> “I think he finds the press to be very disruptive in terms of world peace,” Trump said. “The press is very dishonest.”
It’s projection, as usual.
Jefferson: “The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter."
Reagan: "There is no more essential ingredient than a free, strong, and independent press to our continued success in what the Founding Fathers called our 'noble experiment' in self-government"
FDR: "If in other lands the press and books and literature of all kinds are censored, we must redouble our efforts here to keep them free."
Trump: "The press is the enemy of the people."
Who owned the presses when Jefferson or FDR or even Reagan discussed the role of the press; who owns it now?
Diversity and the (political/social) range of press is an important aspect of this matter.
---
"To your request of my opinion of the manner in which a newspaper should be conducted, so as to be most useful, I should answer, "by restraining it to true facts & sound principles only." Yet I fear such a paper would find few subscribers. It is a melancholy truth, that a suppression of the press could not more compleatly deprive the nation of it's benefits, than is done by it's abandoned prostitution to falsehood.
Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knolege with the lies of the day. I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens, who, reading newspapers, live & die in the belief, that they have known something of what has been passing in the world in their time; whereas the accounts they have read in newspapers are just as true a history of any other period of the world as of the present, except that the real names of the day are affixed to their fables.
General facts may indeed be collected from them, such as that Europe is now at war, that Bonaparte has been a successful warrior, that he has subjected a great portion of Europe to his will, &c., &c.; but no details can be relied on. I will add, that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors. He who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false.
Perhaps an editor might begin a reformation in some such way as this. Divide his paper into 4 chapters, heading the 1st, Truths. 2d, Probabilities. 3d, Possibilities. 4th, Lies. The first chapter would be very short, as it would contain little more than authentic papers, and information from such sources as the editor would be willing to risk his own reputation for their truth. The 2d would contain what, from a mature consideration of all circumstances, his judgment should conclude to be probably true. This, however, should rather contain too little than too much. The 3d & 4th should be professedly for those readers who would rather have lies for their money than the blank paper they would occupy."
Thomas Jefferson, 1807 [1]
---
[1] - https://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendI_sp...
Presumably you mean "dishonest". Do you think OAN is dishonest and perhaps disruptive to world peace?
Thinking the press is dishonest does not make one a Nazi. Even if disliking the press were a sign if despotism, Clconsider what makes Nazism unique compared to other despotic regimes, disliking the press ain't it.
The current mechanism is
1) Fringe theory gestates in the internet.
2) Fringe theory gets into the podcast network and is covered
3) Relatively famous personality comes on a Fox program and mentions the theory
4) Government figures repeats theory that was covered on the news
5) Fox repeats government coverage
People on the right who have alternative theories, simply do not get air time. They aren’t suppressed, they are simply not competitive.
In a more economic framing of their efforts - they have found a way to offset the costs of inaccurate content to the future.
So they are now able to “sell” cheap “junk food” content, while the center and left spends more effort in forming more accurate content.
The center and left publications, for all their flaws, still stick to journalistic norms.
But today the NYT is more a site dependent on its wordle revenue than its subscription revenue. Consolidation of markets means advertisers do not need smaller local newspapers, and platforms get the lions share of attention.
There is no business model to sustain a free information economy.
Up until about 2016 I would have agreed to this. After the last month or two, I don't see how a rational human can think this anymore. Neither side has any mainstream news outlet which tries to be honest in its reporting. You want facts? The talking heads have their own YouTube channels now. If you can find a decent selection of them, they provide more honest reporting and far better analysis than the media on either side provides currently.
Funnily enough - it was also indexed to 2016, however the drift on the left has yet to catch up to the right.
Am I alone in thinking that "woke" was the catch-all for the enemy this time around?
[0] https://news.gallup.com/poll/695762/trust-media-new-low.aspx
Basically the press claimed that the Spanish sabotaged a US navy ship called the USS Maine. The Maine had a boiler accident which caused it to explode but the press claimed it was the Spanish. The government used this as an excuse to take the remaining bits of Spain's empire away from them. So that might be an example of the press being 'an enemy of world peace'. No, I'm not sure the current media would do that. But it is an example of a free press starting a war to sell fish wrap.
Really ? Here [1] they seem to say the same things.
[1] two different EU countries.
If they don’t go back in a week, which can be seen from several examples, like Hungary, that it doesn’t work. I think compared to the Hungarian government, this was a misstep of Trump (which I hope they make it more). In Hungary, when something like this happened, you always lost when you didn’t succumb to authoritarianism. You lost your previous privileges no matter what, but you lost more if you protested. They tried to keep up a facade that nothing changed, while everything changed. In this case it seems to me as an outside observer, that nothing value was lost by quitting compared to signing up.
Or Trump and co don’t want to keep a facade at all. But then they need to bet on that most people in America are really fascists.
If Trump says "I've ended 7 or 8 wars" or says "I've lowered drug prices 800, 900, 1000 percent" and no one says
"Sir, how is it possible to lower a price by 900 percent" or "Could you specify which conflicts it is you refer to by those 7 or 8 wars?" then you aren't a journalist.
If you go to an event where such things are said and there is no opportunity to ask these obvious follow up questions, then you stop going there, or you aren't a journalist.
If someone asks these questions and that leaves them excluded from those events - then you also stop going there in solidarity, or you aren't a journalist.
> Instead of toeing the official line, that reporting helped people understand what U.S. troops were really facing. Far from being a success, the fall of Baghdad marked the beginning of an insurgency that stretched on for years.
https://www.npr.org/2025/10/14/g-s1-93297/pentagon-reporter-...
They turned in their badges that allows them to access certain spaces in the pentagon. They're still reporters, they still work for their employers, and they can still do reporting.
In (Part Two) it was external actors laying bricks that isolated Waters' protaganist, and in (Part Three) cause passes the Rubicon as everyone and everything is lumped together as just more bricks in the wall.
If you did agree to the terms you'd be limited to publishing the official story (and can't talk to anyone for off-the-record stuff), but you get that for free anyway even if you never show up, so why bother with the extra expense of actually going to the Pentagon?
Obviously this rule would apply only to real journalists. Members of the party will get free roam. They will stay.
Just another day in the life of a regime.
I think it's worth it for anyone that cares about the aesthetics of journalism more than actually reporting anything of value.
I also honestly don’t see the point you are trying to make, can you clarify?
Edit: the equivocation about people not being cynical always in their roles in a corporation (a very trite claim to begin with) is extra funny in the context of the literal laws that bind employees of corporations to do exactly what we all already know they are bound to do:
> They must discharge their actions in good faith and in the best interest of the corporation, exercising the care an ordinary person would use under similar circumstances.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duty_of_care_(business_associa...
You can be quite literally sued into oblivion for not being cynical in your roles and responsibilities as an employee of a C corp.
