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Consuming Journalism 101

I used to be a newspaper editor, a cog in the wheel of the dreaded “mainstream media.” I’ve written for the New York and Washington newspapers, and even — angels and ministers of grace defend us! — Politico. And the checks go both ways: I am a paid-up subscriber to the New York Times. Call me an enemy of the people. Here’s a little secret for you: The news ain’t fake. (Mostly.) For conservatives, hating the media is a reflex, and sometimes a funny one: Speaking on his “Morning Minute,” Sean Hannity once read breathlessly from an Associated Press report on a federal surveillance program, ending with the instinctual harrumph: “The mainstream media won’t tell you about that!” There is no media more mainstream than the Associated Press, which is a nonprofit cooperative owned by its member newspapers, television networks, and radio stations. Its reports appear in practically every daily newspaper in the United States, and big scoops like the one that caught Hannity’s eye routinely lead front pages from sea to shining sea. The Associated Press has bias problems and some notable competency problems, and, like any organization that does any substantive reporting, it makes errors. But it does not, for the most part, traffic in fiction. Neither does the New York Times. Neither does the Washington Post. Neither does the Wall Street Journal...

...We owe it to ourselves to take account of reality. And we owe it to the country, too. It is cheap, it is cowardly, and it is bad citizenship to simply shriek “fake news!” every time reality forces a hard choice upon us. Living in a free, self-governing society means making a great many hard choices, and there is no one to make them but us.

If you don't believe it, I'm not going to convince you and I'm not trying to.

....that the various investigations could end up legally undoing an illegal election?

They needed to have educational systems that told the story exclusively from their side. Even the natural world is sectarian.

Multi-billion dollar deals between the US and Saudi Arabia will be signed on Saturday as US President Donald Trump's first foreign trip begins in Riyadh.

Mr Trump and his wife Melania were greeted in the Saudi capital by King Salman on Saturday morning local time.

The eight-day trip will also take in Israel, the Palestinian territories, Brussels, the Vatican, and Sicily.

The visit comes as Mr Trump faces uproar at home following his sacking of FBI director James Comey.

He has strongly criticised the decision to appoint a special counsel to oversee an inquiry into alleged Russian influence on the US election.

Mr Trump is accompanied on his visit by his daughter Ivanka, an unpaid White House adviser, and her husband Jared Kushner, a key member of the Trump cabinet.

Like British Prime Minister Theresa May and German Chancellor Angela Merkel on their recent visits to Saudi Arabia, Mrs Trump and Ivanka Trump did not wear headscarves.

In January 2015, Mr Trump criticised then-First Lady Michelle Obama for doing the same. In a tweet, Mr Trump said she had "insulted" her hosts.

How is the "natural world" sectarian, hightor?

And can you see a time when politics is not about fanfare, soundbytes, and playing to the lowest common denominator?

Fake news. *yawn*

The Conservative Force Behind Speeches Roiling College Campuses
...The group, the Young America’s Foundation, had paid Mr. Spencer’s $2,000 fee, trained the student leader who organized the event and provided literature for distribution. Other than the possibility of outside interference, little had been left to chance.

The speeches are a part of the group’s mission of grooming future conservative leaders — Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Stephen Miller, a White House adviser, are among its alumni — and its long list of donors has included the television game show host Pat Sajak, the novelist Tom Clancy, the billionaire brothers David H. and Charles G. Koch, and the Amway billionaires Richard and Helen Devos, who gave $10 million to endow the Reagan Ranch near Santa Barbara, Calif., which the foundation runs as a preserve. (Their daughter-in-law, Betsy DeVos, the secretary of education, is not a donor, the group says.)

Over the past two years, armed with a $16 million infusion from the estate of an orthodontist in California, Robert Ruhe, the organization has doubled its programming, including campus speeches. In 2016 that meant 111 speakers on 77 campuses. On the group’s website, it boasted of “dispatching” 31 speakers to colleges last month alone...

The Post has said that it was profitable last year — and not through cost-cutting. On the contrary, under the newsroom leadership of Martin Baron, the former editor of The Boston Globe memorably portrayed in the film “Spotlight,” The Post has gone on a hiring spree. It has hired hundreds of reporters and editors and has more than tripled its technology staff.

Last month, according to figures from comScore, The Post had 78.7 million unique users and 811 million digital page views, trailing only CNN and The New York Times among news organizations.

“No other journalist in the world has asked these questions”

In an extraordinary interview with German newspaper Zeit, Nigel Farage called the reporter a “nutcase”, told him he should be on a “comedy show”, and was “away with the fairies”, and terminated the interview after the fourth intervention from his press officer.

Such a reaction came after repeated questioning about the former Ukip leader’s links with Russia. He refused to say why he visited Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy in March (apparently it was for “journalistic reasons” and was somehow also “private”), and initially denied meeting the Russian deputy foreign minister Alexander Yakovenko in May 2013, before admitting it when pressed, asking, “so what?”

ZEIT ONLINE: You once said you admire Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Farage: In 2013, as a political operator, he was the best in the world. Yes, this is what I said. But I wouldn’t like to live in his country. I didn’t like a lot of things he did. But as a political operator, he is to be admired.

ZEIT ONLINE: One of Russia's foreign policy goals is dividing and weakening the EU. Could it be that in the case of Brexit, you were directly or indirectly used for this Russian goal?

Farage: It is obvious that the EU wants to expand to the east and threatens Russia. That’s completely mad.

ZEIT ONLINE: What you say isn't true. It wasn't the EU that triggered the revolution in Ukraine, but the Ukrainians who wanted better relations with the EU.

Farage: I want the EU to be destroyed and it doesn’t matter if God or the Dalai Lama wants it was well. The EU is an anti-democratic, failing structure. You know, you are the first person who has asked me if Russia supported me. Maybe you have a special German mindset. No other journalist in the world has asked these questions.

ZEIT ONLINE: I just want to understand your role.

Farage: We have no links to Russia.

ZEIT ONLINE: You didn't meet with the Russian Embassy's deputy chief-of-mission in London?

Farage: Nope.

ZEIT ONLINE: Not in 2013, before the Brexit campaign was conceived?

Farage: Ah, hang on. He came to the EP office. Or I met with him in London. So what?

ZEIT ONLINE: Why did you meet with him?

Farage: I think you are a nutcase! You are really a nutcase! Brexit is the best thing to happen: for Russia, for America, for Germany and for democracy. And that's the key point.

Farage's press spokesman again interrupts the interview. He says that the interview should focus more on trade relations between Germany and the UK. Farage nods.

Trump-Russia probe now includes possible cover-up, Congress is told

WASHINGTON - Investigators into Russian meddling in the U.S. presidential elections are now also probing whether White House officials have engaged in a cover-up, according to members of Congress who were briefed Friday by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

That avenue of investigation was added in recent weeks after assertions by former FBI Director James Comey that President Donald Trump had tried to dissuade him from pressing an investigation into the actions of Trump's first national security adviser, retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, members of Congress said, though it was not clear whom that part of the probe might target.

Even as members of Congress were mulling over the expansion of the case into possible cover-up, and its reclassification from counterintelligence to criminal, the scandal appeared to grow. The Washington Post reported Friday afternoon that federal investigators were looking at a senior White House official as a "significant person of interest." The article did not identify the official, though it noted that the person was "someone close to the president."

A person of interest is someone law enforcement identifies as relevant to an investigation but who has not been charged or arrested.

There was nothing illegal about the election.

Five myths about Watergate

Watergate was politics as usual. Nixon just got caught.