in depth, write well) but there's so much editorialisation, that they are biased.

You almost have to read the news off the wire, or watch local news to get straight news. Almost everything on CNN, Fox, NYT, WSJ etc. is editorialised in some way, even the non-opinion pieces.

Edit: to anyone that doubts this, consider spending a month reading outlets that you might suspect 'have a bias' (i.e. 'the evil other side'). It becomes very clear, very quickly. Some of the most prominent forms of editorialising, even in the more straight news items comes from what they decide is newsworthy, how the headlines are worded, the facts they decided to leave in vs. what they leave out. The kinds of guests, the form of questions. The main evening broadcast news in the US is decent, but almost everything on cable or in print has bias, even when it's 'high quality'. I should add that this is not an American phenom, there are hardly any large 'straight news' agencies in the world; maybe the BBC.

It's also helpful to read/watch the news from a different country, where you don't have a 'stake in the game' so to speak, and it becomes evident. If you use Google Translate on Die Welt, Der Spiegel, and Die Zeit - you can see how the same news is reported differently.

[inapis]

I don’t believe BBC is any better than NYT, WSJ or WaPo. I have seen BBC’s coverage of India at times can be highly slanted and headlines editorialised to the extent, even when the facts are correct, that you walk away with a different impression than what actually happened on the ground. If they can be slanted about one topic, it would be irrational to assume that they won’t be slanted about something else. Just that you’ll never be able to figure out if they were in fact biased or not because of the gell-mann amnesia effect.

[jariel]

The BBC is definitely better than WSJ, WaPo or NYT for straight news.

First - they are substantially bigger and have much wider operations than any of them - by far. They have global correspondents etc. - a much bigger news room.

Second - they are neutral. NYT, WSJ and WaPo are not. Their editors would admit that, clearly. NYT is a left wing American commentary. WSJ is an economically liberal entity. The BBC actually has oversight and scrutiny because it's a public institution.

It's easy to demonstrate: take any contentious news item of the day, and then see the coverage by those outlets. WSJ won't even cover social issues. BBC generally runs straight news, the NYT will have a lot of editorial coverage op-end on it.

As for 'India' - your confusing short (or wrong) coverage with bias.

I'm from Canada - and I see this all the time: US outlets constantly misrepresent Canadian political issues. This is not because they're bad, it's that different nations are hugely different contexts - it's often very difficult to communicate something nuance without spending an hour going over the issues. And sometimes they just get it wrong. Indian political affairs are complicated - it's hard to narrow anything down to a few sound bites without getting some things wrong. I'll also bet $100 that none of the WSJ, Wapo or WSJ even touched on whatever Indian subject the BBC was covering, their readers don't care, and they don't have the budget or correspondents. I should have pointed out obviously the BBC has a national bias - most outlets do.

[whatshisface]

If only American newspapers could get over their bothsideism, then they could report exclusively on the One True Side. Although that might be dangerous since journalists aren't experts in everything and so aren't qualified to choose sides (even if one side seems stupid to experts.)

[davidw]

There are plenty of examples where there is absolutely a side that is correct and one that is not.

Do you think the earth is flat or that people who say so should be given equal time?

There are plenty of other instances where one side is demonstrably correct.

[larnmar]

As always, thinking about flat Earthism is a terrible exercise for your brain. The fact that a few people exist who are utterly and obviously wrong about something, and that you’re not among them, should not encourage you to think that you’re probably right about any other issue.

I like Scott Alexander’s essay on this subject, The Cowpox of Doubt: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/15/the-cowpox-of-doubt/

Basically, I think an irrational tendency towards “both sides have a point” is a lot better than an irrational tendency towards “my side is right”, and that humans tend to err in the latter way about ten thousand times more often than they err in the former.

[whatshisface]

>There are plenty of other instances where one side is demonstrably correct.

To who, an expert or a journalist? Flat Earthers can beat many people in arguments about the earth being flat, because general science knowledge is not very widespread. I could find plenty of journalists that don't know about, for example, the shadow length thing. The idea that newspapers should only quote truth-speakers does not address the reality of the limited knowledge of the journalists themselves. For them, flat earth theory is a choice between either ignoring everything but the mainstream consensus, or sometimes reporting on fringe groups. Clearly the second option is the right policy, especially because reporting on someone's claims does not imply that the newspaper thinks they are true. It may not be a fact that the earth is flat, but it is a fact that flat-earthers think the earth is flat. It may even be newsworthy.

[davidw]

Good journalists are bright enough to get enough information from enough people, assimilate it, and write it in a clear way for the rest of us.

They might do a 'human interest' story on crackpots like flat earthers, but good ones wouldn't "both sides" that issue, just as they shouldn't with other issues where there is strong scientific consensus, or verifiable facts demonstrating the veracity of one side's claims, and none on the other.

This isn't a new problem, and good journalists are capable of handling it.

Will they get it right 100% of the time? No. But the important thing is that there's a process and they're trying, and they'll admit it if they get it wrong. People get fired for getting things egregiously wrong.

None of that is true for propaganda outlets.

[Fellshard]

Agreed. Plus, print is also harder to quietly modify; silent post-hoc 'corrections' to online articles that wildly change the article's conclusions are the norm, with no rigorous path to present those changes to those who consumed the article previously.

A dedicated print subscription forces the printer to weigh the consequences of correcting an error more heavily, and a regular reader of a subscribed publication can be presented with corrected errors on the front page of each day's edition.

(Not that any of this would happen in print, either; and not that this is impossible with internet media; but rather that the natural consequences of the print medium pushes heavily towards a different set of behaviours. I doubt anyone would subscribe to an RSS feed of errors.)

[gumby]

I think der Spiegel is still pretty reasonable, and die Zeit remains a weekly go-to for me.

What shocks and saddens me is the complete decay of the French language news, quite sad for such an intensely literate culture.

[Fellshard]

Always amusing to see the vote suddenly plummet in a vary narrow window of time. Don't let anyone tell you HN doesn't have Reddit-style vote brigading. People get angry when you touch their institutions.

[mAEStro-paNDa]

Buzzfeed has never really enjoyed a reputation of being a trusted news source[1], so this notion that anyone countering your outright dismissal of the publication is defending it is just silly. It's also just disproportionate considering outlets which are more widely trusted are given the benefit of the doubt despite egregious errors or lies. (such as NYTimes)

[1] - https://www.journalism.org/2014/10/21/appendix-c-trust-and-d...