Also remember that “best interests of the corporation” doesn’t necessarily mean get money now and lose reputation for a long time. Some people might interpret it that way, others not. It is all context dependent and there is no guarantee people would be convinced for taking the long view if they can provide justification.
Imagine being an aspiring blogger/independent journalist. One can only dream of such a possibility as to join the press corp of Pentagon. Of course many will agree to all restrictions and rules for the opportunity.
So many communists ended up imprisoned by other communists because they weren't pure enough or because scape goat was needed.
These YouTube kids...
Which is better than just being a normal person who goes to gulag with no wealth.
You saw it on a smaller scale before. Supporters of the current regime would get paid a lot for a while, then promptly forgotten about. Remember Steven Crowder complaining that 50 million dollars was too little - but where is he now? He's irrelevant. That was before they had gulags.
To be clear, his career imploded when he got caught on camera abusing his wife. It's not like he ended up on the wrong side of a power struggle.
And it's worth noting that as of last month he's now the #1 right wing influencer on Youtube. (The reason why he's now in that spot is left as an exercise for the reader.)
You choose to keep at it because you think military stuff is pretty neat; you get paid by the view; getting briefings from the pentagon makes you seem important to yourself and others; and you like being a celebrity (albeit a very minor one)
The ones who stay are influencers. Not journalists. Their viewers (almost certainly not readers) don’t know the difference.
Edit: I suspect you're right anyway. Typical mind fallacy on my part, as there have been people giving anecdotal stories of DOGE recruiters offering them a pay cut relative to their current roles just for the chance to do that work and get DOGE on their CVs, recruiters very confused that the response was that DOGE would be seen as a negative by future employers.
Nothing stops them from publishing criticisms of the administrations talking points, or conversations that happen outside of press conferences.
So it's purely leaks.
Seems like the wrong way about it. If your own people are leaking information, you should fix that, not force the press not to report on it.
Being a toady often has career benefits - and at least on the right it's often lucrative to boot. I mean, look at how Hegseth got his job.
Although the silent treatment the generals dished out at recent meeting wasn’t bad either
They've been towing the Pentagon/S.D. line, getting privileged official "leaks", going to wars as "embedded" shills, for decades.
Now they suddenly grew a "backbone"?
They just see the signs of lack of long term legitimacy for this particular government and play pretend at safe courage.
I'd quite like to actually see what the rules are, but this is just a complex one. On the one hand, obviously the US military would probably have an easier time securing classified info if unreliable people aren't wandering through the building. On the other hand, the US people do benefit from random people wandering the building and would get more out of looser requirements on who can get in. Making it easy to keep information classified has always been a strategic error that has probably done a lot of damage to the US.
Hold up, that's starting to conflate two very different ideas of what's going on:
1. "We cannot tolerate any outside visitors because it could possibly give them an opportunity to commit espionage and other serious federal crimes.
2. "We cannot tolerate specific vetted reporters that haven't promised us control over what they write and how they write it."
We can tell this isn't a (#1) concern over actual security. If it were, this (#2) "deal" would never be offered at all.
This is about controlling messages and opinions, rather than securing specific facts.
* whether you need to limit people learning something
* whether you need to limit people publishing something
"they might be spies" is an issue for the first, but the new rules infringe on the last one too.
1 has to do with secrecy levels, and those were already there, cause you don't want people to look at top secret files even if they are not journalists.
You do want journalists to raise issues on newspapers tho.
If that's the case, shouldn't we also ban the top brass from restaurants, bars, churches and golf courses lest they encounter strangers there?
I know classified US secrets, the leaks around the Snowden era were pretty interesting. Guarantee you the people in the building know more than me. The NOFORN stuff actually tends to be the spiciest if you feel an urge to go look at something.
Strike packages being leaked before launch? Yes. Yes, that’s new. We spent a lot of time and money to get that access in WWII. It was what Turing built the Enigma to do.
I'm surprised they were let in the building in the first place. Should I be allowed to go if I have a press pass?
Under the new rules this would not have been allowed, either, unless the information was pre-approved messaging.
I can think of one. Name ends on Hegseth.
And that same lying press and propaganda club that roenxi is arguing against here reported his gaffe pretty accurately, which if they had been who he claims they are they never would have.
Source?
The concern is the "you can't report on anything we don't want you to" rule.
There are countless reasons why they are acting now when they haven't before and most of them do not support what you are implying.
So one possible (admittedly uncharitable) take is that they were OK with all those other things because those things didn't hurt them, and might've helped them. They're not OK with this change not because it makes things worse, but because it makes things worse /for them/.
It's difficult to see those on the same plane really. There's spineless and there's spineless. The official "leaks" as theatre as it was, occasionally functioned as soft checks and balances for revealing in-fighting amongst the different departments of goverment -- when the pentagon, white house, CIA were at odds with each other over strategy and tactics on some topic-- and often this was used as narrative fodder for both the left and right.
As for the embeds, at least they saw some shit and had skin in the game by being near the action. Some of them actually died on assignment. Lıke, what the fuck are we talking about here? And when you have Israel not letting any reporters into Gaza I have little confidence Trump won't take a page out of that playbook if he gets the US in some ground conflict either.
So you have administrations that allowed all that in the past, and you have this snowflake administration who's afraid of some questions being asked on a golf course in Florida.
Same as with the tulkarem incident where the west bank police lynched two israelis on camera and the mob noticed the filming reporters and smashed the cameras.
https://www.mediaite.com/media/tv/stain-on-humanity-journali...
- 2025 Jun 7 oped about why it's a good thing that Israel doesn't allow journalists into Gaza (https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/409591)
- 2025 Jul 9 article "Israel Blocks All Foreign Journalists From Gaza, High Court Delays Ruling on Appeal for Access" (https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-07-09/ty-article/.p...)
Israel has killed dozens of journalists, officially marked as press, in targeted killings.
He acts like every other person (myself included) that i know that had a serious alcohol problem and is now somewhat relapsed but still looks funny at his favorite drink. With a guy like this you literally never know what the clear liquid in the glass bottle is.
I assume you meant lapsed - Freudian slip, maybe? ;)
Its good it stayed but just be aware it wasn't the same as a room of normal people being silent.
Probably 25 years. Let's not forget that they haven't shown spine after 9/11
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/feb/03/political-j...
Just check how quickly the elite has switched sides. You would have expected some more backbone.
I wonder at what point in time people will have enough with what they are changing. How does the HN crew based in the US think about the current administration?
Also, is there something like Poe's law but for bots? Bot Attribution Fallacy?
Honestly, I think it's better that we do keep conversation here to shiny technology. If you want to talk politics, go and find a group of people who know what they're talking about. That way you might learn something.
