this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2024
388 points (97.3% liked)

politics

19097 readers
3285 users here now

Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!

Rules:

  1. Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.

Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.

Example:

  1. Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
  2. Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
  3. No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
  4. Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
  5. No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.

That's all the rules!

Civic Links

Register To Vote

Citizenship Resource Center

Congressional Awards Program

Federal Government Agencies

Library of Congress Legislative Resources

The White House

U.S. House of Representatives

U.S. Senate

Partnered Communities:

News

World News

Business News

Political Discussion

Ask Politics

Military News

Global Politics

Moderate Politics

Progressive Politics

UK Politics

Canadian Politics

Australian Politics

New Zealand Politics

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

How often are facts truly verifiable though in practice, especially for a reporter, rather than just deciding that a certain set of people are honest and know what they are doing and asking them for their thoughts and evidence, which is really just taking the side of those people? Like, consider science reporting (because its probably a best case scenario, where claims made are supposed to be statements of objective truth about what was observed that can be physically verified, as opposed to being full of emotions and values). If youre a reporter reporting on something some scientists at CERN or whatever are telling you they've found, its not like you as a reporter have access to the equipment they use, or the know how to use it or understand what the data it generates implies. You pretty much just have to take their word for it. You could choose to go ask some scientists in the same field at a different lab who have been replicating the experiments about it, but then youre still just trusting those scientists too, rather than truly "verifying" the original scientists claims in a way that doesnt require taking somebody's side on the issue by trusting their word or the authenticity of the evidence that they present. Now, with the scientists this is usually good enough, they dont usually have a ton of incentive to lie, and when they do, their colleagues dont have a ton of incentive to help them with it, but with politics, theres a lot of incentive to lie, a lot of incentive to support people on the same side as you, and a lot of incentive to try to undermine those on the opposite side even when the first side wasnt lying, so that trust is a bit more tenuous.

This isnt to say that I think we should take Trump's blatant lying about the election seriously or anything, but its not like reporters reporting on it can prove for sure that there cant have been some kind of vast all encompassing conspiracy against him, including the legal system and therefore any evidence brought up in the various court cases on the matter, they can just point to those myriad of court cases and conclude that the odds that it was all some kind of conspiracy must be so low that the idea is laughable and not worth considering. Which isnt technically actually verifying that it is false, so much as pointing out that it makes far less sense to take Trump's side on that than the side claiming he's a liar such as to be safe in taking the side of the latter.