monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

a con artist might make a lot of money from these Trump-haters by making up a bunch of mean-spirited statements about Trump and then selling them in the form of a book while claiming that it is all true.

I understand that the book claims that Trump expressed total ignorance over who John Boehner was.

And in the period when he was supposed to have had no idea who he was, Trump was actually making tweets about John Boehner.

The author of the explosive new book about Donald Trump’s presidency acknowledged in an author’s note that he wasn’t certain all of its content was true.

Michael Wolff, the author of “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” included a note at the start that casts significant doubt on the reliability of the specifics contained in the rest of its pages.

Several of his sources, he says, were definitely lying to him, while some offered accounts that flatly contradicted those of others.

But some were nonetheless included in the vivid account of the West Wing’s workings, in a process Wolff describes as “allowing the reader to judge” whether the sources’ claims are true.

In other cases, the media columnist said, he did use his journalistic judgment and research to arrive at what he describes “a version of events I believe to be true.”

“The President absolutely believes in the First Amendment. But as we’ve said before, the President also believes in making sure that information is accurate before pushing it out as fact when it certainly and clearly is not,” [Sarah Huckabee] Sanders said when asked about the legal threats and whether Trump believes in the First Amendment.

The New York Times’ new publisher, A.G. Sulzberger, celebrated his first day on the job by vowing to hold the paper he inherited to “the highest standards of independence, rigor and fairness.” He also promised that the Times will resist “polarization and groupthink.”

Boy, does he have his work cut out for him.

. On January 2, when he took office and laid out his ambitions, the Times published an article that was actually positive about President Trump’s efforts to roll back regulations and lower business taxes – a first. The piece noted that “a wave of optimism has swept over America’s business leaders, and it is beginning to translate into the sort of investment in new plants, equipment and factory upgrades that bolsters economic growth, spurs job creation – and may finally raise wages significantly.”

The positive glow was begrudging, and tempered by numerous negative or doubtful comments, but it did not deny that the Trump agenda is boosting growth.

A.G.’s challenge is that he, like his colleagues, may not understand how deep into liberal intellectual channels the Times has sailed, how narrow its chosen route and how impossible it may be to now change course.

The Times is so cocooned in its leftish ecosphere it doesn’t even recognize its own bias. That revelation comes from Liz Spayd, a veteran journalist who was hired as Public Editor in 2016.

...As she pointed out, shutting out a very large swath of the country is unhealthy for business. Unhappily for Spayd, pursuing this theme also turned out to be unhealthy for her. She was fired a mere year into the job, after coming under heavy fire from those indignant that anyone should challenge the politics of the Grey Lady.

Margaret Sullivan, who was Spayd’s predecessor as Public Editor, wrote as she left office that she would not miss what she called the company’s “exceptionalism”, which she defined as “The idea that whatever The Times does is, by definition, the right thing.” She described the paper as “too often self-satisfied.”

Unlike many of her colleagues, Sullivan admitted the Times’ lack of neutrality; asked if the Times had a liberal bias by Joanne Lipman on CNN, Sullivan agreed that it did.

Someone burned down the house of one of Roy Moore's accusers today.

'Why don't these people come forward sooner?' is the continual question from the right-wing. Well...

Cycloptichorn

Somebody needs to tell the John Lee Hooker impersonator that so far no one has been arrested.

The First Amendment does NOT give the press a license to lie (or to recklessly disregard the truth). If you disregard the truth, then you're gunna have to prove that what you published is, IN FACT, true. It's not enough to say you believed or "thought" it was true.

Oh, you know something about the arson??? I didn't think so.

Trump might well have a good libel case, notwithstanding his status as Prez,

The First Amendment does NOT give the press a license to lie (or to recklessly disregard the truth).

It's not enough to say you believed or "thought" it was true.

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Trump might well have a good libel case, notwithstanding his status as Prez,

I haven't read even a condensed version of this "book", but I'm guessing (like the author did) that most of this muck-raking is about Donald's time before he held a position in public office?

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The First Amendment does NOT give the press a license to lie (or to recklessly disregard the truth).

When pushed on such an issue in court, Rupert Murdoch claimed to be dealing in infotainment, rather than news.

We need a big scrolling banner on some "news" sites, so even the slow and stupid realize that they are watching entertainment, rather than factual reporting.

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It's not enough to say you believed or "thought" it was true.

Actually, all they need to state is; "to the best of my recollection....." to get away with it.