It’s that I know the day-to-day headlines from DC are mostly noise, and do not inform in the same way that ESPN talking head analysts do not inform about football.
To understand the state of American politics and of the world, I have news sources I trust. Hacker News will never be one of them. Neither will Reddit. Nor will Facebook.
I don’t want HN to turn into another outrage-bait pseudo-news commentary site. Look at the front page of Reddit (it’s atrociously bad) to see how far this forum could fall.
I flagged this article. If you want to talk about daily political news with other internet people, there are myriad options: WSJ, NYT, and Washington Post all have comment sections. Reddit and Facebook and Twitter and BlueSky and Instagram and Threads all have comment sections. YouTube has comments. Blogs have comments.
Why do people insist that keeping HN free of politics is tantamount to being blissfully ignorant of world affairs? And why do people insist on turning HN into Reddit v2?
But you’re right. It seems to be a better place than the alternatives, but heck, I learn rarely from comments compared how often I did 10 years ago on a - back then - small subreddit. Most comments can be inferred just from headlines, not even from the articles.
It is very dangerous to expect deep insights on every aspect of human life from a HN thread, regardless of how well educated and well meaning average HN commenters are.
A-MEN.
Ton of takes by armchair enthusiasts who think they have the ability call a spade a spade because they're grandmother told them they were a genius after restarting her computer.
I swear to god, DHH has to got to be the best example of this. His blog piece about free speech is so funny in retrospect it's hard for me to read and believe he takes himself seriously.
Hacker news should not become strictly or dominated by political discussion, but given AI and its impact on society amongst many other technologies like social media, which are intertwined within political discussion these days, some of the “knowledgeable“ people and particularly those whose careers have been impacted by AI are right here on hacker news.
How do we do this with tech topics? We rely on our expert knowledge to evaluate the claims of others. If someone is seriously asking this question about political discussion on HN that means they're not at the point where they're ready to have political discussions that are anything more than just saying "hey did you read that mainstream news article?" "yeah".
If you know even a modicum of politics or political theory it's almost trivial to prove, disprove, or add color to what's being said in these threads. If you want a really simple way to do this hop onto one of the big prediction markets like Polymarket or Kalshi. You can probably disprove a solid 15% of top-ranked commenters just by doing that.
If you want to use more brainpower, hop over to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and read one of their long articles. In particular they have a great set of articles on US policy thinking around China right now. It's pretty saddening to read HN commentary on China and compare it to CEIP's readings.
The conclusion I've come to on this site is that the incentives around participating on a public internet site, like HN, Reddit, Facebook, etc are such that they attract a crowd of people who are more interested in talking than listening or understanding. There's a subset of them who really enjoy debating but without being grounded in fact or consequence from misprediction it turns largely into verbal sparring games. There's also little difference between these sites because from what I can tell it's the same set of people attracted to all of the same sites.
Glad that it was almost :)
Why do you think, an US centric, vaguely leftist think tank focused on US politics with seat in Washington, financed by American donors, initiates the use of brainpower and understanding? More than any other media, that is. There is such a thing as the rest of the world (95% of the world population) who may be more incentivised to ask honest questions on HN than reading yet another U. S. publication that regards them as a remark in the margins, as demonstrated by the CEIP front page https://carnegieendowment.org/?lang=en
> Why do you think, an US centric, vaguely leftist think tank focused on US politics with seat in Washington, financed by American donors, initiates the use of brainpower and understanding?
Incentives. Do you really think that internet commenters are going to produce better research than folks paid to research things and provide insights to decision makers? Everyone has a bias. Having a bias doesn't stop you from doing deep analysis. The CCP traces its ideological origins from Marx-Leninism and still uses that to develop their policy positions. It's a very different perspective than US policy which traces its philosophy back to the European Enlightenment, but that doesn't mean their analysis is any less rigorous.
[1]: https://cepr.org/ [2]: https://www.jiia.or.jp/en/
JIIA is the only one of your examples, covering worldwide topics right there on the front page, even Africa. Promoting research.
So far, your selection confirms only one of your statements: bias. Everyone has them. Do you really think, the first two of your choices would engage in"deep analysis" on topics contrary to the political agenda of their donors and hence their incentives?
I'll hold that I get more varied opinions and links to sources on HN than from strictly conforming U. S. publications, but thanks for introducing me to JIIA - which, you know, verifies the first part of this sentence.
The philosophical roots of states is not on topic here, so I'll skip that.
I've started this line of discussion on reddit many times being open and honest. Nobody wants to engage in honest discussion.
1. Blatantly violating the 14th Amendment by signing an executive order that ends birthright citizenship, potentially stripping tens of millions of Americans of their citizenship.
2. Sending the military onto the streets of major cities, in a fundamental break from the centuries-old principle that the military does not police American citizens.
3. Tolerating open corruption by senior officials, such as the border czar Tom Homan accepting a $50,000 bribe.
4. Openly calling for the Justice Department to go after his political enemies, and firing people who refuse to do so.
5. Appointing dangerous and unqualified people like RFK Jr. and Kash Patel to head agencies whose missions they oppose. RFK Jr. is out there making wild claims about autism and vaccines.
6. Trump trying to overturn the 2020 Presidential election results, including calling up the Georgia Secretary of State and demanding that he add 11,000 votes to Trump's total, in order to flip the state in Trump's favor, while threatening to criminally prosecute the Secretary of State if he refuses to change the election result.
7. Trump repeatedly threatening that he will annex Canada, and refusing to rule out the use of military force.
I could go on and on, but I think the above is enough to make the point. This is not just another administration that you can have this or that view about. This is the downfall of the American political system. RIP, 1787 - 2025.
With all of this, you should be sheepish about saying you support Trump.
There's no, "Well, I don't like that he's ending the entire system of rule of law and respect for the results of elections, but I like policy X."
Maybe you want to buy a sports car, but the dealer only has one coupe and it has a sunroof (that you don't want). You can go look at other dealerships for one with the package you like, but in a world where there is only one dealership you have to take what they give you. Lots of people will end up buying that coupe with a sunroof to take to the track. Especially if they approach their decision from a "I want a sports car" perspective and the other option is a minivan.
If the situation is as dire as you feel, then I certainly hope that someone mounts an opposition to Trump because that's how we all win... a better alternative that most people recognize as such. Where and why are they hiding the alternatives?
We're talking about someone who is obliterating the American democratic political system, and you're basically saying, "Well, there are pros and cons with any package deal, just like when you buy a sports car." These aren't little pros and cons with some trifling issue. This is the continued existence of the United States as a democracy.
What I think is absurd is people keep writing these things as if they are facts, when a majority of this country doesn't agree. And any amount of anecdotal or skewed headlines won't change minds.
You need a better approach.
> anecdotal or skewed headlines
How are any of my examples above anecdotal or skewed? Did Trump issue an executive order ending birthright citizenship as enshrined in the 14th Amendment or not? Just one action like that would be an incredible break with the American political tradition, but he's done dozens of things that are just as bad or worse.
I don't know what "my approach" is. I'm describing reality as it is. I don't know how or if the American political system will overcome Trump and survive, but that system is facing extinction right now.
I've seen this over and over again, it's similar to "If you're not with us, you're against us" but on every topic.
How about supporting someone who tried to overturn the results of the 2020 Presidential election by every means at his disposal?
This is actually a clear case where you have to take a stand. "Well, I like some other things he's done" is not a valid answer here.
As an outsider: what do you agree with he's doing specifically?
Supporting Trump, in the general sense, is not the same thing. E.g. "a lot", as you say, implies "majority" or at least more than one or two things, which, of the dozens of (meaningful) things Trump has done, is about how many I'd peg as "theoretically defensible" (for example: Immigration control and getting jobs back to America, both of which I agree with; but obviously not in practice due to his counter-productive/performative/un-American implementations). The rest fall pretty clearly into the category of "materially hurting my home country and my community".
For example: Obliterating discourse, disrespecting rule of law, disrespecting the constitution, disrespecting rights and American principles, encouraging petty hatred and childish mockery, threatening to deport American citizens, calling every crime that might have been committed by a liberal "domestic terrorism", threatening via policy announced on Twitter to imprison my wife (who is a government worker) for the apparent crime of merely attempting to find a legal way to support our local legal immigrant(s) jailed by ICE for months for past non-violent non-drug-related crimes they have already finished serving for, which didn't even include jail time. The hysterical debasement of the amazing country my family has loved and served for hundreds of years.
Just off the top of my head.
There is no "I agree with some of it", or, "on average". It's moot, is what I mean. Yes, "honest discussion" is depressingly rare, but even truer: Focusing on the common person who isn't good at dispassionate political discourse is itself dishonest, when what's happening is hell.
Just like every president I've voted for, I support some of their ideas and some not. This isn't a sports team where there is a winner and loser.
... And, incidentally, knowing that my value judgements are as broken and human tangential as Borg transwarp control computers, I know that it's a massive bubble that is going to financially ruin absolutely everybody.
Likely at least a third of Americans do actively support the current administration and their decisions, so "having enough" is out of the question.
I don't get why California doesn't just join the European Union and exit the US; it's not like the red neck states like California.
I mentioned this before as well, but this all can be viewed as a side effect of the general population not feeling improvements in their lives and not having optimism. Hard issue to solve, if I’ll be honest.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidentia...
Everything I've seen so far from Trump is what I voted for. And almost everything Democrats have said and done has reaffirmed my choice.
Every one I've spoken to that has been surprised Trump was elected lives in a bubble. Hacker News is one such bubble.
You're not going to get any reliable "when are the masses going to revolt" info here.
Did you always have fascist tendencies or did Trump bring them out?
What percent of the US population is eligible to vote, what percent actually voted, and which percent did Kamala receive?
The aggressiveness is losing people who may have supported his immigration policies initially.
Losing, but hasn’t lost. Point is if someone is proudly pro-Trump right now, immigration probably isn’t going to prompt introspection.
I used to be a very "live and let live" type of person.
Then the relaxed "let live" part got abused. I've seen what happens first hand having lived in NYC for 6 years, and now living in London.
It's amazing the power of fear of crime to get people to demand the Federal government jackboot.
Stock market recovered when Trump TACOed, it crashed hard when he tried to implement his actual policies.
Multitude of sins being hidden by the devaluation of the dollar there.
Nah, you see the fundamental problem here is that (based on Biden's estimate), there's about 10 million or so, and that 60–70% of all U.S. agricultural workers and 15–20% of construction workers are such people.
They do this at a pay rate that is both higher than they'd get in their home country, and lower than any American would work for. This itself, being too cheap, precludes them getting a work visa: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/eta/foreign-labor/programs/h-2a
What they bring to America is: your food.
You're the bubble I'm talking about.
Until people like you start dealing in facts the pendulum will continue to swing right as it pushes people like me further in that direction.
You deny that Trump and his family are using their political status to earn money?
You that Trump's tarrif policy is erratic, with vague announcements on social media that are often reverted or not followed through later?
This is common with "centrists", "moderates", "undecided", etc... they'll always be shy Republicans who are too scared to say that they're drinking the kool-aid.
I don't live in the US, so I have no direct experience (though I travel there for work once or twice a year)
You're admitting that you wanted to vote for a guy who is committing an unprecedented amount of corruption? Taking bribes via his own personal bitcoin?
You wanted a President that pardons people who give him money? lol. Really?
Or have the guy who had a literal brainworm and doesn't believe in germs determining American's health? lol
Did you vote to have a WWF person run the dept of education? Are you an adult with a functioning brain?
You voted for a recession lol.
You voted for tanking an economy and prices getting higher lol
You voted to have college students writing op-eds critical of Israel deported (No offense, get out of this country if you don't think people should have the right to criticize any government they want)
You voted for the guy who wants to jail people for burning the flag
You voted for the guy who wants to take away news licenses because they;re mean to him
You voted to have more expensive healthcare
You voted to have all our allies abandon us and laugh at his speeches
You voted for a pedophile. Like an actual pedophile. Congrats on bragging about that one.
You voted to have coal mines reopened lololloooollollo and for the people who don't think solar energy is renewable because it can be nighttime too hahahahahahahahahahah
What is it lke having the worldview of a toddler?
As for the pedophilia accusations: one of Trump's main talking points was releasing the Epstein files, his AG "had the files on her desk", right wing media pundits were proclaiming everything was going to get exposed and... we get nothing. He now calls it a "Democrat hoax" and tells everyone to forget about it.
Idk about Epstein or the files, doesn't affect me or 99% of the daily lives of the average wage earner in America. If you think that makes him a pedophile or anyone who supports him a pedophile, well good luck with that.
> Idk about Epstein or the files
Okay.
You simply "don't agree" with him banning flag burning, ending birthright citizenship, going after his political opponents and their law firms, threatening broadcasting licenses over speech, his lawsuits against media for saying things he doesn't like, him running a cryptocurrency meme coin and making billions, dropping a case against Eric Adams in a quid-pro-quo, and pardoning the January 6th insurrectionists?
If you're just a single issue voter and not a die-hard MAGA person, surely you can list some of the things you "disagree with" and clearly disavow those actions?
These transparent forms of manipulation don't work the way you think they should. I'm not sure what you think will happen. The only thing it could possibly do is push someone else farther away. You should work on that because it's one of the major reasons we (us voters) got to this place. Good luck!
How do you feel it squares with the Constitution?
Are immigrants bankrupting / destroying the country?
Should the Democrats give up their attempts to prevent health premiums from doubling next year?
Do you believe the Democrats want to fund healthcare for illegal immigrants?
Are you 100% supportive of the way ICE has been going about their business?
Do you believe Portland is a war zone?
Do you believe the US can compete with China in manufacturing?
Did Russia start the war with Ukraine?
If it came to choosing sides would you choose Russia or Ukraine, or should the US extract themselves from it entirely? (passively choosing Russia)
Is inflation over?
Should the Fed be cutting rates?
Is the economy booming?
Wouldn't you have wanted a better candidate?
HN and the broader tech community have had their mask off moments.
Can you explain, we're in one now on the front page. In fact, I see the opposite, anything positive of the current administration is drowned out by comments about all the other things not going well.
I mean, I would think that actual libertarians, even right-libertarians, would be extremely alarmed by ol' minihands, tbh.
Curious how you're are directly affected? And as a non us-citizen, why does it matter?
The destruction of US scientific institutions has effects on other countries as well, science is very interconnected. It also affects all companies that supply scientific equipment and supply.
The foreign policy has effects on other countries, the US is still the most powerful nation at the moment. And let's assume that there is a chance his threats to invade Greenland or Canada are actually acted upon, that would change world politics in a fundamental way.
Whilst this is at an international political level, it has effects on individuals world views and therefore psychologies, which can be experienced viscerally.
As an obvious example, I'm sure Ukrainians have gone through some personal ups and downs as a result of the current administrations interpretation of diplomacy.
The notion that American exceptionalism inoculates America's war criminals from facing justice at the hand of International bodies set up specifically for that purpose, is incorrect and anti-human.
It is time for justice.
You can't maintain this culture of warrior narcissism, Americans.
It will end in tragedy - as it has already brought chaos and calamity to millions of innocent people across the globe, this century. The USA and its allies are, by a huge margin, the #1 cause of terror and war on the planet at this time. Nobody even comes close to the level of criminal war-mongering that occurs at the behest of the US' political establishment. No, not Russia. Not China. The USA and Five/Nine Eyes states are #1 at illegal war and murder of innocent human beings, bar none.
Come to grips with the crimes of your state. It is the #1 most important thing for Americans to do, for the rest of the world.
The American people are the only force on the planet which can reign in their monsters. It has to be done by the people, for the people.
Totally disagree. The ICJ makes sense within the scope of geopolitics. The ICC is, best case, a mechanism by which a country can cleanse itself of a bad former leader. More realistically, it is a relic of the unipolar world of the 1990s.
America needs to deal with itself through its own laws. (Same as Russia, China and India will.)
> USA and Five/Nine Eyes states are #1 at illegal war and murder of innocent human beings, bar none
Ah, got it.
If the ICC is good enough for Laurent Gbagbo, its good enough for Obama, Bush, Biden, Trump and Clinton.
The ICC delivers one thing Americans refuse to deliver: justice for victims of war crimes.
That this is not obvious, or prioritised, clearly belies the situation vis a vis American Exceptionalism.
Literally listed three other countries, none of which accept the ICC’s jurisdiction [1]. (A majority of the world’s population lives in non-ICC member states.)
> Obama, Bush, Biden, Trump and Clinton
Sure. This is why it doesn’t work. If you’re going to ignore Putin, Xi and Modi, it just turns into another tool of geopolitics. Not law.
The notion that a citizen of a war-crime committing nation can only have justice if they also demand that other war-crime committing nations face justice, is a dire fallacy.
You cannot, as an American citizen, do anything at all effective about Russia or China or India until you have prosecuted your own war criminals. You simply do not have the moral standing in the world, any more: the entire world sees the crimes of the American people, even if they don't.
Only then will the appropriate precedent be set for others to face justice too.
The whataboutism is why there is no justice.
First, we citizens jail our own war criminals. Only then will we have the tools go go after theirs. There is no other appropriate order of events.
All you do, otherwise, is justify your own states' war crimes without having the moral authority to go after any other states war crimes.
Given the enormous magnitude of the war crimes, crimes against humanity, and violations of human rights at massive scales that the 5-eyes nations have committed THIS CENTURY, there is no higher priority than for us to get on with it and start prosecuting our own war criminals first.
The moral authority you think exists, simply does not exist. Ours are the worst-offending states. Other states cannot even come close to matching the magnitude of OUR states' crimes.
I agree!
I’m not saying we need to commit war crimes. I’m not saying they should go unpunished. I’m saying we have to deal with this within our own laws. Unilaterally punting to the ICC doesn’t make sense if it has limited global authority and thus questionable legitimacy.
> Given the enormous magnitude of the war crimes, crimes against humanity, and violations of human rights at massive scales that the 5-eyes nations have committed THIS CENTURY, there is no higher priority
I think it’s a priority. Far from the priority. (If American goes right-wing imperial authoritarian, our past war crimes become something of a joke.)
> justify your own states' war crimes without having the moral authority to go after any other states war crimes
Nobody is justifying anything. But post-War international law was first based on a bipolar world, with one set of rules for America and the USSR, and another for everyone else, and then on a unipolar world, where America volunteered to subject itself to international rules and institutions. (We didn’t. But powerful elements within us tried.)
Now that world has fallen. We’re in a multipolar world. Not only is international law falling back into spheres of influence, with every global and regional hegemon regularly committing war crimes, it’s an open question whether anyone with power actually wants to enforce those rules.
(As for the ICC, has any ICC-member state has executed an arrest warrant against a third party’s leader? I return to my thesis that the ICC is a rent-a-Court for post-regime change reconciliation. Not a venue for trying cases and controversies.)
> Ours are the worst-offending states. Other states cannot even come close to matching the magnitude of OUR states' crimes
The facts are not with you on this one. To the point that you undermine your entire argument with the bias. I won’t argue America is better than Russia or China. But if you’re saying we’re in a different league from the USSR or China, you’re an unreliable narrator.
And you can’t vest the ICC with legitimacy while ignoring that it actually issued an arrest warrant for Putin.
The ICC issuing an arrest warrant for Putin demonstrates its legitimacy.
What it needs to do next is follow up with the long list of American war criminals, and the American people need to deliver them for prosecution in a court of law.
> I won’t argue America is better than Russia or China. But if you’re saying we’re in a different league from the USSR or China, you’re an unreliable narrator.
If you think the USSR still exists, it is you with the specious arguments. The USA is far worse at committing heinous war crimes, crimes against humanity and violations of human rights at massive scale, than any other nation. This Century!
I don't think you have the courage to look at the stats. That is the entirety of your argument: you don't know the stats, because if you did, you'd be calling for your own war criminals to be immediately shipped off to The Hague where they belong.
"But everyone also does it" is the argument of a kindergartener.
It’s sad that your speech has been chilled by the misuse of the karma system by some large faction of users here.
You mean like Tim Pool lol?
Could you, in a million years, ever imagine seeing his face in the White House briefing room? We're a pathetic country right now.
They’re outed as stooges. That doesn’t matter to the influencer crowd. But I bet this costs the DoD a lot of narrative-shaping power.
A significant fraction of Americans are addicted to rage bait. They don’t care about accuracy as much as entertainment and ideological predictability.
Known lies can still be effective.
Rely on traditional trade craft. A bouncing bevy of brothel, escort service, deepthroats; historically and dramatized, is a staid and proven primary source.
But in this other case, well there's just no value to reporting garbage.
The chances of making that via a White House press conference is pretty close to zero.
That's not exactly what's happening.
>>The rules limit where reporters can go without an official escort and convey “an unprecedented message of intimidation” for anyone in the Defense Department who might want to speak to a reporter without the approval of Hegseth’s team
On NPR (National Public Radio) a few days ago, a reporter said they could wander the halls of the Pentagon and ask anyone they ran into any question about anything. This will not be allowed anymore and, considering it's the Pentagon, doesn't seem unreasonable to me.
What bad things have happened from what you're describing?
A government with public alignment and maybe a slow leak will be fine. A government without public alignment needs to have every crack pried open until alignment with the public is restored.
In a democratic functioning society the gold standard is that citizen are allowed to ask anything and allowed to answer nothing. The GOP wants to reverse both.
Access to the Pentagon is the privilege they are revoking but the action they are punishing is not related to the Pentagon.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/10/15/business/medi...
That link has the actual rules.
I've visited the White House a couple of times and even setting foot on the complex as a visitor requires a background check, I assume the Pentagon functions similarly.
We probably should have taken it as a sign things were heading a bad direction when stuff like that began to change…
It's good for garden mulch.
https://www.npr.org/2025/10/14/g-s1-93297/pentagon-reporter-...
If you don’t quote it out of context you’ll see that a) he doesn’t have any problems with not having physical access to parts of the pentagon and b) the quote was part of a broader anecdote where generals contradicted the secretary of defense.
The new pledge would not allow him to report that disagreement. Which is extremely telling.
I do love that despite the administration lying about everything there are still people who will take what they say at face value without a shred of critical thinking.
They're doing this because people keep leaking unflattering pieces of information and Petey gets his feelings hurt pretty quickly. It has nothing to do with security, and everything to do with control.
This is supposed to be unfair?
With an access badge, at least you can leak something important anonymously.
You think generals leak to journalists at press conferences?
I don't really get what the journalists' role is? To goad and harass employees of the Department of defense in to slipping up and saying more than they should? To encourage people to leak information?
Given the secretive nature of the whole institution, It seems sensible that there is some formal process for deciding what information should and shouldn't be shared. The previous setup seems sort of insane.
If the army is putting babies on spikes and it needs to be leaked.. it seems that that should happen outside of the Pentagon itself and shouldn't involve getting some government approved badge...
"In November 2024, the Pentagon failed to pass its annual audit, meaning that it wasn't able to fully account for how its $824 billion budget was used. This was the 7th failed audit in a row, since the Department of Defense became required to undergo yearly-audits in 2018."
Kicking journalists out would probably not make things more auditable so to speak.
Leaks and whistleblowers do not form in a vacuum. Less press means less oversight, fewer connections built, fewer threads pulled.
And even so, not all Pentagon business is all “life-and-death-top-secret”. Censorious governments LOVE the “national security” excuse.
No.
Real accountability is that the people can torture their leaders when they fail, but that just doesn't happen anymore.
Imagine that this was just a big rock and Trump was sitting on top of the rock like with a group of apes. Also, let's assume that Trump had set fire on the entire banana supply. Do you think the apes would not have picked a different leader immediately?
Rational people would understand that if you make people lose billions that there should be consequences, but someone the world population is more stupid than a bunch of apes.
It seems to me there is some hope for America after all.
War journalists will keep reporting. This just means the government’s position doesn’t get a say every time.
Since nobody is protesting now you can expect that 5 years from now the regime will start making disappear people vaguely opposing the gov decisions or being suicided on a regular basis.
Not the case, there are quite large protests, one is this weekend I believe.
As for disappearances, ICE is already doing that. Although in Chicago their attempts to disappear people are going increasingly poorly, since ICE's appearance in a neighborhood now typically draws dozens of people onto the street to protest.
The skyscraper is the size / scope / power of the US Federal Government (although incidentally it's also housing the US Constitution). And the planes are the entirely unqualified loyalists and useful idiots appointed to top positions of power.
Good impact, that's much harder.
But even with the benefit of hindsight, it's not always clear if a politician's impact was good or bad: people over here are debating how good Angela Merkel really was, and she's been out of office for 4 years (after 16 in power).
They’re doing great at both those things.
Not that it matters: my previous point was more that "being fast" doesn't preclude them being idiots, nor being malicious to the interests of voters.
_Change_ is easy. Anyone can break stuff. _Positive_ change is more difficult.
[1] https://brendonbeebe.substack.com/p/history-of-pentagon-pres...
Any kind of restriction, no matter how trevally exploitable will become legally and technically insurmountable if given time to metastasize.
It kind of shows that "democracy" was never real to begin with.
Certainly with Sora 2 level of technology they can just claim whoever they don't like has blown up a federal building while they were asleep. It's not like you can have an alibi when you sleep and everyone sleeps. In a way, this AI nightmare necessitates protocols for protection against false accusations like only being able to open the door exiting a house when three other witnesses are present. There are cryptographic solutions like verified cameras, but almost nobody has those now, not even news crews publish signed videos.
Journalism in war time has no real meaning, because if it's secret information the journalist basically becomes an adversary and at some point it becomes cheaper to kill them. Those waging wars have historically always been corrupt. So, that leaves repeating whatever the Pentagon wants you to know.
Also, calling the US a democracy is like putting lipstick on a pig and saying it's a hot babe.
Perhaps Switzerland still has a democracy, but most kind of suck in various ways (and most importantly, don't do anything to improve their democracies). In a real democracy, there would be continuous improvement with better checks and balances. At some point you start to wonder whether democracy just exists to give people the illusion that their voice means anything. Also, in a real democracy there would be equal opportunity and advertising budget for all political parties. That's just not the case in many democracies.
So, blatantly obvious autocracies are probably worse than our current "democracies", but let's not pretend democracy is a thing right now.
https://apnews.com/article/pentagon-journalists-new-restrict...
Awfully reminiscent of a certain *other* autocratic regime, and its tyrannical control over public discussion of its armed forces.
> "These laws establish administrative and criminal punishments for "discrediting" or dissemination of "unreliable information" about the Russian Armed Forces, other Russian state bodies and their operations, and the activity of volunteers aiding the Russian Armed Forces, and for calls to impose sanctions against Russia, Russian organizations and citizens.[1][2]"... The adoption of these laws resulted in the mass exodus of foreign media from Russia and the termination of war reporting by independent Russian media. More than 10,000 people have been prosecuted under these laws,[4]..."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_2022_war_censorship_la... ("Russian 2022 war censorship laws")
Where in the memo does it restrict journalists from reporting on any news without official approval? Can you quote me the relevant section?
I see a section about "unauthorized disclosure of CNSI or CUI", but CNSI and CUI are specific classifications of information that the government is required by law to protect.
https://apnews.com/article/pentagon-press-media-restrictions...
The section of the memo that pertains to reporters losing badge access only mentions classified and unclassified but controlled information.
"The Pentagon should let reporters report anything they want" is a very different claim than "Pentagon employees should be allowed to tell us anything they want".
New York Times, AP, Newsmax and others say they won't sign new Pentagon rules
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45575755
The Pentagon Press Corps Is Gone
If I was tasked to start the Pentagon from scratch and was asked, “should we setup a system to provide offices and constant access to journalists?” I’d be like, fuck no, what a dumb distraction.
Members of the military should not be talking to the press about their work while at work. Sure, talk off the record, just don’t do it at work. And talk as an individual, not as a representative of the military.
Unless of course your job is literally PR for the military. In which case maybe go to the journalist.
Joking aside, for discussing classified information, there are dedicated areas called SCIFs[0]. Journalists aren't allowed into those areas.
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensitive_compartmented_inform...
I sincerely hope that people of the United States reject being treated like mindless cattle and choose freedom instead of what appears to be a complete and utter national-fascist tyranny.
bigyabai•3mo ago
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charcircuit•3mo ago
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charcircuit•3mo ago
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baubino•3mo ago
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kstenerud•3mo ago
If your answer is "the government", then every cover up will never be revealed, and the government will answer to no one.
If your answer is "journalists", then you have the status-quo in any functioning democracy.
And when it actually moves into sedition territory, that's what an independent court system is for.
Unfortunately, once things devolve into a two-party system, it becomes ever increasingly difficult to keep the various branches independent.
intended•3mo ago
Moving on to a new version is to waste your own intelligence in reactionary sentence creation.
JuniperMesos•3mo ago
nandomrumber•3mo ago
bigyabai•3mo ago
lelandfe•3mo ago
They’re not subject to FOIA you say? Perhaps there’s a difference to the organizations after all.
f33d5173•3mo ago
troupo•3mo ago
However, Apple is a private company and can do whatever it pleases, however shitty that behavior is.
esseph•3mo ago
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RobotToaster•3mo ago
https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/07/29/we-will-coup-whoever...
JumpCrisscross•3mo ago
I had a friend go deep into addiction. I think there was a period when every headline was his doing, too.
virtue3•3mo ago
uncletammy•3mo ago
blitzar•3mo ago
croes•3mo ago
ok_dad•3mo ago
nutjob2•3mo ago
The word you're looking for is 'murdering'.
guerrilla•3mo ago
Terr_•3mo ago
guerrilla•3mo ago
ok_dad•3mo ago
Because I was in the military in the past and because I grew up on the US continent, I probably have it ingrained in me to not use the words of violence like "murder" for these things, and instead I use the softer words that don't explicitly call out the death that is inflicted by the "bombing". I should work on that, for sure.
ok_dad•3mo ago
I was literally a Naval Officer on a ship doing counter drug operations about 10-15 years ago, and it was made very clear to us at the time that we were not to use weapons unless fired upon. The only exception was trained sharpshooters from the Coast Guard who were allowed to shoot outboard motors, though they were extremely careful about not harming the people on the boats. We'd "arrest" them (the Coast Guard would) and then turn them over to one of several partner countries. Once we captured the same person twice in one deployment. Today, I am not proud of what we did back then, as I am sure we caused more harm than good and spent more resources than was worth it to capture those drugs.
To be PERFECTLY CLEAR: we RARELY found fishing boats that had drugs on them, or who were even supporting drug operations. The fact that several fishing boats have been hit now makes it CLEAR to me FROM EXPERIENCE that we've MURDERED INNOCENT FISHERMEN because I KNOW that there is ZERO POSSIBILITY that all of these guys were a threat in any way. AT MOST these fishermen would refuel a drug boat, and I don't think that's worthy of death. Furthermore, those people usually were forced to do these jobs under threat from the gangs in their towns against their families, so killing these folks makes even less sense because they aren't the actual dangerous people who are running the narco-gangs.
It's a FUCKING SHAME what this country is doing to those people now and I am ASHAMED of having "served in the military" when in reality I was obviously just a tool for a fucked up regime that has finally gone mask-off.
_factor•3mo ago
You want to censor in the armed forces? Classify. You don’t tell reporters they can’t publish anything unapproved. Tomorrow the director gets caught stealing and toppling regimes and you can’t publish a word. After a long time of obeying this, you will fear doing so.
Brilliant strategic play on the Trump admin. Win or lose, the pentagon is more opaque. I just wish they would used some of that brilliance on things that improved the world and adhered to why we have governments in the first place.
DeepSeaTortoise•3mo ago
So if they were to be approached by a whistleblower or happened to hear the right conversation or find the right documents, it'd be fair game.
somenameforme•3mo ago
I just have this feeling that in modern times if the Pentagon Papers were leaked to the NYTimes - but in the context of Ukraine, and especially if the previous administration was still in power, they very possibly might have instead alerted US intelligence instead of publishing them. WaPo repeatedly pat themselves on the back for playing a key role in tracking down the person who leaked the Pentagon documents in 2023. They mostly ignored what was leaked and instead framed everything as a story of tracking down the source and why he might do such a thing. We have a very broken media system, and this, probably unintentionally, might be a big first step in fixing it.
croes•3mo ago
Any information that isn't approved by Hegseth is unauthorized. In other words, only what Hegseth allows could be written.
To call the bad would be an understatement.
DeepSeaTortoise•3mo ago
I'm honestly not sure which rules the media outlets actually want changed.
ben_w•3mo ago
IMO at best this is frogs* jumping out of water that was boiled too fast.
* an idiom based on a stupid truth, as the real frogs were sans-brain at the time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog
matwood•3mo ago
People are not being hyperbolic. This is reducing the transparency of Pentagon to the American people. See also the Whitehouse banning the AP earlier this year.
> It's basically stating that if a news outlet publishes unauthorized information then they won't be allowed access to the Pentagon.
Without access it's going to be very hard to do good reporting, adversarial or otherwise. This is the government working to control what is said.
> You're generally going to be reluctant to frame entities that you have a positive relationship with in a negative way. And this agreement is essentially formalizing adversarialness.
The world is built on relationships. One of the keys of being a good journalist/reporter is being able to have relationships which help to build stories while also staying objective.
Terr_•3mo ago
Yeah, any "benefit of the doubt" burned away months ago.
The administration is trying to control published opinions and value-judgements, as opposed to concealing sensitive military data.
somenameforme•3mo ago
From your worldview, do you not find the timing odd? The media releases one of the biggest ever leaks, completely embarrassing the government, and then the government welcomes them in, with privileged access no less, to one of the most sensitive locations in the entirety of the country? And this all happened under Nixon, a man who wasn't exactly known for his benevolence.
There was a time, not that long ago, when embedded war reporters were looked upon negatively. The reason is that it's impossible to remain impartial. This is not only because of the relationships you form in such a location, but also because if "imparial" ends up being negative, you're getting 'unembedded' quite quickly. So it ends up being defacto propaganda.
Think about what "transparency" we've gained from the media being embedded with the Pentagon since 1972. It mostly doesn't exist. Even if somebody wants to leak something it's not like they're going to walk up to a journalist in the Pentagon to do it. On the contrary, the media seems to have become ever more ingrained into the military industrial complex ever since this date, to the point that in 2023 WaPo spent more time trying to track down a leaker and assess his possible motives, than covering what was leaked.
Government and media should be kept separated, and this act is, probably unintentionally, helping to do exactly that.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_Papers
[2] - https://nation.time.com/2012/09/27/pentagons-correspondents-...
rufus_foreman•3mo ago
The Pentagon Papers covered the period from 1945 to 1968. Nixon took office in 1969. If the leaks were embarrassing, they were particularly embarrassing to the JFK/LBJ administrations. Nixon initially didn't intent to do anything about the leak. Henry Kissinger convinced him that allowing the leaking of classified documents in the press would set a bad example:
"President Nixon’s reaction that Sunday morning was that the damage fell mostly on the Johnson Administration and that he should leave it alone. That afternoon, however, security advisor Kissinger convinced Nixon that he had to act on “this wholesale theft and unauthorized disclosure.”
“The massive hemorrhage of state secrets was bound to raise doubts about our reliability in the minds of other governments, friend or foe, and indeed about the stability of our political system,” Kissinger said in his memoirs.
Once energized, Nixon soon became obsessed. Dissatisfied with the FBI’s progress in the case, he organized his own group of investigators in the White House. They styled themselves “the plumbers” because their job was to stop leaks."
-- https://www.airandspaceforces.com/article/0207pentagon/
If Nixon had ignored Kissinger that day, he would probably close to the top of the typical lists of greatest US Presidents rather than close to the bottom.
somenameforme•3mo ago
As for the impact of the papers directly on Nixon, he could have been honest and immediately come forth with the truth when entering office. He chose not to, which made him complicit in the lies of previous administrations. This is also why if you ask somebody who's war was Vietnam? Most of everybody is going to say Nixon.
You can see strong parallels with Trump and Ukraine in modern times. It's obvious the government is not being at all honest about their assessment of the situation over there, yet Trump continues to 'play along' with the lies and indeed this is a big part of the reason why Ukraine will likely go down in history as 'Trump's War.'
If the 'Ukraine Papers' were leaked, Trump would certainly first try to pin it on Biden, but in reality nobody cares about Biden anymore - and instead the papers would mostly just reveal his own lies and complicity.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_wiretaps
amazingman•3mo ago
blitzar•3mo ago
parineum•3mo ago
croes•3mo ago
vintermann•3mo ago
Maybe they think they'll get access to them eventually if they're loyal.
It might seem cowardly, but it isn't that different to what happens every day in business. Society is full of organisations working on the "make the boss' opinions your own" principle.
JumpCrisscross•3mo ago
Then you aren’t a journalist.
vintermann•3mo ago
JumpCrisscross•3mo ago
The people winning White House credentials are political influencers. Chomsky was an interesting linguist. His political observations are about as scientific as our current crop of Silicon Valley elites’.
mikkupikku•3mo ago
JumpCrisscross•3mo ago
The refutation is there are lots of places to sit. Like, yes, the people at a linguistics conference will predominantly be linguists. That doesn’t suggest a linguistics conspiracy.
vintermann•3mo ago
Chomsky's whole point is that it doesn't take a conspiracy for journalists to share their superiors' views. Not for those superiors to be very aligned with each other.
mikkupikku•3mo ago
That's Chomsky's point. In Manufacturing Consent, Chomsky explains how the appearance of collusion can arise without conspiracy. Like-minded people hiring and promoting like-minded people isn't a conspiracy, it only looks like one because people with similar incentives and values will behave in similar ways given similar circumstances.
vintermann•3mo ago
What he said, and I agree is true and important, is that you won't get to work as a journalist and do things like, say, interview people for BBC, unless you believe most of the things your employer believes.
eagleal•3mo ago
In fact the most common form of journalism you will find is what's akin to a Propaganda channel of a Sponsoring Party (Defense, Media Company, Political party, Rich Individual with an agenda, etc). Essentialy a PR employee.
But this is true since always.
The kind of journalism we usually think of though is Investigative journalism, but that's a different beast and usually doesn't really pay.
JumpCrisscross•3mo ago
You seem to have presumed your conclusion.
notarobot123•3mo ago
intended•3mo ago
There’s always a good reason, or good intentioned idea.
It’s why the saying about paver stones on the road to hell is all about.
There were certain norms that America counted on, to hold its governance mechanisms in check. Those checks and balances are being broken.
It is possible, that nothing will happen. People have fallen out of planes and survived. Maybe this will be America’s experience.
The country I knew, that many others used to be angry with, but also respect - would NEVER have left such a thing to simple chance. There used to be many who stepped into the breach.
And perhaps people are. It may simply be that this new information environment - geographically, financially consolidated, but ideologically divided - is ensuring that people who are solving problems and figuring things out, are unable to coordinate or gain traction. Gain traction in a manner that used to cross party lines.
solatic•3mo ago
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solatic•3mo ago
Nice caveat, noting that none of your friends are doing that. But plenty of people do really dangerous, stupid shit and upload it to YouTube for the advertising dollars. Because news media is usually ultimately financed by advertising or partisan donors pushing a specific viewpoint, they're incentivized to publish dangerous stuff - but only the kind people want to see, which is why outlets like the New York Times didn't host video clips showing the outright gore from Charlie Kirk getting shot. The democratic value of an independent media rests on editorial discretion finding content that shocks its audience but not its advertisers.